July 2005 — SETDA
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Creating Strategies for Improved Teaching and Learning
This current effort, however, targets professional development to student needs, provides ongoing support, as well as evaluates the impact of professional development on teachers and student performance. The combination of technology and the greater involvement of administrators has played a central role in changing the previous cycle of ineffectiveness to one that makes a real difference. Following the basic premise of the Iowa Professional Development Model (IPDM; www.iowaaea.org/evaluation/n.01-ipdm.html), the state’s teachers are learning through understanding the theory of the strategy, having it demonstrated, and practicing how to implement the strategy in their classroom.
What’s different in this project is that some administrators are being encouraged to participate in the professional development so they can support teachers in the classroom. There has also been a heavy reliance on technology to support the teachers. This is especially important because Iowa is a rural state, and establishing any kind of teacher learning community is difficult. Previously, teachers have used the Web for filing journals, blogging, surveys, and monthly meetings via the Iowa Communications Network (www.icn.state.ia.us), which promotes group discussions of the strategies.
However, one of the biggest changes in this approach to professional development is the use of IP video conferencing for the evaluation of fidelity (i.e., the extent to which teachers implement the teaching strategy as it was taught to them) and support of the classroom teacher. Using rubrics developed for each strategy, professional development content experts or former administrators viewed teachers (with their permission and understanding) for fidelity and frequency of implementation. The video units have also been used to establish learning communities of once isolated teachers. In some consortia, these communities have been called “IP buddies,” and allow instructors to meet, discuss, and support each other in the deployment of the teaching strategy.
Examining Project Results
It is important to examine two sets of results from this project. The first concerns how technology affected the ongoing support of teachers in the program, and how it ensured they implemented the strategies appropriately. As noted above, relying on just one discussion or demonstration of a teaching strategy and then expecting teachers to execute that strategy perfectly was not effective in the past. Instead, it is more successful when teachers implement the IPDM of learning a strategy’s theory, seeing a demonstration, and practicing the strategy. It is also important to monitor the strategy in a teacher’s classroom and provide feedback. In addition, the project has found that there is a strong connection between the strategies supported by the IPDM within the scaffolding of the technology support network.
The role of video conferencing. The video conferencing units have been evaluated to be effective in supporting the implementation of the strategies teachers have been taught. During the study of the IP video conferencing units, the external evaluator of the project, Gary Phye, director of Iowa State University’s Psychology in Education Research Lab (PERL) and one of the authors of this article, found that there was an 86 percent inter-rater reliability between those observations done on-site and those done via the video units.
