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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2021 Sep 2.
Published in final edited form as: Early Educ Dev. 2009 Apr 14;20(2):321–345. doi: 10.1080/10409280802595425

On-going, Web-mediated Professional Development Focused on Teacher-Child Interactions: Early Childhood Educators’ Usage Rates and Self-reported Satisfaction

Jason T Downer 1, Marcia E Kraft-Sayre 1, Robert C Pianta 1
PMCID: PMC8412435  NIHMSID: NIHMS609966  PMID: 34483629

Abstract

As the pre-kindergarten teacher workforce continues to grow in the United States, the promise of early childhood education depends in large part on in-service professional development. Given mounting evidence that the quality of teacher-child interactions is a fundamental ingredient for young children’s learning in classrooms, the challenge becomes how to develop and test models of teacher education that facilitate teachers’ development of these instructional interaction skills. In this paper, we describe how an innovative program, MyTeachingPartner (MTP), addresses the challenge of providing an enduring, classroom-focused, and scalable professional development experience that focuses on facilitating high quality teacher-child interactions. Feasibility and usability results from two years of MTP implementation suggest high levels of teacher engagement, buy-in and satisfaction, as well as some challenges related to sustaining these levels over time. Implications for scalable implementation of interaction-focused professional development in early childhood are discussed.

Keywords: Teacher-child interactions, Early childhood education, In-service training, Professional development, Consultation, At-scale implementation

Enrollment of three-and four-year olds in early education programs approaches 70% of the population and grows annually (Barnett, Hustedt, Hawkinson, & Robin, 2006; West, Denton, & Germino-Hausken, 2000). To meet this increasing demand, universal enrollment programs currently need an additional 200,000 teachers, and will need another50,000 teachers by 2020 (Clifford & Maxwell, 2002). Rigorous studies now indicate that teachers’ interactions with children are the mechanisms through which the value of attending early education programs transmits to children (Hamre & Pianta, 2005; Howes et al., 2008; Mashburn et al., 2008; National Council on Teacher Quality [NCTQ], 2005; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network [ECCRN], 2000). Yet, there is mounting evidence that overall, the quality of classroom interactions is average and varies tremendously, even within samples of fully certified and degreed early educators following organized curricula, leaving considerable room for improvement (Bryant, Clifford, Pianta, Howes, & Burchinal, 2002). It is increasingly recognized that the promise of early childhood education depends in large part on professional development and pre-service training of teachers in key instructional interaction skills (Zaslow & Martinez-Beck, 2005).

Given mounting evidence that the quality of teacher-child interactions is a fundamental ingredient for young children’s learning in early childhood classrooms, the challenge becomes how to develop and test models of teacher education that facilitate teachers’ development of these instructional interaction skills. In particular, can these effective teacher-child interactions be promoted within a ‘best practice’ professional development model that emphasizes an active, ongoing and practice-focused role for teachers, while at the same time be used among large numbers of teachers in ways that are responsive to wide-ranging needs of early childhood settings? The current paper describes the two-year implementation of MyTeachingPartner (MTP), an innovative professional development approach that has been shown to increase the effectiveness of teacher-child interactions (Pianta, Mashburn, Downer, Hamre, & Justice, in press) and improve children’s early learning (Downer, Pianta, & Fan, 2008; Mashburn, Hamre, Downer, Justice, & Pianta, 2008). MTP utilizes a collaborative consultation process and web-based resources to provide ongoing, practice-focused in-service training at a state-wide level. The premise of MTP is that professional development for pre-k teachers can improve key classroom interactions through provision of extensive opportunities for a) observation of high quality emotional, managerial, and instructional interaction s, through analysis and viewing of multiple video examples, and b) repeated opportunities for individualized feedback and support for effectiveness in one’s own instruction, implementation, and interactions with children. Importantly, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008), a shared framework for defining and observing teacher-child interactions that has shown strong links to growth in child outcomes, guides all observations, feedback and support. In this paper, we describe how the MyTeachingPartner model addresses the challenge of providing an interaction-focused, enduring, and scalable professional development experience, and pre sent feasibility and usability results from two concurrent years of implementation, which suggest high levels of teacher engagement and buy-in.

Teacher-child Interactions as a Mechanism for Learning in Pre-k Classrooms

The nature and quality of children’s interactions with teachers in early education classroom settings have reliable and detectable effects on children’s achievement and social competence both concurrently and in elementary school (e.g., Burchinal, et al., 2008; Howes, Phillipsen, &Peisner-Feinberg, 2000; Matsumura, Patthey-Chavez, Valdes, & Garnier, 2002; Meyer, Waldrop, Hastings, & Linn, 1993; Morrison, 1999; Nelson-LeGall & Resnick, 1998; NICHD ECCRN, 1996; 2003; 2004; Peisner-Feinberg & Burchinal, 1997). The most comprehensive and accessible information about the quality of teacher-child interactions and pre-k child outcomes stems from the extensive observations conducted through the National Center for Early Development and Learning’s (NCEDL) Multi-state Study of Pre-kindergarten and State-Wide Early Education Programs Study (Pianta, Howes, Early, Clifford, Bryant, & Burchinal, 2003), using the CLASS (Pianta, LaParo, & Hamre, 2008). The CLASS is an observational coding system with well-established psychometric properties that is used by objective classroom observers to assess 10 dimensions of teacher-child interactions (see Appendix and www.classobservation.com for details). One example of a dimension is teacher sensitivity, which is scored highly when a teacher is observed creating a safe and supportive learning environment, being consistently responsive to the individual needs of her students, and understanding her students well enough to proactively anticipate needs for support. Factor analyses indicate that the CLASS assesses three domains of high quality interactions —emotional, organizational and instructional support—with a high degree of reliability (Hamre et al., 2007).

