Relationships between ongoing professional development and educators' perceived skills relative to RtI

Widespread adoption of Response to Intervention (RtI) requires large numbers of educators to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to implement the model with fidelity. This study examined relationships between large-scale professional development on RtI and educators' perceived skills. Elementary educators (n = 4,283) from 34 pilot and 27 comparison schools in a southeastern state participated. Leadership teams composed of subsets of educators from pilot schools who were responsible for leading RtI implementation participated in 13 days of training across a 3-year period. Additionally, job-embedded coaching was provided to pilot school instructional educators. Results from multilevel models indicated that leadership team membership related to increases in educators' perceptions of RtI skills applied to academics (pi = .05; SE = .02; t[6,726] = 2.60; p < .05) and of data display skills (pi = .07; SE = .03; t[6,678] = 2.45, p < .05). Educator participation at pilot schools that received job-embedded coaching related to increases in perceptions of RtI skills applied to academics (beta = .07; SE = .02; t[6,726] = 2.77, p < .05). Implications for future research on RtI implementation and the practice of providing large-scale professional development focused on RtI are discussed. (C) 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.