Using multimedia to teach inservice teachers: Impacts on learning, application, and retention

This study investigated teachers’ ability to learn, apply in lesson plans, and retain knowledge of classroom discourse from a single module of a multimedia professional development program, used with 39 K-12 teachers enrolled in two graduate courses. Data collection and analysis included: (a) teacher development of – and panel review of – lesson plans integrating discourse, and (b) follow-up teacher interviews one year later. The study found: (a) the video modeling in the module was effective in helping teachers learn, and (b) discourse strategies were learned, applied, and retained. Implications for professional development with multimedia to teach classroom discourse include: (a) recursive use, (b) reflection, (c) multiple examples, (d) counter examples, and (e) prompts for observation.