The Impact of a Professional Development Program on Middle School Math Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Over the past decade, policy makers provided support for a range of professional development (PD) efforts designed to improve mathematics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and skills. However, there has been little success in determining what features of PD efforts contribute to such teacher learning. This lack of success is due, in part, to the complex interplay of factors that may contribute to changes in teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and skills. This paper attempts to address these gaps. In it, we describe an effort to evaluate the Mississippi Delta Math Science Partnership (MDMSP) program by comparing participants’ preand post-test scores on PCK assessments. Our analyses showed that teachers participating in the MDMSP program did improve their performance on these measures during the extended summer workshop portion of their experience. This analysis also suggests that the content and characteristics of the PD, as well as teachers’ prior knowledge and experiences, predicted teachers’ learning.