Mathematics teacher persistence in online professional development: emerging (mis)alignments between instructional expectations and professional development utility

Sustained professional development is critical to support mathematics teachers' development of ambitious instructional practices. This study aimed to better understand the factors and conditions that impact mathematics teachers' persistent participation in an optional and online professional development that includes a sequence of three online workshops focused on doing mathematics and examining student mathematics work. We interviewed 37 mathematics teachers and explored their perceived utility of our online workshops for their instructional practice, perceived expectations for instruction in their local institutional context, and persistence in the online workshops. We identified three types of alignment-alignment, misalignment, and emerging (mis)alignment-between participants' perceived utility of the workshops and perceived expectations for instruction in their local institutional context, and these alignments were significantly related to their persistence in the workshops. Our findings are significant because they suggest that mathematics teachers' interest and persistence in optional and online professional development focused on ambitious instructional practices is an emergent phenomenon that depends, in part, upon the affordances and constraints for instruction in their local institutional context. We argue that mathematics teachers' experiences of alignments can differentially trigger and sustain their situational interest, potential to recognize the relevance of ambitious instructional practices to their day-to-day work in the classroom, and persistence in online professional development. We offer a set of online professional development design features that can support mathematics teachers to connect their learning in online professional development with expectations for instruction in their local institutional context.