Eric.ed.gov – Educator Enhancement Academies Evaluation Study: Phase 2. Teacher and Trainer Reports of NxGen Professional Development and Their Sense of Preparedness

As the final stage of West Virginia’s rollout of the Next Generation Content Standards and Objectives (NxGen CSOs), the regional education service agencies (RESAs) conducted six train-the-trainer events in the spring of 2013 to prepare educators–mostly teachers–to provide professional development back in their home schools and districts. These events, called Educator Enhancement Academies (EEAs), lasted two or three days depending on which RESA conducted them, and targeted teachers in grade levels that had not yet received professional development in the NxGen CSOs, that is, Grades 2-3, 6-8, and 10-12. The first phase of this study looked at how well prepared those trainers were at the end of their EEA experience by asking them about their experiences during the training and after they, themselves, conducted training sessions during the summer of 2013. This study further examines the experience of those same participants in providing their own training, as well as what additional professional development they received from the RESAs. It also asks about the experience of the end-user teachers who received professional development from the EEA-trained teachers and other sources in the targeted grade levels during the 2013-2014 school year. The following research questions were presented: (1) To what extent did participants in the EEAs follow up with their own training?; (2) What challenges did EEA participants encounter and what supports did they indicate they needed going forward?; (3) What follow-up did RESAs provide after the initial EEA training;?; (4) What was the NxGen PD experience of end-user teachers and EEA teacher trainers during the course of the 2013-2014 school year?; (5) What were the outcomes of 2013-2014 professional development experiences in terms of teachers’ overall sense of preparedness to teach to the NxGen CSOs and perceived impacts of those experiences on knowledge, practice, and beliefs?; and (6) What training-related factors may have been at work to produce these outcomes? The authors examined three populations in this phase of the Educator Enhancement Academies (EEA) study: (a) 953 teachers, district office staff, and others who received training at the RESA-sponsored EEAs to become teacher trainers; (b) professional development directors or executive directors from the eight RESAs; and (c) general and special education teachers involved in teaching English/language arts (ELA) and mathematics across the state in Grades 2-3, 6-8, and 10-12. For all groups, they surveyed the full population. Of the 953 EEA participants, 599 responded to the Follow-up EEA Participant Survey, for a 63% response rate. Of the 4,686 ELA and math teachers in the targeted grades, participants returned 1,662 usable responses to the NxGen Standards Professional Learning Survey, for a 25% response rate. Although this is a lower response rate than typically is seen–probably due to testing and other pressures on teachers during the April-May survey period–the total number of responses fell only slightly short of our calculated target sample size (1,740). PD directors or executive directors responded to the interview protocol for all eight RESAs. Tables Displaying Results are appended. [For phase one “Educator Enhancement Academies Evaluation Study: Phase 1–Preparation of RESA-Based, Next Generation CSO Trainers,” see ED569928.]