Constructivist teaching and intra-school collaboration among teachers in South Korea: an uncertainty management perspective

In an effort to understand how collaborative teacher interaction is contingent upon teacher characteristics and school-organizational contexts, this study conducts a series of hierarchical generalized linear modeling analyses based on a nationally representative sample of about 2,500 teachers across 149 middle schools in South Korea. The data are from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey 2008. The result from this study suggests that teacher collegiality may be understood largely as teachers?? collective effort to deal with uncertainties that arise from their approach to teaching as a constructivist endeavor to engage students in meaningful inquiry-based learning. This result is very robust as it holds after a range of other factors such as principal instructional leadership and teacher efficacy are simultaneously taken into account.     

Teacher collaborative inquiry in the context of literacy education: examining the effects on teacher self-efficacy,instructional and assessment practices

This case study research reports on elementary (grade 8) and secondary school (grade 9) teachers’ participation in job-embedded, professional learning and engagement in collaborative inquiry. Teachers constructed an inquiry-oriented media literacy unit following the collaborative inquiry model. The current study sought to investigate how collaborative inquiry influenced their self-efficacy in literacy instruction, instructional and assessment practices. Qualitative data sources included researchers’ anecdotal notes, teacher interviews, and professional learning blog conversations. Inductive analyses of the data generated six major themes comprising enhancements to teachers’ literacy instructional and assessment practices, which were evident in their adoption of the backward-design model, use of success criteria, and greater emphasis on diagnostic and formative assessment. With respect to teachers’ self-efficacy, data analyses also revealed increased levels of intrinsic motivation, professional satisfaction, and reflective practice. This study provides evidence for the transformative potential and characteristics of school-based teacher collaborative inquiry and the resultant impacts on teacher learning.     

Tracing the effects of teacher inquiry on classroom practice

Videotape and participant observation were used to document an American high school teacher workgroup's experience with collaborative teacher inquiry and to monitor changes in practice through two cycles of instructional planning, classroom implementation, and reflective analysis. Detectable changes in practice were observed, including a substantial improvement for two of the four teachers in fidelity of implementation of an instructional innovation. Results support claim that meaningful instructional changes are more likely when teachers work in job-alike teams, are led by trained leaders, use inquiry-focused protocols, and have stable settings in which to engage in the continuous improvement of instruction.     

Opportunities for Professional Learning in Mathematics Teacher Workgroup Conversations: Relationships to Instructional Expertise

Increasingly, instructional improvement efforts include teacher communities as part of their overall strategy, yet the relationship between teachers’ talk and professional learning remains underspecified. Using a discourse perspective on learning, this article compares opportunities to learn (OTLs) in the collaborative conversations of 3 mathematics teacher workgroups. We examined the differences in OTLs in 17 hr of videotaped meetings from 3 groups at different levels of instructional accomplishment in secondary mathematics. Using mixed methods, we uncovered differences in the groups’ interactions and found that OTLs were not equally distributed. Instead, teacher groups whose active participants demonstrated the greatest facility with ambitious instruction also had the richest conversational OTLs. We interpret this as an accumulated advantage developmental story: Because collaborative work in teaching involves problem posing and the articulation of practice, teachers’ conceptions get built into the framing and discussion of pedagogical problems. Accomplished teachers are thus positioned to learn more from talking with colleagues. This analysis contributes to understanding of how OTLs are constituted in teacher workgroups, with implications for making better use of teacher collaboration for professional learning.     

Pattern of classroom activities during students’ use of computers: Relations between instructional strategies and computer applications

The purpose of this study was to identify instructional strategies used by teachers to support technology integration. In addition, relations between types of computer applications and teachers' classroom practices were examined. Data were direct observation results from 143 integration lessons implemented in schools receiving federal technology grants. Results reflect use of student-centered practices such as teacher as a facilitator, project-based learning, and independent inquiry. Furthermore, this study revealed that classroom practices tend to be more student-centered when students use the computer as a learning tool such as the Internet, word processing, and presentation software. Conversely, drill and practice software showed a dissimilar pattern.     

