Improving Teachers' Monitoring of Learning

In order for learning to be effective, teachers must accurately monitor students' learning. Monitoring is important to making informed decisions about whether educational objectives have been reached by all students, and to identify which students may need additional help to reach their objectives. This research team, using a metacognitive perspective of teaching, believe that monitoring accuracy plays an important role in effective teaching-and that by improving the accuracy with which teachers are monitoring their students learning, teachers' effectiveness and student achievement can be improved. The purpose of this study is to develop and test a professional development program called Monitoring Professional Development (Monitoring PD), a program intended to improve the accuracy of elementary teachers' monitoring of student learning, specifically in mathematics. In addition, researchers will gather evidence about the relation between teachers' monitoring accuracy and student achievement.