Sustaining teacher knowledge and self-perception of reading comprehension instruction: A year-long study of practice-based professional development

We examined a practice-based professional development (PBPD) program and implementation of a reading comprehension strategy, the Knowledge Acquisition and Transformation (KAT) Framework, over one school year and its relationship with teachers’ knowledge and self-perceptions about teaching reading comprehension. During the study, 189 upper elementary teachers from 27 schools across six U.S. school districts were randomly assigned to the KAT program (n = 102) or a control condition (n = 87). Teachers completed measures of main idea knowledge, reading comprehension knowledge, and self-perception of their ability to teach reading comprehension at three timepoints. KAT teachers demonstrated significantly higher scores than control teachers immediately following the PBPD on the main idea measure (g = 1.05) and the self-perception measure (g = 0.36), but not on the reading comprehension knowledge measure (g = -0.03). At the end of the school year, KAT teachers scored significantly higher than control teachers on the main idea measure (g = 0.97), the reading comprehension knowledge measure (g = 0.37) and the self-perception measure (g = 0.41). Results suggest the PBPD program and implementation of the reading comprehension instruction is positively associated with teachers’ content knowledge and perceptions of their ability to teach reading comprehension.