Reification of instructional materials as part of the process of developing problem‐based practices in mathematics education

This teacher development study closely examined a teacher's practice for the purpose of understanding how she selected and implemented instructional materials, and correspondingly how these processes changed as she developed her problem‐based practice throughout a school year. Data sources included over 20 hours of planning and analysis meetings with the teacher and 27 video‐taped lessons with discussions before and after each lesson. Through qualitative analysis we examined the data for: students' cognitive demand for curricular materials the teacher selected and implemented; teacher's beliefs and practices for students' engagement in mathematical thinking; and teacher's and students' communication about mathematics during instruction. We found that the teacher shifted her views and use of instructional materials as she changed her practice towards more problem‐based approaches. The teacher moved from closely following her traditional, district‐adopted textbook to selecting problem‐based tasks from outside resources to build a curriculum. Simultaneously, she changed her practice to focus more on students' engagement in mathematical thinking and their communication about mathematics as part of learning. During this shift in practice, the teacher began to reify instructional materials, viewing them as instruments of her practice to meet students' needs. The process of shifting her views was gradual over the school year and involved substantial analysis and reflection on practice from the teacher. Implications include that teachers and teacher educators may need to devote more attention and support for teachers to use instructional materials to support instruction, rather than materials to prescribe instruction. This use of instructional materials may be an important part of transforming practice overall.     

Fostering collaborative teacher learning: A typology of school leadership

Previous research indicates that supportive school leadership is a key condition of collaborative teacher learning. The purpose of this study was to develop a typology of how school leaders foster collaborative teacher learning. We adopted an integrative perspective on leadership by examining both learning-centred leadership and distributed leadership practices that are supportive of collaborative teacher learning. Data were gathered by means of interviews with ten school leaders and a questionnaire that was completed by 39 teachers from six secondary schools in the Netherlands. The aim of the interviews was to identify to what extent school leaders applied learning-centred leadership and distributed leadership practices. The questionnaire measured teachers' perceptions of the role of school leaders in teacher learning. As an outcome of this study, we constructed a typology that provides insights into how school leaders foster collaborative teacher learning. Four types of school leaders were distinguished: (a) integrators of teacher learning, (b) facilitators of teacher learning, (c) managers of teacher learning, and (d) managers of daily school practice. Our findings suggest that integration of learning-centred leadership and distributed leadership practices can help school leaders to support collaborative teacher learning.     

When Magic Becomes Art: Educating Teachers

Metaphors representing the practice of teacher educators were the data for this collaborative self-study by a small group of teacher educators from across the USA. Seventy-five pre-service teachers and practicing teachers enrolled in teacher education courses were asked to create metaphors to represent the teaching practices of the authors, who were their professors at the time. Qualitative analysis of these data revealed that many of these students believed that effective teaching springs from a kind of teacher magic – a mysterious force arising from the personal characteristics of the teacher rather than from any purposeful selection from a repertoire of instructional strategies – developed over time. For the researchers, these results posed a challenge for reworking their teaching to make the art of teaching more visible and accessible.     

协作式教学设计过程模式研究

该文从传统的教学设计理论与实践的不足、设计人员自身素质的缺陷、理论专家的关注等几个方面,论证了开展协作式教学设计的必要性。同时借鉴企业管理的思想,论证了在教师之间建立一种“学习型组织”,从而保证开展协作式教学设计的可行性。此外列出了几种教师协作的组织形式,并尝试性地给出一种协作式的教学设计过程模式。     

Building Pre-service Teacher Capacity to Use External Assessment Data: An Intervention Study

In recent years, the use of data to inform instructional decision making has become a particularly prominent facet of K–12 educators' professional practice. However, research estimates limited opportunities for preservice teachers to learn how to use data, including standardized test data, for such purposes. In response, this article describes the results of a pretest–posttest study of a 6-hour standardized assessment data use intervention for preservice teachers. The facilitated, collaborative, and highly structured assessment course-embedded intervention engaged preservice teachers in asking and answering four different kinds of questions (e.g., achievement strengths and weaknesses, instructional implications) at five different student levels (e.g., individual, subgroup, school) with external assessment data presented in tables, charts, and score reports. Findings—which include highly favorable preservice teacher perceptions of the intervention's impact on their data-driven decision making skills, and changes in their self-efficacy and data interpretation skills—indicate that the intervention holds promise as a preservice teacher learning mechanism.     

