Files
Abstract
Effective professional learning has the power to strengthen teacher content knowledge and pedagogy. Nationally, training has a 38% chance of making it to the workplace after six months. At Kenbrooke School District, less than 10% of social studies teachers indicate using district content and pedagogy training 18 months after the initial training. With public school funding at stake, the lack of transfer results in a poor return on investment and a waste of time for both the district coordinator and the training participants. Although transfer theory has been studied in the human resource development and business sectors, few studies have focused on K-12 social studies teachers. This action research study sought to address the problem of transfer in the context of secondary social studies teachers by focusing on intervention strategies that may strengthen the likelihood of transfer of Document Based Questions training into social studies classrooms. Four research questions framed this study: 1. How do action research team members currently design district-level social studies training? 2. What are the perceived levels of learning and training transfer for study participants in their classrooms? 3. Are social studies teachers learning and transfer influenced by professional learning interventions? If so, to what extent? 4. What is learned by the action research team regarding training design and transfer theory? Findings from this mixed methods study indicate that transfer is aided by embedding opportunities to address participant attitude toward training and perceived barriers to transfer immediately following district training. The results implied that district trainers should adopt post training interventions informed by the theory of planned behavior to improve teacher intent to transfer. Teacher attitude and perceived behavioral control toward transfer were influenced by goal setting and self-management training interventions, respectively. The influence of subjective norms was realized through classroom observations. The study identified theoretical connections between teacher intent to transfer and post-training interventions. Future research studies should consider moving beyond transfer intent to actual transfer by extending data collection period among social studies teachers.