Students whose teachers participated in Quality Teaching Rounds achieved an additional 25% learning growth in maths. That is the headline finding of our latest research paper, published last week.
Our exciting results are the culmination of decades of research. Quality Teaching Rounds was born out of a desire to support teachers, respecting their work and honouring the complexity of teaching.
We’re eager to see how these results help build capacity for quality teaching around Australia and the world.
Our paper, Improving student achievement through professional development: Results from a randomised controlled trial of Quality Teaching Rounds, is published in the Teaching and Teacher Education Journal, and is open access for you to read in full.
Highlights
- A four-arm randomised controlled trial examining PD effects on student achievement.
- PD intervention was pedagogy-focused Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR).
- QTR has significant impact on students’ mathematics achievement.
- PLCs undertaking peer observation insufficient for growth in achievement.
- QTR is a powerful form of PD with significant potential for wider impact.
Abstract
Improving student achievement through professional development (PD) is both highly sought-after and elusive. This four-arm randomised controlled trial evaluated effects of Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR), a pedagogy-focused form of PD, on mathematics, reading, and science outcomes for elementary students (n = 5478). Outcomes at baseline and 8-month follow-up were compared for QTR, QTR trainer-led, peer-observation, and wait-list control groups. Students in the QTR group made 25% more progress in mathematics than the control group (g = 0.12, 95% CI: 0.07–0.17). This result supports QTR as a form of PD with significant potential for wider impact.
