What do Teacher Leaders Value About Regional STEM Professional Learning Communities?

Authors: Therese Shanahan, EdD;Silvia Swigert

The research design follows a form of action research strategy in research design inputs between project directors as participants and researchers in participative evaluation roles serve as "an organizing strategy to get people involved and active around particular issues" (Bogdan & Biklen, 1982). The intervention of this study was the production of a Teacher Leader Cadre comprised of  classroom teachers in the three partner districts who provided professional development in their own and other partner districts. These Teacher Leaders were asked to complete a survey to describe their perceptions of their experiences in FOCUS. The research director participated in the design of the survey and focus group questions, and provided the conceptual framework for coding the observations obtained with these methods. Researchers who were not directly involved with the program or teachers collected and coded observations from the surveys, focus groups, and classroom observations in the study.

Of particular importance to the project and the participants was addressing the issue of the value of the Teacher Leader Cadre. A funnel approach to including teacher perspectives was planned by inviting all teacher leaders active within the last three years of the project to participate in a semi-structured survey, followed by a smaller subset of 30 teacher leaders to participate in one of four focus groups, and finally a set of 4 case study master teachers to be interviewed individually and observed teaching a lesson to their students. 

Semi-structured surveys
The semi-structured surveys were sent to all teacher leaders who had been active in the program within the previous three years (36% of the population over 5 years). The surveys asked teachers about their instructional practices and the source of materials used in their classrooms, as well as the benefits they received from participating in the different types of events that constitute the professional development program.

Focus groups
Focus groups were created through representative (quota) sampling within district, role, and teaching level with the goal of recruiting 6-8 teachers into four different focus groups. The purpose of the focus group was to follow up on themes that might be specific to instructional leader role.

Case studies
In the last stage of the study, four master teachers were interviewed by the professional development program director. An independent student researcher observed lessons delivered in the classrooms of these master teachers using an  observation protocol previously used by the professional development program to provide feedback to teacher leaders participating in the program.  The case study teachers interviewed provided insights into the experiences of teachers when interviewed by a mentor. The classroom observations provided additional information on the impact of the program on students during a lesson delivered by these master teachers.

The classroom observations were coded using the standard observation protocol used in the program. The observation protocol was designed through a series of eighteen revisions and field tests from Collaboratives for Excellence in Teacher Preparation (CETP) Core Evaluation Classroom Observation Protocol; Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE) strategies; Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) Handbook; and Compton Classroom Observation Protocol. The intent of this protocol is to capture who is talking during the lesson; how often the teacher varies the group size during the lesson; whether the teacher incorporates the California standards for English Learners of listening, speaking, reading, and writing; the cognitive level of the lesson; the amount of student engagement; as well as the tools and strategies employed by the teacher during the lesson. Observations are taken at  five minute intervals during the lesson to capture these aspects of the lesson. Inter-rater reliability was established during a previous study using this protocol where raters agreed with 80% of the research director's observations using this protocol while independently observing a classroom lesson.  For the individual interviews with the master teachers, the  research director, having served as their mentor during the program, was selected to conduct the interviews and analyze their content. This would provide additional insights to the director on situational constraints these teachers might have experienced in being an instructional leader with other teacher leaders and within their schools and classrooms. Focus group and interview data were captured with digital tape and transcribed for coding within NVIVO software.