A Comprehensive Professional Development Program to Prepare Effective Teacher Leaders in Science
Teacher Leaders showed statistically significant increases from pretest to posttest as a result of their participation in the content immersions. Moreover, on delayed posttests a year after each immersion, Teacher Leaders retained a significant amount of their content knowledge. Additionally, Teacher Leaders reported increases in their understanding of inquiry-based teaching and learning and their understanding of their own learning process as a result of their participation in the content immersions.
In annual impact surveys, Teacher Leaders consistently reported positive, lasting effects from their SA experiences, including greater confidence to teach science. Teacher Leaders indicated the importance of the experience with the content and pedagogy from the role of a learner. Teacher Leaders felt this experience helped them internalize the importance of assessing preconceptions, resulting in changes in their teaching practices. These data suggest that the NCOSP professional development experiences had a positive impact on Teacher Leader content and pedagogical content knowledge, which in turn supported increases in their instructional effectiveness.
With respect to leadership, Teacher Leaders reported that their role in NCOSP included learning more about science education, as well as working with others as leaders. With each year in the program Teacher Leaders described more leadership responsibilities compared to the previous year. Teacher Leader responses indicated collaboration and sharing with other educators rose in 2006 from 17% to 24% and sharing or conducting more formal professional development events increased from 30% to 38%. Most Teacher Leaders describe their goals and rewards within NCOSP as related to better science education and professional collaboration. In 2006, a growing emphasis on leadership as a goal was also apparent, correlating with an emphasis on leadership experiences in the professional development programs that year.
In the fourth summer when the professional development experiences were designed to prepare Teacher Leaders to support their professional learning community, Teacher Leaders reported that the experience increased their understanding of effective science instruction, effective professional learning communities, and of NCOSP tools and resources available to them. When ask how prepared they felt to successfully deliver their 3-day workshop, over 90% responded prepared or very prepared. Satisfaction surveys from their professional learning community members were overwhelmingly positive on multiple indicators consistent with the Teacher Leaders' sense of preparedness.
Data on the performance of students in Teacher Leader classrooms were collected as a measure of the impact of instruction on student learning. Modest, but significant improvements in student performance, compared to trends statewide, were detectable when students had a Teacher Leader for one year of instruction. However, sizeable improvements were seen when students had two or more years of instruction from one or more Teacher Leaders, demonstrating the positive, cumulative effect of effective instruction on student outcomes.
