Investigating Rural Teachers' Professional Development, Instructional Knowledge, and Classroom Practice

Autor/inn/en	Glover, Todd A.; Nugent, Gwen C.; Chumney, Frances L.; Ihlo, Tanya; Shapiro, Edward S.; Guard, Kirra; Koziol, Natalie; Bovaird, Jim
Titel	Investigating Rural Teachers' Professional Development, Instructional Knowledge, and Classroom Practice
Quelle	In: Journal of Research in Rural Education, 31 (2016) 3, (16 Seiten) PDF als Volltext (1); PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei (2) Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	Weitere Informationen
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1551-0670
Schlagwörter	Elementary School Teachers; Rural Schools; Rural Education; Professional Development; National Surveys; Teacher Surveys; Educational Practices; Predictor Variables; Pedagogical Content Knowledge; Teacher Attitudes; Path Analysis; Regression (Statistics) + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Elementary school; Teacher; Teachers; Grundschule; Volksschule; Lehrer; Lehrerin; Lehrende; Rural area; Rural areas; School; Schools; Ländlicher Raum; Schule; Schulen; Ländliche Erwachsenenbildung; Bildungspraxis; Prädiktor; Pädagogische Kompetenz; Lehrerverhalten; Pfadanalyse; Regression; Regressionsanalyse
Abstract	Teachers Speak was a national survey study designed to investigate the characteristics of rural elementary school teachers' existing professional development; differences in professional development practices between rural and non-rural settings; and the potential influence of professional development characteristics on rural teachers' knowledge, perceptions, and instructional practice. The respondents included 268 rural and 327 non-rural (city, suburban, town) teachers whose schools were selected via stratified random sampling. Key findings indicate that professional development experiences, perceptions, and classroom practices were similar for rural and non-rural teachers. Rural teachers did not appear to be comparatively disadvantaged, at least not in terms of their best professional development experiences. They reported comparable characteristics for professional development (e.g., providers, hours, practice and feedback opportunities, collaboration opportunities). An emphasis on topics during professional development was found to be related to increased (a) positive perceptions of the utility of the topics, (b) perceptions of knowledge gained pertaining to those topics, and (c) increased focus on those topics during classroom instruction. Perceived utility of instructional topics was a significant predictor of reported practice. When including both rural and non-rural teachers, time in professional development was found to be a significant predictor of their pedagogical content knowledge. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Penn State University College of Education, Center on Rural Education and Communities. 310B Rackley Building, University Park, PA 16802. Tel: 814-863-2031; Web site: http://www.jrre.psu.edu/
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01