Across the 700 classrooms sampled in 11 states for the NCEDL studies, variation in teachers’ use of the instructionally and emotionally supportive interactions with children, as assessed by the CLASS, was directly related to growth in children’s achievement test scores and social behavior ratings over the pre-k year (Howes et al., 2008; Mashburn et al., 2008) and into kindergarten (Burchinal et al., 2008). Of particular concern were average ratings of teachers’ instructional support (e.g., focusing on concept development and providing high quality feedback) that fell well below the mid-point on a seven-point scale, despite teachers being fully credentialed, experienced, and using an organized curriculum (Pianta et al., 2003). It is also becoming clear that early educators need additional supports in how best to implement early literacy instructional activities and engage in interactions and conversations that promote language skills (Justice & Ezell, 1999; Morrison & Connor, 2002; NICHD ECCRN, 2002b). In short, the wide range of program implementation and quality of teacher-child interactions in pre-k is profound (Bryant, et al., 2002), a finding consistent with results from other large-scale observational studies of kindergarten (Pianta, et al., 2002), first grade (NICHD ECCRN, 2002a), and third grade classrooms (NICHD ECCRN, 2005).

Given the variation and fairly low quality levels of teacher-child instructional interactions reported in these observational studies of pre-k, more teacher educators are recognizing that ongoing training and support for high quality implementation of curricula, through an emphasis on effective teacher-child interactions, is critical to ensuring the value of early education experiences, particularly for children at-risk of early school failure (Pew Charitable Trusts, 2005; Pianta, 2005). If current early education programs, such as state-supported pre-k, are going to achieve high quality standards at-scale, then mechanisms need to be developed and tested for delivering ongoing, first-rate training to large samples of teachers focused on their implementation and interactions with children (Pianta, 2005). It is apparent that college degrees or knowledge, per se, may not be sufficient to ensure high quality and child growth (Early et al., 2007; Mashburn et al., 2008); instead, direct training combined with ongoing support and feedback about teacher-child interactions is increasingly becoming recognized as a potentially effective and more direct path to efficacious teaching (Pianta, 2005).

Limits of Traditional Professional Development

Professional development for teachers has a long history of being fragmented and incoherent (Ball & Cohen, 1999); in-service teachers pursue learning opportunities on their own (e.g., weekend workshops, MA courses), pick up advice within informal settings at school (e.g., in the lunchroom, at the copying machine), attend district-mandated workshops, and learn from daily experiences with children in the classroom (Wilson & Berne, 1999). Short-term direct trainings, often knowledge-or technique-based, are the most common form of in-service training with substantial variation in the mechanisms of delivery and intensity of the source and follow-up (Birman et al., 2000). Yet, these traditional professional development workshops fall short in a multitude of ways: teachers take on a passive learner role, content is vague, irrelevant or disconnected from classroom context, and there is limited follow-up (Sandholtz, 2002). Such longstanding criticisms are reflected in Borko’s (2004) recent comment that “each year, schools, districts, and the federal government spend millions, if not billions, of dollars on in-service seminars and other forms of professional development that are fragmented, intellectually superficial, and do not take into account what we know about how teachers learn” (p. 3).

In fact, when teachers are asked about their professional development experiences, workshops are clearly rated as occurring most often but being the least helpful. For example, in a recent survey of 1,000 nationally representative teachers 79% reported involvement in traditional professional development workshops during the academic year in comparison with only 5–16% who reported opportunities for more active learning (Birman et al., 2000). Teachers in another study ranked district-sponsored workshops as the least preferred form of professional development opportunity, given that these experiences were neither enjoyable nor useful to their everyday practices (Smylie, 1989). Teachers clearly indicate the need for more dynamic professional development experiences that are relevant to their interactions with children in the classroom.

Next Steps for Professional Development

Despite persistent criticisms of in-service training opportunities for early educators, almost no empirical data are available to help decide which variant of direct training and follow-up is best-suited for teachers’ training and skill-development needs (Richardson & Anders, 2005). This absence of evidence for the effectiveness of delivery mechanisms renders it nearly impossible to base training decisions on scientific grounds (Bryant et al., 2002). Education theorists have begun to generate lists of key characteristics of effective professional development for teachers, predominantly based on literature concerning adult learning (Abdal-Haqq, 1995; Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995; Putnam & Barko, 2000). These visions conceptualize professional development as a lifelong pursuit of learning that is active, collaborative, embedded within a classroom context, and part of school culture (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995; Lieberman, 1995). Such conceptualizations of effective professional development are aligned with recent No Child Left Behind legislation, which describes high quality professional development for teachers as intensive, sustained and classroom-focused. There is a need to develop and empirically test models of professional development that meet these standards in order to speak more definitively about what works for teacher learning.

In contrast to the static, knowledge-based focus of traditional professional development for educators, there is a rising interest in the use of mentoring and consultation as a model for providing support and guidance to in-service teachers (Ingersoll & Kralik, 2004; Pianta, 2005). It is becoming increasingly common for novice teachers to be provided with an ongoing mentoring relationship, wherein an experienced teacher becomes an agent of change through support and guidance of less experienced colleagues (Fideler & Haselkorn, 1999). Often used as a means of reducing teacher turnover and attrition rates (Strong, 2004), mentoring support during the induction period is described by Wong (2005) as a “comprehensive, coherent, and sustained professional development process (p. 5).” A recent review by Ingersoll & Kralik (2004) found that on average induction programs had a significant positive effect on beginning teachers, such as promoting job satisfaction and reducing attrition.

