Hi everyone. Thanks for dropping by to watch our video. We hope it sheds light on the importance of offering support to teachers after professional development ends. 

Let us know your thoughts. What other supports could be offered to teachers to help sustain professional development outcomes? What supports would teachers find most effective? What supports would be easy to scale across different districts?

Hi Cathy and Team! As someone who maintains a vehicle and designs professional development programs in informal settings, I relate to the challenges of keeping the benefits of the initial effort over time.  Did you experiment with the optimal length of time since the end of the original training for the “tune up” intervention? If you started sooner than 1 year, was there evidence that it might not take as long as 2-3 additional years to reach those original outcomes (if I understood your data correctly at 02:20-02:30). In other words, is it possible to avoid that slump at the end of the first year altogether with something closer to the original professional development.  Your findings make a lot of sense and should be a common sense in sustained program support, however, it remains difficult to ensure continued funding after the end of a project.  

Hi Nickolay! Thanks so much for watching our video and posting your question. You have interpreted our findings correctly. We were not able to do an experiment to look at the optimal length of time to wait before adding our modest supports. The four original PD programs that were offered ended at various times, and were funded by the State of California. I was the evaluator on all of them, and used the same measures on all of them. When the projects ended, I was curious about whether the changes made were actually sustained. So, Dr. Sandholtz and I did an NSF study to look at the long-term impacts on teachers from one of the groups (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_I...). When we saw the PD outcomes declining in this study, we began to wonder if there were modest supports that could be offered to teachers to stop the decline.

I personally believe that this slump could be avoided. In fact, I am working now on a study with new teachers in rural North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and California that will offer PD and modest supports to see if we can learn more about this topic. Although it seems pretty obvious that this kind of support would help teachers, we could not find any existing research about this. The funding was just awarded. If you email me a reminder in a year, I'll let you know what we are finding!

Thank you for sharing your work! I have a question about the follow up and supports. In our PD program, we have a summer workshop followed by four follow up meetings in person and extensive virtual interactions with a team of teachers over the course of a year. We haven't built in ongoing support after the year of participation, however. What would you recommend based on your research?

Hi Rebecca! Thanks so much for your great question.

In our first NSF study about the sustainability of teacher development (#1119589, https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_I...), we found that teachers’ attitudes and instructional practices began to decline two years after the professional development ended, but remained higher than pre-program. The most significant declines occurred in teachers’ self-efficacy in teaching science. Teachers continued to use a broader range of instructional strategies in science than pre-program, but their reported frequency declined. Teachers’ most frequently requested forms of support were modest, a finding that led to the study described in the video. 

I would actually recommend starting modest supports toward the end of the year of their professional development, so the teachers have the opportunity to experience these supports and get in the habit of using them. For example, one of the supports teachers used most frequently was our monthly newsletter, full of resources about teaching NGSS. We also held webinars were they could chat and collaborate, but these were not used by many teachers. (I believe these webinars would be more popular now that teachers are used to Zoom; when we did them, it was before the pandemic, and Zoom was not popular.)  I feel like if you start these types of supports before their participation "ends" at the end of year one, and they are continued as the project continues with new teachers, that will help sustain the teacher outcomes.

We will happily share our newsletters with you to adapt if that would be helpful. Creating relevant newsletters can take a lot of time, and this might help you.

 

Hello and thank you for sharing your work and providing another data point to support the efficacy of ongoing professional learning rather than "one and done" models. Your study focused on elementary teachers. What might you expect to find if you repeated your study with middle school and high school teachers? Have you explored the possibility of grooming teacher facilitators as a means to help teachers retain their self-efficacy and skills? I have always found that having to teach something is a great way to gain mastery.

 

Sounds like a terrific project, and I love the fact that it's applicable across all kinds of specific PL programs. I also think it's fascinating that some of the electronic offerings were more used than others - maybe some teacher interview data on that might be a super helpful addition to understanding what works and why, among the set of offerings you  provided. Could it even be the $150 for essential supplies that has the most impact? - e.g. Do they know that comes from the program that runs the PL they took? (ie. might it be an affect-loaded reminder of the program and its principles?)

Thanks, Sue. I think it is very interesting that many of the teachers in this study were very resistant to using webinars or Zoom. We had to train them repeatedly on how to use these supports. Now, after the pandemic, I suspect our findings would be much different!

We do have a lot of interview data that we didn't have time to discuss in our video that describes some reasons why teachers didn't avail themselves of some of the supports we offered. As you probably would suspect, teachers often felt they did not have time to participate in webinars and Zoom collaboration. Many seemed intimidated by the technology.

They seemed to find the newsletters valuable because they could read them at their convenience.

The teachers did know that the money for supplies came from the project. However, some of them were reluctant to order anything, for fear that it would take a long time to get reimbursed by the project. We ended up ordering for these folks, once they told us what they wanted. We certainly had not anticipated this as a barrier. 

Yes, these lessons ARE applicable across all kinds of PL. Interestingly, many people say to me, "Well, of course support is needed after PL." If is so obvious to people, why is it rarely offered? And why are there so few longitudinal studies about outcomes of PL once the PL ends? 

 

Thanks for Sharing. I thought your project was very interesting; I found a lot of the premises, assumptions and goals quite compelling. I honestly found it all terrific except for the car tune up analogy...it doesn't work for me because, well people are not cars and the idea is not to postpone the inevitable decay and depreciation that starts the moment they come out of the dealer... :-) 

Anyway, I digress, sorry; that's secondary. I am actually very interested in how you went about measuring  and/or monitoring the kind/frequency/depth of instructional practices the teachers used. Without a commonly accepted model of NGSS instruction (or instruments to monitor it) this is challenging and a question that we've grappled with in our prior work. Thank you!

Channa asked about what this might look like with secondary science teachers rather than elementary teachers. It seems to me that secondary teachers would likely retain higher self-efficacy and content knowledge. I do wonder, however, if professional learning focused on newer teaching strategies (3D science, phenomenon-based teaching, storylines, etc.) in states where NGSS-based standards have been adopted would see a similar decline over time, with teachers slipping back into familiar approaches to teaching. I imagine this type of professional learning would benefit from a similar approach to tune-ups.

This is very useful research.  I am wondering if having short videos would also work for a tune-up that can be used on demand.

Hi Paul. Thanks so much for watching our video and leaving a comment. I agree that short videos might be one good way of supporting teachers. There are now a wide variety of videos available online. We offered links to various videos on our newsletters, and teachers seemed to like them, especially if they were short and highly focused on relevant issues.

This is fascinating - and wonderful, essential  findings! Thank you for your work on this. Ongoing and SUPPORTED PL is essential and often lacking. Love seeing there is evidence behind  this approach!

Thank you so much, Cynthia! Please take a look at the STEM for All Showcase next year because I believe we will have some preliminary results to share related to our upcoming project in rural Wyoming, North Dakota, California, and Montana. This new project will build on the work described in this video.