Professional Development Standards and Practices in Elementary School Mathematics

In this article I argue that the literature describing effective professional development is missing at least 2 key pieces of information-typical professional development that reaches typical teachers and how effective recent standards are in assisting district or school personnel to design and/or choose high-quality staff development experiences. To fill this gap, I used commonly cited professional development standards to analyze observations of 13 professional development sessions in mathematics in an eastern state, seeking to understand what teachers might have learned and how that content related to the standards. These observations were made over 6 months and included professional development provided by teachers, district officials, consultants, and university staff. I found that although much of the observed professional development met published standards, it often treated mathematics and student learning superficially. I suggest reasons for the failure of literature-based standards to discriminate high- from low-quality programs and describe alternatives to such standards in assisting schools and teachers to use professional development resources more effectively.