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Adapting a professional development program for cognitively demanding instruction across shifting contexts

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Abstract

This study explored what was entailed in implementing a professional development (PD) designed in the United States (US) to a different, Israeli, context. To achieve this goal, the first step was empirically examining the effectiveness of such a PD using quantitative methods. We then examined which adaptations were made in the imported PD and at what level. Our study is based on data obtained from the Israeli TEAMS (Teaching Exploratively for All Mathematics Students) PD, which “imported” a US-based program based on “The Five Practices for Orchestrating Productive Discussions” and “Accountable Talk.” We build on studies of cultural adaptations of interventions which provide a framework whereby adaptations to a model can be made along three levels: philosophical, propositional, and procedural. To assess the effectiveness of the PD, we analyzed 211 recorded lessons. Individual growth curve analysis indicated significant growth in five parameters: intellectual authority, classroom discourse, exposure of student thinking, task enactment, and consolidation. These findings show that the PD was effective in importing several core practices which were relatively well defined. We use these quantitative findings, coupled with additional data obtained from the planning and execution of the PD, as a case to study the process of adapting an educational intervention to a new context. This analysis shows that our adaptations were mostly done at the procedural level. However, the quantitative results point to the possible necessity of also changing the propositional model of what intervention can work in a new context.

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Notes

  1. We are risking oversimplification of CBT, which is a complex and diverse umbrella term for multiple types of treatments. For more on CBT, see Felgoise, Nezu, Nezu, and Reinecke (2005).

  2. We are aware of Cohen’s Kappa being a more robust measure of inter-rater reliability. However, calculating Cohen’s Kappa on this set of coding, due to the multiple coders involved, proved to be extremely complex. In addition, as explained herein, the coding is highly inferential. Therefore, reliability was often supported by an additional judgment of the authors and/or by discussions between the group members. In such a high-inference setting, we chose to rely on percent of agreement to gain a general sense of the reliability of our coders.

  3. From the collective experience of the four authors, as well as the 10 coders who worked with us on coding the videos, we know this structure is indeed the standard form of a mathematics lesson, at least in secondary schools in Israel.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the Israeli Trump Foundation, no. 220. We wish to thank Mary Kay Stein and Richard Correnti for providing support at the initial stages of this study. We also thank Miriam Wallach for her feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

    Einat Heyd-Metzuyanim, Merav Weingarden & Rinat Baor

  2. Levinsky College of Education, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel

    Talli Nachlieli

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  1. Einat Heyd-Metzuyanim
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Correspondence to Einat Heyd-Metzuyanim.

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Heyd-Metzuyanim, E., Nachlieli, T., Weingarden, M. et al. Adapting a professional development program for cognitively demanding instruction across shifting contexts. Educ Stud Math 104, 385–403 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-020-09967-y

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