Adapting a professional development program for cognitively demanding instruction across shifting contexts

This study explored what was entailed in implementing a professional development (PD) designed in the United States (US) to a different, Israeli, context. To achieve this goal, the first step was empirically examining the effectiveness of such a PD using quantitative methods. We then examined which adaptations were made in the imported PD and at what level. Our study is based on data obtained from the Israeli TEAMS (Teaching Exploratively for All Mathematics Students) PD, which “imported” a US-based program based on “The Five Practices for Orchestrating Productive Discussions” and “Accountable Talk.” We build on studies of cultural adaptations of interventions which provide a framework whereby adaptations to a model can be made along three levels: philosophical, propositional, and procedural. To assess the effectiveness of the PD, we analyzed 211 recorded lessons. Individual growth curve analysis indicated significant growth in five parameters: intellectual authority, classroom discourse, exposure of student thinking, task enactment, and consolidation. These findings show that the PD was effective in importing several core practices which were relatively well defined. We use these quantitative findings, coupled with additional data obtained from the planning and execution of the PD, as a case to study the process of adapting an educational intervention to a new context. This analysis shows that our adaptations were mostly done at the procedural level. However, the quantitative results point to the possible necessity of also changing the propositional model of what intervention can work in a new context.