UC Berkeley

Curricular and demographic changes in our schools have created significant shifts in the instructional needs of our classrooms. Inservice professional development (PD) through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has been posed as a scalable approach to meet the professional needs our teachers need to respond to instructional challenges. But what we know about MOOC PD is limited by our lack of knowledge of how teachers respond to this online mode, and by the shifting of MOOCs from simply online modes to hybrids using face-to-face interaction. This study is a multiple, embedded case study of the professional learning of 7 teachers participating in a hybrid MOOC. The MOOC was a multidimensional and adaptive platform to introduce current practices of engagement, the information gap, and an increased attention to language for teaching instructional strategies to elementary level teachers to support students’ development of academic uses of English.

The research questions focused on how teachers processed PD features emphasized in the MOOC across 3 time points using a socio-cultural theoretical frame of developing teacher expertise (Snow, Griffin & Burns, 2005). Data sources included interviews, observations, surveys, and participants’ work assignment submissions. Findings suggest that teacher expertise was a mediator variable in response to the PD content and modes of delivery.

The findings from this study have implications in research, policy, and practice. At a research level, multiple measures support analysis of modal interactions across different settings. Policy implications include specific suggestions to strengthen the collaborative nature of the PD. Implications for practice include providing additional instruction to teachers beyond the MOOC. Moreover, there is a need to develop teacher capacity for scaffolding authentic instructional interactions within context and based on ongoing formative assessment.