To be an effective tool, mentoring relationships and their foci would benefit from being less diffuse, and more defined. Consultee-centered consultation, historically used in mental health fields (Caplan, 1970; Caplan & Caplan, 1993) and more recently applied within schools (Rosenfield & Gravois, 1996), offers a model similar to mentoring, but with a more clearly identified focus. Typically, an outside professional brings a particular expertise and knowledge base into collaboration with a teacher to address specific challenges in the classroom. Such consultation entails a joint problem-solving approach and focuses on expanding the teacher’s ability to handle similar challenges in the future (Knotek & Sandoval, 2003). Central to consultee-centered consultation is the facilitation of change through the consultation relationship and individualized focus on a teacher’s classroom experiences.

Mentoring and consultation have several commonalities that distinguish them from the vast majority of traditional approaches to professional development. First and foremost, there is an emphasis on consistent support for teachers from a knowledgeable, non-evaluative colleague. Furthermore, this relationship serves as a context in which teachers focus and get feedback on their practices as observed in the classroom and in interactions with children. The early childhood education field must move beyond “one-and-done” workshops and curriculum-focused in-service opportunities to develop and empirically evaluate consultation approaches that provide sustained, in-context professional development that focuses on classroom ingredients with known links to children’s learning, such as high quality teacher-child interactions.

Scalable Professional Development through the Internet

A major challenge for professional development in early childhood education is the move toward scalable application of in-service opportunities for rising numbers of pre-k teachers. It is imperative, given the magnitude of public investment in early childhood education and the pressing needs of children at-risk for school problems, that opportunity for skill development offered by enrollment in and access to pre-k programs be maximized at-scale. Because state-supported pre-k programs provide services for a large percentage of the population in need, systematic efforts to improve these programs’ benefits for children are a critical aspect of “bringing to scale” the lessons learned from early intervention research (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2001). It is one thing to establish the efficacy of improving teacher-child interactions with a few pre-k teachers in a controlled setting, but quite another to package and implement such professional development support at-scale in a way that is ecologically valid in diverse settings and retains its intended effects.

A strong argument can be made for the value of providing teachers with ongoing support and feedback embedded within a consultation relationship, but all too often teachers experience these types of supports infrequently or in a scattered, uneven manner due to significant costs related to a consultant’s time and travel between classrooms. A promising, cost-effective means for reaching large numbers of teachers/classrooms is the use of the Internet, particularly well-suited to sustain complementary synchronous (e.g., videoconference) and asynchronous (e.g., email, website content) learning interactions (Zhao, Lei, Yan, Lai, & Tan, 2005) and develop supportive, on-line communities (Lock, 2006). For example, the Internet has been used to provide consultative services to teachers dealing with challenging behaviors in their students (Meers & Nelson, 1998) and to school psychologists interested in assistance on practice problems (Kruger, Shriberg, Donovan, & Burgess, 1999). Increasingly, web-based technology meets the demands of at-scale applications, such as the Head Start National Reporting System for which teachers across the United States transmitted results of child assessments to a central database via computers in their classrooms (Administration on Children, Youth and Families, 2003). The web holds great promise as a vehicle for communicating with and providing regular feedback to teachers from a distance about their interactions with children in the classroom (Kinzie et al., 2006), thereby increasing feasibility of regular contact and support while holding costs down.

On-going, Web-mediated Professional Development with a Teacher-child Interaction Focus

The remainder of this paper examines the two-year implementation of MTP, an in-service professional development effort that explicitly addresses the above-mentioned critical needs for pre-k teacher professional development emphasizing teacher-child interactions, classroom-focused, sustained consultation, and scalability through the Internet. The MTP approach aims to improve the quality of teaching in early childhood education classrooms and enhance children’s school readiness by providing teachers with year-long, individualized support and feedback about their classroom practices based on a well-validated lens for describing teacher-child interactions. MTP is an ongoing, systematic in-service opportunity, one feature of which centers on a supportive consultation relationship, which is sustained via web-based interactions. The web-based consultation revolves around observation-based reflection and feedback that is enacted through a regular cycle of interactions between a teacher and consultant. Every two weeks, teachers videotape their implementation of instructional activities in the areas of literacy, language, and self-regulation and share this footage with consultants. Together, they then use the CLASS (Pianta, LaParo, & Hamre, 2008) as a common lens with which to observe and reflect upon aspects of teaching and teacher-child interactions that have known links to children’s skill development. Another key feature of MTP professional development is continuous, on-demand access to a dynamic, interactive website. This website provides diverse teaching resources, including lesson plans and materials, and video clips that exemplify high quality interactions with preschool children (Kinzie et al., 2006; Pianta, Mashburn, Downer, Hamre, & Justice, in press).

In sum, the MTP approach to professional development is designed to sustain a high level of in-depth analysis and feedback about actual observed teacher-child interactions that lead to positive child outcomes; provide teachers with a set of relational and web-based resources that are consistent throughout the year; and be both an efficient and cost-effective use of professional development time for large numbers of pre-k teachers. Initial findings provide strong evidence that teachers assigned to receive the consultation and feedback, as described above, demonstrate greater increases in observed quality of videotaped teacher-child interactions than did those teachers only receiving access to the MTP website (Pianta, Mashburn, Downer, Hamre, & Justice, in press). These positive effects of interaction-focused consultation were particularly strong within classrooms that had higher proportions of children from economically disadvantaged families. Given these promising findings for the effectiveness of targeting teacher-child interactions, it is important to begin examining the extent to which implementing interaction-focused, enduring, and scalable professional development is feasible and useable within an early childhood education context. In the following sections, we therefore address a series of related research questions.

