Professional Development for Mathematics and Science Teachers

Author(s): Rosenberg, Sharyn L.; Heck, Daniel J.; and Banilower, Eric R.
Publication Date: December 2005

As part of the LSC Core Evaluation, Heck and Crawford (2004) performed longitudinal analyses on teacher questionnaire data to examine impacts of the LSC program on teachers’ attitudes toward Standards-based teaching, perceptions of pedagogical and content preparedness, and use of traditional and Standards-based teaching practices. Given the recent emphasis on the importance of content preparation in the designation of teachers as "highly qualified," two questions were investigated in this study: 1. Are teachers with stronger college content preparation different than teachers with less strong preparation on the outcomes measured by the teacher questionnaire? 2. Does teacher college content preparation moderate the relationship between LSC professional development and these outcomes? The analyses were run first using data from all LSC projects. Follow-up analyses were conducted separately for projects targeting K–8 mathematics and for projects targeting K–8 science.