Chapter 4: Student Achievement from Anchor Action Research Studies in High-Needs, Urban Professional Development Schools: a Meta-Analysis

Clinical teaching employed through anchor action research (AAR) studies helps to evaluate teacher preparation efforts in professional development schools (PDSs) through K–12 student achievement. As a part of the teacher–intern–professor (TIP) group, the intern participates in the planning and delivery of a unit of instruction that uses a pretest and posttest as assessments. This study contributes a summary of 10 AAR studies in PDSs which overall have a statistically significant effect size for student achievement using meta-analysis. The results show that Cohen’s d effect size between groups is .387 in favor of the PDS TIP Groups, which is typical of effect sizes of meta-syntheses of educational interventions. Thus, this study demonstrates a clinical approach to teaching combined with a statistical approach to overcome small sample sizes through meta-analysis to show student academic achievement gains in PDSs.