At A Glance

A randomized control study of professional development for humanities teachers provides empirical evidence that teachers who experienced the planned intervention showed positive, significant impact on variables related to self-efficacy; satisfaction with professional support, engagement, and growth; and positive, significant impact on their 9th- and 10th-grade students’ historical understanding and four variables related to civic literacy.

The study

Barr, D., Boulay, B., Selman, R., McCormick, R., Lowenstein, E., Gamse, B., Fine, M., & Brielle, M. (in press). A randomized controlled trial of professional development for interdisciplinary civic education: Impacts on humanities teachers and their students. Teachers College Record, 117(4).

What This Means For The Practitioners

The professional development intervention, despite the impact on teachers and more limitedly for students, fails to meet all the Standards for Professional Learning at a high level. Had all standards been met at high levels, the results, particularly for students, might be more significant.
Standards the professional development intervention meets well: Resources, Learning Designs, and Outcomes. Intervention teachers had access to regional staff, print and digital curricular and instructional resources, and a stipend for participation in the summer program and for implementing the program.

The intervention program incorporated formal and informal learning designs and available ongoing support. Outcomes focused on teacher and student cognitive and affective changes associated with full engagement in civic life.

Standards the intervention meets weakly: Learning Communities, Leadership, Data, and Implementation. While teachers had access to online communities, they did not have the benefit of engaging in ongoing sustained communities of educators with collective responsibility for student success nor apply a cycle of continuous improvement to refine their practice and student learning.

Researchers engaged school leaders during the selection phase, yet not in the implementation of the program, nor did they address the systems and supports within schools for effective professional learning. Data were used to measure defined outcomes to answer the research questions, yet no student or teacher data were used to craft the specific professional development intervention.

Previous evaluation studies may have used data to identify specific areas of need, but there is no mention of how the intervention or researchers used data for needs analysis or ongoing implementation monitoring and adjustments.

Implementation support and expectations for accessing support were limited, and the actual implementation support provided was limited. This might account for the overall level of high-fidelity implementation at the teacher and classroom level.

The results of this research study might be even greater had the professional development intervention more intentionally incorporated and adhered to all Standards for Professional Learning.