Chapter 6: Fidelity of Practice: The Challenge of Transformative Change in Teacher Professional Development

Constructing robust bridges between teachers’ pedagogical praxis and the theoretical frameworks and instructional recommendations of professional development is a fundamental challenge for teacher educators. Indeed, research on teacher professional development finds that such programs are often unsuccessful in substantively changing teachers’ beliefs and attitudes and that, ultimately, course acquired knowledge does not necessarily make its way into instructional practice (Cohen & Hill, 2000; Dusenbury, Brannigan, Falco, & Hansen, 2003; and Fullan, 1982). In this chapter we investigate the notion of fidelity of practice—the reflective and productive implementation of development-recommended instructional practices— through a longitudinal mixed-methods case study examining the impact of training designed to prepare mainstream classroom teachers to work with English Learners (ELs).¹