Form and Substance in Inservice Teacher Education

Much of the reform rhetoric about professional development is geared toward the form that such development should take. This literature advocates collaboration among teachers, schoolwide participation in professional development, programs that extend over time and are interspersed with classroom practice, programs that include classroom visitations, and so forth. Much less has been said about what the content of such programs should be. This paper reviews studies of inservice programs that aim to enhance mathematics and science teaching. It focuses exclusively on studies that examine effects of programs on student learning. The review suggests that the differences among programs that mattered most were differences in the content that was actually provided to teachers, not difference in program forms or structures.

[1]  T. Wood,et al.  Deepening the Analysis: Longitudinal Assessment of a Problem-Centered Mathematics Program , 1997 .

[2]  John R. Schwille,et al.  Teachers as Policy Brokers in the Content of Elementary School Mathematics. Research Series No. 113. , 1982 .

[3]  F. Lawrenz,et al.  Integrating quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods to compare two teacher inservice training programs , 1988 .

[4]  The effect of A teacher questioning strategy training program on teaching behavior, student achievement, and retention , 1983 .

[5]  Paul Cobb,et al.  Assessment of a problem-centered second-grade mathematics project. , 1991 .

[6]  Douglas A. Grouws,et al.  Active mathematics teaching , 1983 .

[7]  Rochelle L. Rubin,et al.  Systematic modeling versus the learning cycle: Comparative effects on integrated science process skill achievement , 1992 .

[8]  M. Lampert.  What Can Research on Teacher Education Tell Us about Improving Quality in Mathematics Education , 1988 .

[9]  Jane A. Stallings,et al.  Program Implementation and Student Achievement in a Four-Year Madeline Hunter Follow-Through Project , 1986, The Elementary School Journal.

[10]  Edmund A. Marek,et al.  Effects of the learning cycle upon student and classroom teacher performance , 1991 .

[11]  M. Kennedy.  Learning to Teach Writing: Does Teacher Education Make a Difference? , 1998 .

[12]  T. P. Carpenter,et al.  Using Knowledge of Children’s Mathematics Thinking in Classroom Teaching: An Experimental Study , 1989 .

[13]  Andrew C. Porter,et al.  A Curriculum out of Balance , 1989 .

[14]  Robert J. Stevens,et al.  The Cooperative Elementary School: Effects on Students’ Achievement, Attitudes, and Social Relations , 1995 .

[15]  T. Wood,et al.  Assessment of a Problem-Centered Mathematics Program: Third Grade. , 1996 .

[16]  Thomas L. Good,et al.  Effects of Two-Group and Whole-Class Teaching on Regrouped Elementary Students’ Mathematics Achievement , 1993 .

[17]  Douglas A. Grouws,et al.  The Missouri Mathematics Effectiveness Project: An experimental study in fourth-grade classrooms. , 1979 .

[18]  Mark A. Smylie.  Teachers' Views of the Effectiveness of Sources of Learning to Teach , 1989, The Elementary School Journal.