Responding to the Needs of Early Literacy Teachers: Designing Online Professional Development to Improve Writing Instruction for Multilingual Learners

While the population of multilingual learners (MLs) in the United States has grown rapidly in recent years, many teachers feel unprepared to teach them. The professional development (PD) teachers receive is often misaligned with their particular needs and experiences. This design-based research study examined the development and impact of online PD designed with teacher input to improve writing instruction for young MLs. Data were collected over twelve months from 25 teachers in six Southeastern U.S. school districts. Researchers evaluated the impact of the PD on teachers’ knowledge and self-efficacy for teaching writing to MLs. Findings highlight how teachers made instructional moves to support the linguistic assets of their students and shifted their beliefs toward more culturally responsive perspectives. These shifts were facilitated by the core PD elements of content focus, active learning, coherence, and duration. The study highlights a need for soliciting iterative feedback on PD from teachers themselves, revising PD based on ongoing feedback, and providing practical opportunities to apply new learning.