Theoretical Influences on the Establishment of Inclusive Practices

The purpose of this study was to examine strategies used by classroom teachers for including students with severe multiple disabilities in elementary general education classrooms. Interviews and participant observations were conducted across a 10 month period at four sites. Categorical coding procedures for qualitative data were used to identify themes related to instructional practices in these inclusive classrooms. Results revealed influences of constructivist, Vygotskian and multiple intelligence theories on teacher decisions and perceptions. The tenets of each theory are presented, the impact of theoretical assumptions on teacher practice is examined and three lessons exemplifying such influences are illustrated.     

Roles of a teacher and researcher during in situ professional development around the implementation of mathematical modeling tasks

Partnership with teachers for professional development has been considered beneficial because of the potential of collaborative work in the teacher’s own classroom to be relevant to practice. From this perspective, both teachers and researchers can draw on their own expertise and work as authentic partners. In this study, we address the need for such collaboration and focus on how a teacher and a researcher performed their roles when collaboratively implementing mathematical modeling tasks within a context of in situ professional development. Using multi-tier design-based research, as a framework, a researcher worked in a teacher’s classroom to implement a series of research-based mathematical modeling activities. A broad corpus of data from this interaction was analyzed, including audio recordings of interviews with the teacher, video recordings of three mathematical modeling lessons, researcher field notes and journal reflections, instructional materials, and students’ written work using the principles for designing activities for teachers. The emerging roles and relationships between the teacher and the researcher were documented, as (1) the researcher implemented the professional development, (2) the teacher shared her concerns, (3) the researcher responded to the teacher’s challenges, and (3) the teacher reflected on student development. As a case study of collaboration, the participants’ roles and strategies to overcome challenges and achieve shared objectives can benefit teachers and researchers who plan to collaboratively implement modeling in the classroom. The study supports the value and viability of this form of in situ professional development, indicating that significant changes in teachers’ thinking about their students’ mathematical model development can occur in relatively short periods of time.     

Whose perception of principal instructional leadership? Principal-teacher perceptual (dis)agreement and its influence on teacher collaboration

This study examines teacher collaboration across three Asia-Pacific countries (Australia, Malaysia, and South Korea), focusing on the possibility that principal-teacher perceptual disagreement regarding principal instructional leadership performance may impede progress toward a school organizational condition conducive to collaborative teacher interactions. Data for this study were taken from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey 2008. Overall, the results from a series of hierarchical linear modelling analyses appear to give credence to the hypothesis that the degree to which a principal's self-evaluation of her/his instructional leadership diverges from teachers' perception of the leadership is likely to negatively influence teachers' engagement in collaborative activities and collegial interactions; in other words, teachers become more likely to establish collegial relationships with other teachers in a situation where there is little principal-teacher disagreement regarding principal leadership performance. The significant effect of principal-teacher perceptual disagreement found in this study was fairly consistent across all three countries examined despite the substantial differences among the countries in terms of socio-cultural background. This finding sheds light on the need for paying close analytic attention to principal-teacher perceptual agreement as it may constitute an important aspect of school capacity.     

Teacher Learning and Collaborative Action Research: Generating a “Knowledge-of-Practice” in the Context of Science Education

In this case study, teacher inquiry groups from 3 school districts engaged and transformed various facets of their professional knowledge and practice in the context of science education. To examine the nature of teacher learning, a 3-part teacher knowledge and learning framework, proposed by Cochran-Smith and Lytle in 1999, was adopted (knowledge-for-practice, knowledge-in-practice, and knowledge-of-practice). While 16 school-based inquiry groups participated in the collaborative action research project, one case study involving a primary teacher, Katrina, is highlighted to illustrate outcomes related to the role of collaborative inquiry in supporting teacher learning, contextual issues and concerns that impact teachers’ daily classroom practice, and the types of knowledge generated by teachers within collaborative inquiry communities.     

