What brought me here
My research agenda stems from my fourteen years of teaching experience in K-12 education.  During that time I served as a model for technology integration and a technology integration specialist, provided technology and literacy professional development, and chaired technology integration committees. During my initial grad years, I developed an online professional development on concept-based learning and instruction.  I modeled the design after the online courses I was taking towards my two master’s degrees in educational technology and literacy studies.

While I talked a great deal about my online courses and how it was changing my views on teaching and learning, and while I was providing professional development and technological assistance, I soon came to understand that teacher change was a formidable opponent.  Whether we were discussing technology integration for project or problem based learning, or implementation of a new reading program, teachers needed more than the basic knowledge to make sustained, lasting change in their classroom.  If the professional development topic was not already aligned with their teaching beliefs and attitudes, then changes to beliefs and attitudes were necessary if administrators and professional development providers wanted to see enduring, meaningful impact in classroom instruction and student learning.  The way professional development was designed and implemented, changes were not occurring in the classroom.

My research thus far
My first research project was an action research conducted during one of my later years as a teacher.  At the time I was an Intel Master Teacher, and I wanted to gauge the effectiveness of the professional development program on teachers and their students.  By surveying students and looking at artifacts in their digital portfolios, I was able to see that students were using technology more for learning in their various subject areas.  Additionally, by comparing portfolios of students of the same teacher from year to year, I was able to see that teachers who had taken the Intel Teach to the Future professional development were engaging their students in technology enriched projects much more than they had in years prior to taking the professional development.

During my time as a doctoral student, I’ve become very interested in technology integration at area schools, especially in how it varies by demographic regions and in comparison to national statistical reports.  We conducted case studies at 4 area middle schools.  We collected data in the form of focus groups of students and surveys.  We compared schools by rural, urban, and suburban grouping.  We also compared two middle schools in the same district.  Finally, I investigated factors related to a students’ likelihood of being a Web 2.0 user.  One of the biggest findings was that teachers were still receiving relatively little in-depth technology related professional development that was anything more than a how-to for running a particular application or software.  A natural conclusion then was that meaningful technology integration was not occurring despite the fact that teachers were developing technology knowledge. Findings from these analyses were presented at several AERA presentations, and journal publications are in progress.

I also spent some time looking at how teachers across the country used interactive whiteboards in their classrooms, and how three teachers in one area high school used the learning management system, Moodle, for teaching and learning.  This case study was presented at SITE in 2012, after a comparative look at how LMSs were being used in higher education, which was presented at ELEARN 2010.

In my work as a graduate research assistant and technology trainer in the College of Education, I have looked at the impact of specific tools in teaching and learning such as interactive whiteboards, iPad tablets, and learner response systems.  With the iPads, we created a working group with faculty members who collaborate and engage in discussion around the technology tool and how it can be beneficial in the classroom.  Descriptions of these pilots and the working group activities have been presented at SITE and AERA conferences in the past few years.

My dissertation
In preparing for work on my dissertation, “Faculty Change for Disciplinary Literacies Instruction:  Effects of Cognitive Modeling as an Instructional Strategy in Online Professional Development,” I found that a few studies, mostly within the last decade, discovered that certain design elements such as collaboration, reflection, product development, and active learning, appeared to be effective in teacher change actually occurring in the classroom, and ultimately in student success.  Literature also suggested that there were several elements necessary for teacher change, and few of these studies seem to address any of these elements separately.   I opted to look at one specific instructional approach, cognitive modeling, and its impact on teacher change in terms of knowledge development, knowledge application, belief, attitude, and self-efficacy.  For the purposes of the dissertation, this case study looked at only the online version of the professional development.  However, prior to the development of the online version, a face-to-face version existed. After finishing my dissertation, I plan to analyze data from the face-to-face version and compare and synthesize findings from both platforms.

In my dissertation work, professional development on the topic of disciplinary literacy and cognitive modeling through think-aloud is presented to higher education teacher educators.  I look at evidence to suggest instructor transformative change in all of these factors through content knowledge pre- and post- assessments, performance comparison in pre- and post- professional development via video-taped observations, evaluation of lesson plans, analysis of discussion within groups within the professional development event, interviews, and general beliefs, attitudes, and self-efficacy surveys.

Preliminary data, from an early pilot study, suggests that participants do experience transformation to varying degrees as they learn through cognitive modeling by the professional development facilitators, and practice the act of think-alouds themselves.  When asked how the professional development facilitator’s use of think-alouds to teach metacognition changed her understanding of modeling, one participant said, “I finally realized that is more than just showing.”  This cognitive apprenticeship approach to instruction in professional development gave the participants confidence as they watched the facilitators, and practiced with guidance during the professional development event.

Ideally, I would take this one step further and look to see how this professional development impacted the teacher educator’s instruction in the classroom as they taught their pre-service teachers in kind, by gauging changes in the pre-service teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and self-efficacy. There are three main critiques of professional development research:

* First, the research is usually simply an evaluation of effectiveness of a single professional development event.
* Secondly, effectiveness and success is often based solely on teacher self-reporting.
* And, third, research does not often extend into the classroom to gauge impact on student learning. When it does it is often a look at their standardized test scores.

I add that current research looks a great deal at knowledge gain and practice, as reported by the teachers, but not at teacher changes in belief, attitude, and self-efficacy, which are necessary for sustained change. A long-term study that begins with evaluation of a specifically designed professional development specifically related to a particular instructional strategy, moves to comparative case studies, and statistical analysis of large-scale deliveries, all the while collecting objective data on teachers’ knowledge growth through knowledge assessments, evaluated artifacts, such as lesson plans, and teacher reporting of impact through belief, attitude, and self-efficacy surveys and interviews, is called for.  Each of these stages must also include a look at impact on students. The goal is to find instructional approaches, which work across topics and disciplines to serve as foundations for professional development design.

I believe a great deal of learning by both teachers and their students will be conducted online in the near future.  Time and money make the virtual environment very convenient.  However, I also believe that face-to-face professional development, both locally and nationally, will continue if only on a smaller scale.  I want to look at the professional development of pre-service and in-service teachers, and higher education teacher educator faculty, and their experiences in professional development in both environments—face-to-face and online.

Some of my questions include:

*Do the objectives and ideals of the professional development transcend in to the classroom in an enduring, meaningful way?
*How can professional development be designed to help facilitate the changes in knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and self-efficacy that teachers’ need for implementation of technology or instructional approaches in their classroom?
*Can the tools that work in face-to-face settings be as effective in online settings?  What are teachers really experiencing in terms of professional development?
*How does the design of professional development ultimately impact what is occurring in the classroom.  Are K-12 children using technology in ways that helps them to learn, while developing technology skills?
*Are they developing the skills needed for the futures?
*What do the children say?
*And, how does this vary from school to school, district to district, state to state, and internationally?

By contributing to the research knowledge base what works and doesn’t work in professional development, both online and face-to-face, professional development can then be designed utilizing these effective strategies to best prepare teachers to teach and facilitate learning for their students.  Effective professional development makes teachers, their students, and stakeholders happy.