Special Treatment or Responsive Instruction? Teaching Teachers in Master\u27s-Level Coursework

In 2004, an upper Midwestern school district received a grant to administer content-specific professional development to teachers of American history. A series of nine master\u27s level, degree-eligible courses were developed and administered by the local university\u27s history department. At the conclusion of the grant activities in spring of 2008, the 34 teacher-participants were invited to be interviewed. The purpose of the interviews was to determine teacher motivation for taking the course and each teacher\u27s overall impression of the effectiveness of the professors and course content. Additional data were gathered including observations of the history teachers in their classrooms, student work samples from the history teachers\u27 classrooms, history teacher work samples from the master\u27s courses, demographic data such as years of experience and level of education for each of the history teachers, and interviews with the history professors. One theme that emerged from the data was the expectation of specialized treatment