Using Professional Development to Move Toward a Guided Discovery Approach in the Classroom (Abstract Only)

In this research, I studied two enactments of a professional development course designed to help teachers learn how to program games and teach programming to middle school students using a guided discovery approach. In the first PD course (n=58), a wholly teacher-directed approach was used. In the other PD course (n=54), a guided discovery approach was employed. I found three major differences between the groups. First, the descriptions of the games varied significantly based on the type of instruction, leading us to believe that teachers were taking more ownership of their creations. Second, the teachers who were taught with a guided discovery approach were able to work at a quicker pace, with less assistance, and ultimately were able to more quickly apply those skills to more complex games and simulations within the course of the professional development. Third, it also appears that this guided discovery teaching methodology is similarly impacting changes in pedagogy when these newly trained teachers use Scalable Game Design in the classroom. Students in classrooms where teachers were taught using guided discovery methods were more likely to go beyond the curricular materials when building their own games. This appears to indicate that these approaches to training will translate to changes in classroom practice, enabling teachers to more readily employ a guided discovery approach in their own teaching efforts