What The Study Says

Civic literacy is not only core to success in college and careers, but also to responsible participation in civic life in adulthood. This study contributes empirical evidence that professional development has positive and significant impact on teacher knowledge, practices, and dispositions, and student learning of complex concepts and critical thinking skills.

Professional development interventions provided by Facing History and Ourselves, a nonprofit organization, is planned, nonprescriptive, and sustained over time. It includes seminars, workshops, coaching/mentoring, access to print and electronic resources for classroom use, modeling classroom lessons, guest speakers, communities of support, and opportunities to address implementation challenges.

This mix of professional development practices coupled with rich curricular resources affects not only teachers’ practice, but also their sense of competence, degree of satisfaction, and level of burnout. When teachers experience these changes, students’ opportunities and engagement in civics learning and classroom environment change.

When students’ learning environment and experiences change, they gain deeper understanding of history, increased civic responsibility, efficacy, tolerance, and engagement as well as social and ethical awareness.

Study Description

Schools with sufficient numbers of 9th- and 10th-grade teachers and with limited or no previous exposure to Facing History and Ourselves were recruited to participate in a planned professional development intervention.

Schools, including public, public charter, and private schools, that met eligibility requirements were randomly assigned to an intervention group that would participate in the professional development in Year 1 or control group whose participation was delayed until Year 2. Most intervention schools met federal criteria for underperformance and high poverty. Participating teachers received a stipend.

In Year 1, 80 schools within a geographical area surrounding Facing History and Ourselves regional offices participated in the study, with 40 in each of the intervention and control groups. Seventy-eight teachers participated in the intervention, and 102 were in the control group.

Attrition during Year 1 accounted for eight schools in the intervention group and 10 in the control group. About 1,400 students from the randomly selected classes of teachers participated in the study.

Ninth- and 10th-grade humanities teachers in the intervention schools participated in a summer program, Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior. They implemented the program in the subsequent school year in one randomly selected class they taught and received follow-up support from regional office staff as they designed their lesson plans and implemented the units.

Intervention teachers also received classroom materials and access to print and digital instructional and content resources.

Questions

Researchers posed two research questions and several hypotheses related to teacher and student changes as a result of the professional development.

1. What is the impact of this approach to professional development and follow-up coaching on high school teachers’ sense of self-efficacy, burnout, and perceptions of professional engagement and satisfaction compared to a group of control teachers who were not assigned to participate in the professional development?

The authors hypothesized that teachers without experience with the intervention and randomly assigned to the intervention would develop greater self-efficacy and professional engagement and satisfaction and lower levels of burnout than control teachers.

2. What is the impact of assigning teachers to professional development aimed at supporting classroom implementation of the Facing History and Ourselves program on 9th- and 10th-grade students’:

• Perceptions of the classroom climate and civic learning opportunities;
• Civic skills, dispositions, and behaviors;
• Historical thinking skills; and,
• Social and ethical awareness, compared to a group of control students taught by teachers who were not assigned to such professional development?

The authors’ hypothesized that the intervention students would:

• Perceive their Facing History class as having a more open climate and providing more opportunities to learn about civic matters;
• Develop greater civic skills, dispositions, and behaviors; and
• Demonstrate the capacity to reflect more deeply on social relationships and ethical decisions and be more likely to value active, prosocial solutions to social conflict (e.g. collaboration) and ethical dilemmas (e.g. standing up for others).

The authors also hypothesized that, given the lack of research on how this educational approach impacts adolescents’ historical thinking skills, program students would perform at least as well as control students in their academic subject area (Barr et al., in press).

Methodology

High-fidelity implementation of the program included attending a four- or five-day Facing History and Ourselves professional development session, accessing staff support, using print and digital resources, and teaching a minimum six-week unit with at least two hours devoted to each part of the course of study. About half of the teachers met high-fidelity criteria, with the remaining half at medium and low fidelity.

Researchers measured outcomes using existing and newly developed survey instruments, administered as baseline and follow-up to the implementation, in two teacher domains including 12 outcomes and seven student domains including 15 outcomes.

The teacher domains included teacher self-efficacy and teacher perception of professional engagement and satisfaction. The efficacy outcomes included teacher beliefs and efficacy in instructional practices relevant to the program such as promoting deliberation, tolerance, student civic literacy, and historical understanding.

Student domains included civic responsibility, civic self-efficacy, civic participation, tolerance, classroom climate and civic learning opportunities, historical understanding, and social and ethical components.

Analysis

Researchers used a two-level hierarchical linear model to address random assignment at the teacher and classroom levels. The model included other factors relevant to the characteristics of students, such as gender and race; to the school, such as type of school; and to the teacher, such as level of education and subject taught. There were no significant differences between teacher groups or between student groups on baseline measures.

Results

The professional development intervention impacted both teachers and students. Teachers experienced greater effects, demonstrating the causal effects of professional development. Statistically significant differences were found on 10 of the 12 teacher outcomes and for five student outcomes, including historical understanding and four aspects of civic literacy at the end of the intervention.

Limitations

The study measures teachers’ first implementation of the program. As teachers become more familiar with the resources, content, and pedagogy over time, student impacts might increase. ν