  1. To what extent are teachers engaged and satisfied with central elements of the MyTeachingPartner professional development process?

  2. Do teachers maintain their levels of involvement and satisfaction over two years of implementation?

  3. Do teachers with access to web-based consultation report higher levels of engagement and satisfaction with MyTeachingPartner than teachers with only access to the website resources? We hypothesized that the engagement and satisfaction levels would be relatively high, that these levels would be sustained over the course of two years, and that teachers receiving consultation would be more engaged and satisfied with resources common across the intervention conditions.

Method

Participants

The study was conducted within a state-funded pre-kindergarten program in a single state. The program is targeted to serve an “at risk” population of four-year-olds that meet at least one of the following risk indicators for early difficulties in school: 1) poverty; 2) homelessness; 3) parents or guardians are school dropouts, have limited education, or are chronically ill; 4) family stress as evidenced by poverty, episodes of violence, crime, underemployment, unemployment, homelessness, incarceration, or family instability; 5) child or developmental problems, or 6) limited English proficiency. Recruitment and randomization occurred first at the school district level, using a clustered approach. Forty school districts were classified into large, medium, and small sizes (in terms of number of classrooms in the pre-k program) and assigned randomly, by size, to one of three conditions – Consultancy, Web Access, and Control; these conditions varied in the degree of intensity and support from the MTP consultants and website (see Procedures for details). Though a total of 182pre-kindergarten teachers were initially recruited to participate in the study, this paper only refers to 134 teachers in the Consultancy (65) and Web Access (69) groups who represented 25 different school districts statewide and participated in both years of the intervention. The Control group is not included in the current analyses, because the focus of the paper is on engagement and satisfaction with key intervention components.

Of the original 182 teachers, 29 dropped out of the study during the first year and 19 dropped out of the study during the second year, resulting in an attrition rate of 16% during year 1 and 12% during year 2. To estimate potential attrition bias, analyses were conducted comparing teacher and classroom characteristics for the 134 teachers who fully participated and the 48 teachers who did not fully participate. Results indicate that there were not statistically significant differences between the two groups of teachers for the percentage that had an advanced degree (χ2=0.35, p=0.56), the percentage with training in the field of early childhood education (χ2=0.19, p=0.67), or the number of years of experience teaching pre-kindergarten (t=−1.76, p=0.08). In addition, there were no statistically significant differences between classrooms that did and did not fully participate for the percentage of children who are poor (t=0.46, p=.65), mean maternal education (t=−0.42., p=.67), or percentage of children with limited English proficiency (t=1.29, p=.20). Characteristics of teachers and classrooms that participated in the study are presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Teacher and Classroom Characteristics and Use of Intervention Components (n=134)

n % Missing Mean Sd
Classroom Characteristics
 Mean Proportion Non-English Speaking 134 0 . 12 .25
 Mean Proportion Poor 134 0 . 69 .23
 Mean Maternal Education (years) 134 0 12.7 0.86
Teacher Characteristics
 Level of Education 1
  Bachelor’s Degree 86 65
  Advanced Degree 47 35
 Field of Study 2
  Early Childhood Education 52 39
  Other 80 61
 Years Teaching Prek 132 2 9.75 7.94
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Approximately 4,288 children from ethnically diverse and economically disadvantaged families were exposed to the 134 teachers receiving some form of professional development across both years of the MTP evaluation trial. Ninety-four percent of the teachers in these classrooms were women. The majority of teachers reported their race/ethnicity as Caucasian (66%), while 28% reported African American, 2% Native American/Indian, 1% Latino, and 3% Other. In terms of educational background, 64% had a BA degree and 35% had advanced degrees, while 84% were specifically certified to teach 4-year-old children. Teachers had an average of 16 years of classroom experience, with a range of 1 to 37. Over 97% of the teachers reported using a formal curriculum in their classroom, with High Scope and Creative Curriculum being the most common.

Teachers were assigned to one of six consultants; these assignments were not made randomly, but instead systematically, often by district, to reduce scheduling conflicts. All consultants were English-speaking women with MA degrees or above in a field directly relevant to early childhood education. Each consultant also had experience working in a classroom with young children.

Intervention Conditions

Both Consultancy and Web Access teachers had access to the MTP website and implemented a common set of activities during both years. The MTP Language and Literacy Curriculum (Justice, Pullen, Hall, & Pianta, 2003), a research-based set of activities, provides instructional tools that cover six content areas: vocabulary and linguistic concepts, pragmatics and social language, narrative, alphabet knowledge, print concepts, and phonological awareness. The social relationship curriculum, PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies; Greenberg, Kusche, Cook, & Quamma, 1995), is based on a universal prevention model to build positive relationships in the classroom, while Banking Time (Pianta& Hamre, 2001) offers an individually-based intervention to foster positive teacher-child relationships. In addition, the Consultancy teachers participated in web-mediated conferencing with an MTP consultant every other week (see Table 2 for detailed list of resources for each intervention condition).

Table 2.

Detailed List of Resources Available to Teachers as Part of MTP Participation

Consultancy Web Access
Apple iBook laptop computer ✓ ✓
Access to MTP Website ✓ ✓
 MTP Language/Literacy Curriculum ✓ ✓
 Banking Time ✓ ✓
 PATHS Curriculum ✓ ✓
 Video Exemplars of Teacher-Child Interactions ✓ ✓
Video camera and tripod ✓ ✓
Consultancy Support ✓
 Bi-weekly contact with consultant ✓
 Electronic journaling about teaching ✓
 Share videotape observation of self in the classroom ✓
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Measures

Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered from multiple sources at various time points across the course of two academic years (September–June).

