Abstract
Teacher-level interventions are one potential way to enhance instructional quality and, in turn, student performance. A need for teacher professional development about differentiation (the adaptation of instruction to diverse educational needs) has been identified. 18 teachers participated in a professional development programme about differentiation in primary school mathematics, 17 teachers served as control group. Video-observations were obtained before and after the professional development programme and were coded with the Mathematical Quality of Instruction instrument (MQI; Learning Mathematics for Teaching Project, 2011). As hypothesized, Bayesian analysis of the observed growth in mathematical quality of instruction revealed that teachers who participated in the professional development programme were better able to link and connect ideas or procedures, were better able to give mathematical meaning to ideas and procedures, more often presented and compared multiple procedures or solution methods for a problem at stake, and applied more remediation compared to the control group. Contrary to our expectations, teachers who participated in the professional development programme were not better able to respond properly to students’ mathematical productions in instruction. This study revealed that it is possible to enhance mathematical instructional behavior of primary school teachers with a professional development programme about differentiation. Future research should establish whether this intervention at teacher level also promotes higher student achievement. During the presentation, we will share our most recent findings regarding achievement effects.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Unpublished - 28 Aug 2015 |
Event | EARLI 2015 - Limassol, Cyprus Duration: 25 Aug 2015 → 29 Aug 2015 |
Conference
Conference | EARLI 2015 |
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Country/Territory | Cyprus |
City | Limassol |
Period | 25/08/15 → 29/08/15 |
Keywords
- Mathematics education
- Primary education
- differentiated instruction
- observation
- teacher professional development