Examining the impact of Quality Teaching Rounds on teacher professional learning

Despite rhetorical and financial investments in professional development, much professional learning activity fails to generate the intended improvements in teaching quality and student learning. In this paper, we examine the impact of Quality Teaching Rounds as a specific form of ongoing professional learning designed to address such weaknesses in professional learning experiences, as inadequate time, the absence of an agreed knowledge base, and cultural norms of privatism. Drawing primarily on questionnaire data, we compare the views of teachers who participated in Quality Teaching Rounds with the views of teachers who were not part of the Rounds process. Statistically significant differences were found for seven of eleven scales including Quality Teaching Support, Quality Teaching Reception, Professional Learning Satisfaction, Quality Teaching Coherency, Teacher Responsibility, Quality Teaching Importance, and Professional Learning Coherency. These findings indicate the potential of QT Rounds to substantially impact on teacher professional learning.