First Advisor

William Becker

Date of Publication

Fall 12-1-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Teaching (M.S.T.) in General Science

Department

Science Teaching

Language

English

Subjects

Reflective teaching, Elementary school teaching -- Case studies, Elementary school teachers -- Self-rating of -- Case studies, Science -- Study and teaching (Elementary) -- Methodology, Mathematics -- Study and teaching (Elementary) -- Methodology

DOI

10.15760/etd.2074

Physical Description

1 online resource (v, 150 pages)

Abstract

With the new goal of K-12 education being to prepare students to be college and career ready at the end of high school, education needs to start changing at the elementary school level. The literature suggests that teachers need reflective professional development (PD) to effectively teach to the new standards and to demonstrate change to their current instructional practices. This mixed-method multiple-case study investigated the impacts of a reflective professional development (PD) in changing elementary school teachers' instructional practices.

Teachers Instructional Portfolios (TIPs) were scored with a TIP rubric based on best practices in teaching mathematics problem-solving and science inquiry. The TIPs were also analyzed with a qualitative coding scheme. Case descriptions were written and all the collected data were used to explain the impacts of the reflective PD on changes in teachers' instructional practices.

While we found no predictive patterns in relation to teachers changing their classroom practices based on the reflective PD, we claim that teachers' desire to change might contribute to improvements in instruction. We also observed that teachers' self-assessment scores tend to be higher than the actual TIP scores corroborating with the literature on the usage of self-assessment to evaluate teachers' instructional practices.

Rights

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Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/13168

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