The Relationship Between Teachers' Professional Knowledge and Skills, Teachers' Empowerment, and Students' Learning

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine (a) the effect of a differentiated professional learning program (PL) for teachers of multilingual learners of English (MLEs) and (b) the pathways of the teachers' empowerment and professional knowledge and skills on their MLEs' learning. This PL program contained three components: (a) five large-group PL sessions, (b) two follow-up small-group coaching sessions, and (c) a PL community. Twelve schools were randomly assigned to an experimental or a control group, with four elementary and two middle schools in each group. We had 48 experimental teachers with 497 MLEs and 48 control teachers with 402 MLEs. The experimental teachers reported a higher level of empowerment and more knowledge and skills teaching MLEs than the control teachers. Additionally, the experimental students reported a higher level of learning than the control students. We further discovered that when teachers participated in a differentiated PL program in response to their needs and in collaboration with other participating teachers, their enhanced knowledge and skills teaching MLEs were related to their empowerment and MLEs' learning ((Formula presented.) = 0.78 and 0.64, respectively). Teacher empowerment also significantly predicted MLEs' learning ((Formula presented.) = 0.53). This study presented sufficient evidence on the importance of a differentiated PL program for teachers of MLEs and a relationship between professional knowledge and skills and empowerment needs to be relevant to teachers' needs for their MLEs.