Monitoring logs

The MTP server automatically collected data about website use each time a teacher logged into the site (web server log). Specifically, the database includes information about number of webpage hits and duration of webpage visits. All teachers also sent videos to the MTP office every other week. Each time a videotape arrived, it was logged into a database to provide frequency counts for each teacher (videotape log). Finally, consultants kept year-long logs of their contacts with each teacher participating in the consultation process, including conferences (by I-chat or phone) and journaling entries (consultancy cycle log).

Teacher survey

At the beginning of each year, teachers completed on-line surveys about their professional demographics (e.g., years of teaching experience) and composition of their pre-k classroom (e.g., child race/ethnicity, class size). At the end of each year, all teachers also responded to 9 items about satisfaction with various MTP components (e.g., web), while Consultancy teachers completed an additional 5 items about the consultation process. For example, on a four-point scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree, teachers responded to items such as “The website adds value to my teaching practice.” Teachers also chose a top three from a list of potential benefits and challenges related to participating in MTP.

Results

The following sections report findings from two years of implementing this broad-scope, multi-faceted, and web-based form of establishing regular interaction-focused communications with pre-k teachers across an entire state. In particular, we describe teachers’ utilization of MyTeachingPartner instructional supports and web resources, as well as their level of satisfaction with participating. A series of 2×2 mixed ANOVAs are used to compare website usage, videotape logs, and reported satisfaction between the Consultancy and Web Access conditions and within participants across years. Paired sample t-tests are also used to compare Consultancy teachers’ condition-specific experiences and satisfaction across years.

Website Usage

All Consultancy and Web Access teachers were provided with some form of on-demand, web-based support throughout the year. In Year 1, website activity logs from mid-December to mid-June indicated that teachers spent an average of 11.24 minutes (SD= 16.10) on the site per week, resulting in an average of 4.49 total hours (SD= 6.44) spent on the site during a 6-month window. In Year 2, web logs from September to mid-June indicated that teachers spent an average of 9.02 minutes on the site per week (SD = 13.07), resulting in an average of 5.72 hours spent (SD= 8.28) on the site during the 10-month window. Important to note is that across both Years 1 and 2teachers receiving ongoing, one-on-one support through the Consultancy averaged considerably more time per week on the website in comparison with teachers in the Web Access condition (F[1, 127] = 54.39, p<.001, η2= .30; see Table 3). However, there was a reduction in website usage from Year 1 to Year 2, which was largely due to a small decline in use by teachers in the Consultancy group (F[1, 127] = 24.86, p<.001, η2= .16).

Table 3.

Means, Standard Deviations and Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance Results for Website Usage and Videotaping of Teacher-child Interactions

Year Consultancy Web Access ANOVA F
M SD M SD Year Condition YearXCondition
Minutes spent per week on website 20.14** 54.39** 24.86**
 Year 1 21.38 19.53 1.61 2.60
 Year 2 14.11 16.53 1.99 4.72
Video pages visited during the year 7.73* 33.99** 3.08
 Year 1 15.29 16.09 2.94 5.78
 Year 2 9.74 16.93 1.69 5.24
Videotapes returned 37.98** 16.78** .071
 Year 1 14.06 3.11 11.29 4.96
 Year 2 11.78 4.01 8.80 5.40
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*

p < .01.

**

p < .001.

A central component of the website was a library of video exemplars, which were specifically designed to provide opportunities for teachers to learn about and view high-quality teacher-child interactions. Seventy-nine percent of Consultancy and 36% of Web Access teachers watched at least one video exemplar during Year 1, and this pattern held true in Year 2 (Consultancy = 65%; Web Access = 27%). Across both years, Consultancy teachers watched significantly more videos than the Web Access teachers (F[1, 127] = 33.99, p<.001, η2= .21). Much like use of the website as a whole, teachers’ review of the video exemplars declined from Year 1 to Year 2, though in this case across both conditions (F[1, 127] = 7.73, p<.01, η2= .06). Given the rich, dynamic materials available on the website, time engaged in material on the web pages constitutes ongoing professional development focused on support of teacher-child interactions that promote children’s skill growth.

Videotaping Teacher-child Interactions

Teachers in both conditions were asked to provide videotapes of their interactions with children during an instructional activity every other week for the entire academic year, resulting in a monthly average of 161 and 126 videotapes of teachers’ practices being shared with the MTP intervention team in Years 1 and 2. Across the course of each year, teachers in the Consultancy group tended to send in more videotapes of their classroom practices than Web Access teachers (F[1, 119] = 16.78, p<.001, η2= .12; see Table 3), and all teachers sent in fewer videotapes the second year than the first (F[1, 119] = 37.98, p<.001, η2= .24). These data serve as evidence that teachers were willing and able to capture and share video footage of their teaching practices with a collaborating partner from a distance.

Consultation Journals and Conferences

As part of a bi-weekly cycle, Consultancy teachers regularly wrote in journals in response to their consultants’ prompts about their interactions with children from video footage in their classrooms. The vast majority of these teachers reported having responded to prompts from their consultants in on-line journals at least once per week in a typical month (Year 1: 99%; Year 2: 97%), and in both years teachers tended to report spending 20–30 minutes or more journaling each time (60%). Eight hundred total journal entries were recorded during Year 1 and 644 occurred in Year 2. The average teacher therefore responded to watching her own video footage and reviewing her consultant’s prompts by journaling 12.45 times (SD= 3.63) in Year 1 and 10.06 times (SD= 4.19) in Year 2. In addition, teachers were typically engaged in this video review and journaling process for 57.05 minutes per month in Year 1 (SD = 40.07), and 50.27 minutes per month in Year2 (SD = 26.79). Though the number of journal entries went down over the two years (t[63] = 5.32, p < .001), the amount of teacher-reported time spent per month in video review and journaling remained consistent over time (t[55] = 1.18). These extensive journaling experiences were an opportunity for teachers to observe video of their own interactions with children in the classroom, receive focused, written feedback about these interactions from their consultant, and then respond to this feedback in a systematic way.

