The measurement and impact of university teacher development programs

Abstract

Teacher development programs have been part of the English speaking higher education landscape for over 40 years. There is now general agreement that teacher development programs have a positive impact on teachers and students, yet the extent and longevity of their impact on the culture of the discipline and the institutions are less well researched and evidenced. There is clearly a need for ongoing and rigorous research on the impact of teacher development programs that looks deeper and beyond the teachers who participate in the programs. The focus of this paper is to draw on the English research and literature to identify the impact and effectiveness of teacher development programs and activities and propose a framework for the systematic measurement and collection of information on the effectiveness of these programs. It is argued that these measures and indicators need to move from the research paradigm to the evaluation paradigm so that they can inform ongoing and future teacher development programs and enhancement. Programs from the planning stage should be designed to build an evidence base that will enable researchers and practitioners to ask more complex questions on where and on whom the programs have an impact, and why they have impact.

Keywords

• teacher development programs
• evaluation and monitoring
• impact
• measuring effectiveness
• university