Abstract
Purpose. This qualitative study explored how professional development enhances a teacher's self-efficacy in teaching literacy to low socioeconomic middle school students. It also explored the instructional strategies and best practices implemented by teachers as a result of the professional development they identified as improving their self-efficacy.Methodology. A case study design, using interviews, was used to answer the following central question: What professional development enhances a teacher's self-efficacy in teaching literacy to low socioeconomic middle school students, and what instructional strategies do teachers implement as a result? The researcher used a purposeful sampling approach to interview 5 middle school teachers in Southern California. Participants responded to 8 open-ended questions.Findings. High self-efficacy teachers shared the professional development and instructional strategies they implemented in their class to support low socioeconomic middle school students. Thirteen strategies were cited by 3 or more of the participants as highly effective. From these 13 strategies, 3 major themes emerged. The 3 major themes were (a) belief that all students can learn, (b) collaborative learning, and (c) communication with students.Conclusion. The findings support the need to implement professional development to embed research-based best practices that focus on believing that all students can learn, learning groups, and knowing how to communicate with students in the classroom and to continue to provide teachers with ongoing training in teaching and modeling lessons.Recommendations. This research study adds to the field of education by providing strategies to support low socioeconomic middle school students. Future research that includes a larger sample size in order to provide more generalizable results should be conducted. In addition, this study could be replicated by using different methodologies to help support the data, analyze high school teachers' professional development that enhances a teacher's self-efficacy in teaching literacy to low socioeconomic high school students, learn what instructional strategies teachers implement as a result, and investigate the effects of teacher self-efficacy and implicit bias when working with African American, Latino, and low socioeconomic students in the classroom.