Once these journals were completed, teachers were also supposed to discuss their videotaped classroom interactions with their consultant during a one-on-one feedback conference, either web-based or on the phone. Six hundred eighty-nine total conferences were conducted during the first academic year with the 65 teachers in this group, and 874 total conferences in Year 2. In Year 1, each teacher averaged 10.60 conferences (SD= 2.76) that lasted an average of 26.37 minutes (SD= 6.39). At a minimum then in Year 1, the average Consultancy teacher experienced four hours and 40 minutes of direct, individualized professional development focused on her consultant’s observations of her interactions with children across the course of an entire school year. This conference experience remained similar during Year 2. Each teacher averaged 13.45 conferences (SD= 4.80) that lasted an average of 26.62 minutes (SD= 7. 22), resulting in an average of almost five hours spent in feedback conferences throughout the year. Conferences occurred more often over time (t[64] = −5.51, p < .001), but stayed consistently the same length in minutes across the years (t[64] = −0.44, p=.66).

Teachers’ Satisfaction

End of the year survey data provided information about how satisfied teachers were with the MTP professional development opportunity after each year of implementation. Teachers rated their level of satisfaction with the professional development program and the degree to which they found the website and consultation components to be valuable resources to their teaching practice. In regards to the website, in both years over 89% of participants agreed that the website was helpful to them as a teacher, provided examples of high quality teaching that were helpful to them as teachers, easy to use, added value to their teaching practice, and was worth the time they spent on it. Specifically, when comparing feedback across the Consultancy and Web Access groups, it was evident that teachers in the Consultancy group found the website as a whole to be more helpful (see Table 4). Also, of those Consultancy and Web Access teachers who visited the “Quality Teaching” section (75% in Year 1; 74% in Year 2), inclusive of the extensive video library with illustrations of effective teacher-child interactions, most agreed that the video and text examples of high quality teacher-child interactions helped them to understand their interactions with children in the classroom (95%), be more effective in interacting with these children (90%), and see ways that they could be better teachers (93%); these ratings were consistent across groups. For the most part, teachers rated the website similarly across the two years of participation, however, there was evidence that teachers in both groups found the website to be somewhat less worth the time that they put into it in the second year of the project.

Table 4.

Means, Standard Deviations and Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance Results for Teachers’ Feedback about the MyTeachingPartner Website

Year Consultancy Web Access ANOVA F
M SD M SD Year Condition YearXCondition
The website was helpful to me as a teacher. .07 3.87* .61
 Year 1 3.80 .45 3.59 .56
 Year 2 3.73 .58 3.62 .64
The MTP website provides resources that assist me as a teacher. 1.65 5.09* .02
 Year 1 3.54 .63 3.28 .77
 Year 2 3.61 .56 3.36 .81
The website provided examples of high quality teaching that were helpful to me as a teacher. .07 9.11** .62
 Year 1 3.63 .55 3.22 .84
 Year 2 3.59 .56 3.29 .88
The website added value to my teaching practice. .07 2.63 .07
 Year 1 3.54 .57 3.40 .70
 Year 2 3.58 .56 3.40 .72
The website was worth the time I spent on it. 21.37*** 2.83 .03
 Year 1 3.59 .56 3.43 .62
 Year 2 3.27 .76 3.08 .76
The website was easy to use. .26 4.10* .26
 Year 1 3.59 .53 3.36 .69
 Year 2 3.53 .60 3.36 .72
The Quality Teaching video and text examples help me understand my own interactions with children in my classroom. .77 .02 2.53
 Year 1 3.55 .53 3.43 .51
 Year 2 3.40 .60 3.48 .57
The Quality Teaching video and text examples help me be more effective in interacting with children in my classroom. .02 .48 .02
 Year 1 3.49 .72 3.30 .70
 Year 2 3.40 .60 3.30 .64
The Quality Teaching video and text examples help me see ways that I can be a better teacher. .13 .12 .13
 Year 1 3.51 .64 3.43 .66
 Year 2 3.45 .57 3.44 .58
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*

p < .05.

**

p < .01.

***

p< .001.

Specific to the Consultancy condition, teachers across both years consistently agreed that their participation in the ongoing consultation process was easy, added value to their teaching practice, helped them to understand and interact more effectively with children in their classroom, and was worth the time they spent on it (over 90% in all cases; see Table 5). In terms of particular components of the Consultancy, in Year 1 teachers reported support from their consultant, the relationship with their consultant, and talking about their interactions with children in the classroom as the most helpful (over 92% in all cases). In addition, teachers at the end of Year 2 mostly agreed that participation in the second year of the Consultancy added value above and beyond participation in Year 1 (88%).

Table 5.

