Abstract
In 2004, an upper Midwestern school district received a grant to administer content-specific professional development to teachers of American history. A series of nine master's level, degree-eligible courses were developed and administered by the local university's history department. At the conclusion of the grant activities in spring of 2008, the 34 teacher-participants were invited to be interviewed. The purpose of the interviews was to determine teacher motivation for taking the course and each teacher's overall impression of the effectiveness of the professors and course content. Additional data were gathered including observations of the history teachers in their classrooms, student work samples from the history teachers' classrooms, history teacher work samples from the master's courses, demographic data such as years of experience and level of education for each of the history teachers, and interviews with the history professors. One theme that emerged from the data was the expectation of specialized treatment.
Location
Room 2903
Recommended Citation
Duffield, Stacy and Hodge, Angela, "Special Treatment or Responsive Instruction? Teaching Teachers in Master's-Level Coursework" (2009). SoTL Commons Conference. 42.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sotlcommons/SoTL/2009/42
Special Treatment or Responsive Instruction? Teaching Teachers in Master's-Level Coursework
Room 2903
In 2004, an upper Midwestern school district received a grant to administer content-specific professional development to teachers of American history. A series of nine master's level, degree-eligible courses were developed and administered by the local university's history department. At the conclusion of the grant activities in spring of 2008, the 34 teacher-participants were invited to be interviewed. The purpose of the interviews was to determine teacher motivation for taking the course and each teacher's overall impression of the effectiveness of the professors and course content. Additional data were gathered including observations of the history teachers in their classrooms, student work samples from the history teachers' classrooms, history teacher work samples from the master's courses, demographic data such as years of experience and level of education for each of the history teachers, and interviews with the history professors. One theme that emerged from the data was the expectation of specialized treatment.
