Paper Presentation 1
room KA 101
The problem of having participants with different characteristics in the treatment and comparison groups in experimental PD studies
Balta, Nuri, University of International Business, Almaty, Kazakhstan
The practice of teacher professional development (PD) requires a rigorous design, which involves a broad array of issues such as the cost, the duration, the participants and the content of the program. One major problem in experimental PD studies is having participants with different characteristics in the treatment and comparison groups. The aim of this proposal is to discuss the true experimental designs in PD, and suggest a feasible design for the researchers to critically assess and evaluate the effectiveness of the outcomes from teacher PD programs. Furthermore, we want to discuss if the effect of a treatment can be investigated by looking at pre- and post- teachings of the same “unit” by the same teachers. In other words, teachers will first teach a unit (or units) to one of their classes (control group) and after having a treatment then they will teach the same unit to the equivalent counterpart class (experimental group).
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Paper Presentation 2
room KA 101
Fostering teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs through rehearsals in professional development programs
Thurm, Daniel, University Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany Barzel, Bärbel, University Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany
For delivering effective professional development programs, it is important to equip teachers with the relevant competencies needed to implement innovative teaching approaches (like inquiry-based learning or teaching mathematics with technology). However, despite a stronger focus on pedagogies of reflection and investigation there is still a disappointment with the outcomes of PD-programs. With regard to teaching with technology, Hegedus at al. (2017, p.30) claim that “the gap between teachers’ needs and the teacher education contents is deemed as the main reason“ for this disappointment. Hence it is important to investigate the needs of teachers and to design PD-programs that directly address teachers needs. For this reason, we started a theoretical-based design of a PD-program for teaching mathematics with technology, which is redeveloped in further cycles of designing and researching (Thurm et al. 2015). In the first design-cycle we could identify teacher’s self-efficacy beliefs as key factor that has to be addressed in PD-programs. Based on this we are redesigning the program to include approximations-of-practice in order support the development of teacher’s self-efficacy beliefs.