Means, Standard Deviations and Paired t-test Results for Teachers’ Feedback about the MyTeachingPartner Consultancy

Year 1 Year 2 t(58)
M SD M SD
The Consultancy…
 Helps me to understand my interactions with children in the classroom. 3.68 .66 3.75 .48 −1.27
 Helps me be more effective in interacting with children in my classroom. 3.63 .67 3.71 .56 −1.52
 Added value to my teaching practice. 3.76 .47 3.73 .55 .70
 Was worth the time I spent on it. 3.78 .53 3.41 .56 1.43
 Was easy to participate in. 3.58 .70 3.48 .68 1.63
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Finally, all teachers were asked to share the most significant benefits and challenges that they experienced during the two-year implementation of the intervention. Consultancy teachers reported benefiting most from the detailed language and literacy lesson plans (73%) and other instructional materials (62%), but also frequently endorsed feedback from their consultant (48%) and use of the video camera (47%). Web Access teachers also reported lesson plans and instructional materials as most beneficial (90–93%), though they noted use of the video camera (59%) and the website resources too (53%). For teachers in each condition, competing job priorities and demands (Consultancy = 64%; Web Access = 53%), requirements to implement district-mandated curricula (40% and 50%, respectively), and videotaping bi-weekly (43% and 62%, respectively) were often endorsed as the most challenging aspect of participating in MTP.

Discussion

Leveraging the value of public investments in early childhood education requires that research and development efforts focus on identifying effective and replicable approaches to at-scale teacher training that produce positive, and even accelerated, gains in children’s academic performance (Brandon & Martinez-Beck, 2005; Ramey & Ramey, 2005). In the face of evidence that degrees and credentials alone are not enough to produce high quality classrooms (Early et al., 2007), the time has come for in-service professional development opportunities to focus on what research tells us matters within the classroom – teacher-child interactions. In addition, in-service training for early educators is likely to be more effective as it distances itself from isolated workshop models and engages teachers in an enduring, practice-focused process of self-observation and supportive feedback that can be applied at-scale. The MTP approach to professional development with pre-k teachers serves as one model of how to make this shift, via ongoing, web-mediated consultations and web-based resources for teaching literacy, language and regulatory skills, all of which are informed by an empirically validated framework for observing and reflecting upon aspects of teaching and teacher-child interactions that have known links to children’s skill development. Findings are promising in that teachers largely stayed engaged with the website, videotaping regiment, and consultation cycles across two years, and reported that their involvement added value to their everyday teaching practice. In addition, patterns across and within the intervention groups throughout the two years of implementation hold implications for future web-mediated professional development.

Building from early effectiveness findings during Year 1 (Pianta, Mashburn, Downer, Hamre, & Justice, in press), across two full years of implementation teachers remained consistently engaged in a multitude of ways with enduring professional development resources focused on effective teacher-child interactions. Specifically, the website, accessible to both Consultancy and Web Access teachers, was utilized for about 4–5 hours during each academic year. This amount of time equates to about one full day of typical in-service training, yet offers the added benefits of being available on-demand to any teacher with internet access and allowing teachers to individualize learning about effective teacher-child interactions. With high speed internet access becoming increasingly available in pre-k centers, schools, and classrooms, this medium for providing teachers with practice-focused training is highly scalable.

Certain patterns of website usage have implications for ways to improve the feasibility of utilizing this professional development resource. Though on average teachers regularly accessed the website throughout both years of implementation, there was considerable range in these usage levels, with some teachers in the Web Access condition never visiting the website during an academic year and other teachers spending as much as 76 hours on the website across 10 months. Clearly, there is room for improvement of this resource in ways that might increase its usability and uptake by teachers. This necessitates further work on identifying factors that predict website usage (e.g., Downer, LoCasale-Crouch, Hamre, & Pianta, in press), so that steps can be taken to reduce barriers and increase supports to maximize the utility of this aspect of professional development focused on teacher-child interactions. In addition to the variability in website usage, another consistent pattern involved Consultancy teachers using the website more frequently than those in the Web Access condition, and in particular watching more video footage of effective teacher-child interactions. Similarly, teacher reports of the website’s helpfulness as a teaching resource favored teachers in the Consultancy group. A likely reason for this distinction is that these Consultancy teachers received more active, on-going prompts and support for making use of the website as part of their work with one-on-one consultants, suggesting that an on-demand website, no matter how useful, may be underutilized without opportunities for guided use. This idea has some support in distance learning literature, where meta-analyses of studies that compare adult student learning in distance education and traditional face-to-face courses indicate that two-way interactions are the key to effectiveness, specifically a balance of synchronous and asynchronous as well as human and technology interactions (Machtmes & Asher, 2000; Zhao, et al., 2005).

Then again, although the Web Access teachers may have used the website less on average, it is important to point out findings from Pianta and colleagues (in press) that indicate Web Access teachers with higher rates of website usage in Year 1 showed more growth in the quality of their interactions with children than Web Access teachers with lower website usage rates. Also, when Web Access teachers made it to the “Quality Teaching” section of the website, they found it to be just as informative and useful as their Consultancy colleagues. So, guided support may be one mechanism for increasing website usage levels, but it is also crucial that more is learned about the teachers who used and benefited from the website on their own so that their experience can be replicated on a wider scale. Finally, it is clear that although teachers still found the website to be helpful as a resource in Year 2, reduced usage rates and lower reports of the website’s worth over time suggest that greater attention must be paid to keeping website resources dynamic and engaging. Perhaps more interactive opportunities and refreshment of video library with all new footage would ensure more consistent long-term usage.

Despite teachers noting that videotaping their classroom practices every other week was a challenge, most teachers were reliable at capturing this video and thus sharing their instructional interactions with children, even without accountability to a consultant. This in part debunks the myth that teacher discomfort with observation is an insurmountable barrier to providing video-based consultation and feedback, and matches recent findings that pre-service teachers preferred video-based reflection to the memory-based alternative (Welsch & Devlin, 2006). The relative success of this videotaping process, in tandem with teacher satisfaction regarding the remote consultation support, is foundational to the scalability of such an approach to in-service teacher development focused on teacher-child interactions. Video observation provides a rich, objective medium for identifying strengths and challenges for teachers during interactions with children in the classroom, focusing on ways in which they are helping children learn through individualizing instruction, engaging children actively in activities, facilitating children’s problem-solving and higher-order thinking skills, etc. Then again, the number of videotapes did decline across the years of implementation, indicating the need to ensure that reinforcement structures are in place to support teachers’ continued engagement in the videotaping process.

