Understanding teacher professional development for urban and suburban high school mathematics teachers

<p>This is a quasi-ethnographic (qualitative) interview examination of understanding teacher professional development for urban and suburban high school mathematics teachers. Since teacher professional development has been found to be critical in improving student learning such as mathematics achievement, and teacher professional development is recommended by the scholarship as a strategic approach to improve teacher quality through the improvement of teacher practice, the purpose of this research was to study the professional development experiences of four high school mathematics teachers. Two of the teacher participants taught in urban, public school districts and two taught in a suburban, parochial school. Each participant was interviewed three times to understand and describe how teacher professional development proceeded in this study and how teacher participants applied what they learned from their teacher professional development in their classrooms. Cyclical data analysis strategies were used to describe the teacher participants' professional development experiences. A discussion of findings includes descriptions of the outcomes of the teacher participants' professional development experiences with respect to their learning, changes in teacher practice, and students' learning. Additionally, concepts and practices associated with professional learning communities were found to exist in this study and among the teacher participants.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Open Access Embargo

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education Evaluation and Research

Year dc:date.available

2011

Author dc:creator

• St. Clair, Sibyl Yvette

Contributors dc:contributor

• Karen L. Tonso

• Ethnography
• Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research
• Teacher Education and Professional Development

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/397

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.wayne.edu:oa_dissertations-1396