®® Are we asking the right questions about professional development on national surveys? Insights from cognitive interviews Laura DesimoneKerstin Carlson Le Floch Susie AnsellJames Taylor Meisha Fang American Institutes for Research Vanderbilt University Laura DesimoneKerstin Carlson Le Floch Susie AnsellJames Taylor Meisha Fang American Institutes for Research Vanderbilt University

®® Professional development central to school improvement, yet challenging for surveys Cognitive interviews is an effective technique for identifying specific problems and possible remedies Improving Surveys of Professional Development

®® Cognitive interview data from survey development processes  National Longitudinal Study of NCLB,  National Longitudinal Evaluation of CSR,  Longitudinal Evaluation of the Effectiveness of School Interventions Approaches in national surveys  NAEP, ECLS, SASS, FRSS, and NELS Data sources

®® Cognitive Interviews: Teachers were unsure of what should be considered professional development – faculty meetings, informal meetings, release time? National Surveys : Great variation in definitions of what respondents should and should not count as professional development Implications : Need to acknowledge that teachers receive professional development through formal and informal means, surveys should enable teachers to reflect full range of activities, but better specified. What counts as professional development?

®® Cognitive Interviews: teachers don’t always follow instructions in stem (!) but tend to think about current year; also didn’t recall all activities. National Surveys: Some questions were anchored to the current school year, others asked about different time periods. Implications: Research shows it is helpful to anchor questions to a particular event, such as the beginning of the school year Recalling professional development activities

®® Content vs.Methods

®® Overlap and Differences by Subject

®® Impact/Change Everyone knows (especially IES) that to attribute cause, Random assignment is the best! But why can’t we just ask teachers Like we’ve always done before How well did it work… (on a scale of 1 to 4)?

®® Content Focus The Concept of a Conceptual Framework Active Learning Collective Participation Coherence Duration Structure/Type Increase in Teacher Knowledge & Skills & Change in Practice

®® More Sophisticated Ideas about Teacher Learning

®® What are Appropriate Current and Continuing Efforts?  Comparing across surveys  Conducting cognitive interviews  Using a conceptual framework ( coincidentally, exactly what we’re doing!)