Consultancy teachers in particular regularly saw themselves interacting with children in their classrooms during instruction, spent time critically reflecting on their intentions and patterns of behavior, and receiving feedback from a supportive consultant. Importantly, this feedback loop occurred consistently across the course of two entire years, and Consultancy teachers strongly endorsed how valuable and effective this process was for improving their interactions with children in the classroom. These teachers received a heavy dose of personalized support and feedback that targeted key knowledge and skills related to effective teacher-child interactions in their actual classroom, which is very much in line with No Child Left Behind guidelines for professional development and requests from teachers in pre-k through 12th grade for more relevant in-service training with follow-up. Additionally, the Consultancy was delivered from a distance, suggesting far greater feasibility of providing enduring and intense consultation focused on teacher-child interactions than if the consultation necessitated live classroom visits.

Interestingly, when asked to identify the greatest benefits of participating in MTP, teachers most often selected access to lesson plans and activities, closely followed by more innovative elements such as website videos and consultation support. Given the often limited resources of pre-k classrooms, it comes as no surprise that teachers would readily embrace the benefits of receiving access to new lesson plans, activities and accompanying materials. It is promising, however, that teachers also saw considerable benefit in use of the website and feedback from their consultants, given that these are rare in-service resources that likely required certain adjustments to daily routines and perceptions about professional development. Perhaps the most important feedback from teachers was agreement that the largest barriers to participation in MTP were pre-existing school district mandates and expectations. This feedback points to the need for development of comprehensive professional development systems that recognize the centrality of effective teacher-child interactions in the classroom and integrate scalable elements of website and consultation supports.

Findings in this paper need to be interpreted with several key limitations in mind. First, randomization occurred at the district level, while inferences are being drawn related to effects at a teacher level. Although there were several compelling practical reasons for this approach, including maintenance of a collaborative partnership with the districts and reduction of contamination among participating classrooms, it nonetheless limits the causal nature of these findings. Second, satisfaction data in these analyses were self-reported by participating teachers, which may be subject to socially desirable responses. For instance, it could be that teachers in the Consultancy condition had more one-on-one contact with MTP staff, and therefore felt more social pressure to rate their experience highly. Third, this study was conducted with a state-funded, pre-k teacher workforce that was largely well-educated and credentialed; therefore, findings may not be generalizable to the larger, more diverse population of early childhood educators and child care staff. However, it is important to point out that although publicly funded the some of these teachers were not working in public schools (13%) and most had classroom rosters with high percentages of children from families below the poverty line. Given these limitations of the current study, a new randomized controlled trial is now underway through the IES-funded National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education (NCRECE) to examine the MTP professional development approach with a more diverse sample of early childhood educators at sites across the United States.

In sum, given that teacher engagement and satisfaction were consistently high for two years across a wide range of indicators, this study offers evidence that it is feasible to provide ongoing, web-mediated feedback and support focused on teacher-child interactions. In contrast to the typical “one-and-done” professional development workshops that are all too common for early childhood education teachers, this enduring, observation-focused approach appears to be responsive to the needs that pre-k teachers have in their classrooms, is directly aligned with the types of teacher-child interactions that have been empirically linked to child outcomes, and intriguingly has the capacity to reach many teachers without the expenses associated with live contact. It now becomes critical that efforts be made to integrate a focus on teacher-child interactions into comprehensive early childhood education professional development systems, creating systematic, seamless learning experiences for teachers applicable at all stages in their career.

Acknowledgments

The development of this paper was supported by a grant awarded to Dr. Robert Pianta by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) -- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE); and the Department of Education (DOE) --Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (Grant # 5R01HD046061-03). The opinions expressed herein are those of the investigators and do not reflect the views of the funding agencies. We extend our gratitude to the set of teachers who provided us with the opportunity to experiment with new ways of supporting them.

Appendix. Domains and Dimensions of Observed Teacher-Child Interactions in the Classroom Assessment Scoring System

Domain Dimension Description
Emotional Support Positive Climate Reflects the overall emotional tone of the classroom and the connection between teachers and students.
Negative Climate Reflects overall level of expressed negativity in the classroom between teachers and students (e.g., anger, aggression, irritability).
Teacher Sensitivity Encompasses teachers’ responsivity to students’ needs and awareness of students’ level of academic and emotional functioning.
Regard for Student Perspectives The degree to which teachers’ interactions with students and classroom activities place an emphasis on students’ interests and points of view, rather than being teacher-driven.
Classroom Management Behavior Management Encompasses teachers’ use of effective methods to prevent and redirect misbehavior, by presenting clear expectations and minimizing time spent addressing behavior.
Productivity Considers how well teachers manage instructional time and routines so that students have the maximum number of opportunity to learn.
Instructional Learning Formats The degree to which teachers maximize students’ engagement and ability to learn by providing interesting activities, instruction, centers, and materials.
Instructional Support Concept Development The degree to which instructional discussions and activities promote students’ higher order thinking skills versus focus on rote and fact-based learning.
Quality of Feedback Considers teachers’ provision of feedback focused on expanding learning and understanding (formative evaluation), not correctness or the end product (summative).
Language Modeling The quality and amount of teachers’ use of language-stimulation and language-facilitation techniques during everyday interactions with children.
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