Author(s):
Need: Teacher preparation programs are essential for long-term improvement in teacher performance and retention of effective teachers. This project establishes practices to enhance teacher preparation. The study was conducted in four teacher preparation programs through collaborative, design-based research.Guiding Question: What are the individual and systematic challenges in maintaining focus on high quality teaching professional development from preparation through early career?Outcomes: The poster will present observation, survey, interview, and focus group data (mixed methods). Individual challenges were context specific and focused on workload, navigating a new organization, and developing classroom and instructional management systems. Systemic challenges included state and district mandated testing requirements as obstacles to high quality inquiry-base pedagogy, entrenched views regarding the nature of mathematics and high-quality mathematics instruction. The study positioned participants as researchers in their own classrooms to investigate well-defined problems of practice and refine their classroom innovations based on their findings. The use of network improvement communities to cycle between classroom implementation and whole group engagement is a key feature of PrimeD that helped teacher candidates and early career teachers make stronger connections between field experiences and theories. Broader Impacts: This study provides crucial information for enhancing and transforming secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs, especially reliability and validity across programs. Results from this project provide a strong foundation for subsequent studies of how such teaching practices affect secondary student outcomes.
Coauthors
Robert Ronau, University of Louisville; Jon Saderholm, Berea College; Sarah Bush, University of Central Florida; Margaret Mohr-Schroeder, University of Louisville