A School—University Collaborative Journey Toward Relevance and Meaning in an Urban High School Physical Education Program

The promise and potential for collaborative teams of school and university colleagues to address substantive issues in physical education were the focus of an international conference and a series of high-profile articles in the late 80s and early 90s. However, school-university partnerships have seldom focused on school reform. Few scholars address secondary school physical education, save for the occasional article describing its eminent demise. Successful implementation of innovative practices, such as curricular and instructional revisions, requires significant investments in teacher development. This paper details a specific collaborative effort in physical education that makes a case for systematic long-term commitments to improve young people's physical education experiences. Stories from a 4-year collaborative highlight the complexities and challenges faced by any subdisciplinary group that commits to connecting professional preparation and practice for the benefit of our respective constituencies.     

Navigating the complex cognitive task of classroom assessment

We investigated how a fifth-grade literacy teacher with classroom assessment expertise integrated assessment into his teaching practice. We employed a qualitative case study methodology to examine and document the processes this teacher used to make instructional decisions informed by classroom assessment events. We identified a repertoire of assessment relevant management routines and interpretation strategies that supported his assessment practice and instructional decision-making. Findings can be used to inform policy and organize content for teacher education by identifying a repertoire of potential management routines and interpretation strategies for engaging in classroom assessment and documenting how to enact these practices.     

Using cogenerative dialogues to improve coteaching for language learner (LL) students in an inclusion science classroom

This paper presents findings from a study conducted in an urban elementary school in the United States with an English language learner (ELL) student and two teachers engaged in collaborative teaching in an inclusion science classroom. This study examines the efficacy of utilising cogenerative dialogues between an ELL student and his science teacher and English as second language teacher to improve instructional practices enacted during coteaching. Drawing from field notes, teacher and student interviews, and video captured during cotaught science lessons and during cogenerative dialogues between the student and his coteachers, we examined the ways in which cogenerative dialogue expands teachers’ agency to adapt curriculum and implement instructional strategies that can better meet the needs of their students. At the same time, we examined the ways in which participation in cogenerative dialogues with his teachers expanded this student’s agency as a science learner and a language learner.     

Best Practice in Middle-School Science

Using socio-ecological theory, this study explores best practice (educational practices correlated with higher student performance) in middle-school science. Seven schools with consistently higher student performance were compared with three demographically similar, average-performing schools. Best practice included instructional approaches (relevance and engagement, inquiry, differentiated instruction, collaborative work, moderate amounts of homework, and integration of language literacy and science) and administrative practices (nurturing a climate of opportunity to succeed in science, offering professional development based on data and dialogue, engaging teachers in standards-based curriculum revision and alignment, and recruiting the right fit of teacher). It is argued that best practice entails multiple levels of teaching and administrative praxis that together form a school-wide socio-ecological system conducive to higher performance.     

Pre-service teachers’ TPACK competencies for spreadsheet integration: insights from a mathematics-specific instructional technology course

This article explored the impact of strategies applied in a mathematics instructional technology course for developing technology integration competencies, in particular in the use of spreadsheets, in pre-service teachers. In this respect, 104 pre-service mathematics teachers from a teacher training programme in Ghana enrolled in the mathematics instructional technology course for one semester. Strategies applied in designing the course were: aligning theory and practice, collaborative design, learning technology by design, modelling how to use technology and scaffolding authentic technology experiences. The pre-service teachers’ technology integration competencies were assessed through analysis of lesson plans and lesson observations, their self-reported technological pedagogical content knowledge and attitudes towards technology. Findings show that pre-service teachers’ technology integration competencies improved after participation in the course. All strategies were considered important, but in particular, scaffolding authentic technology experiences including feedback from teaching try-outs made significant contributions to the pre-service teachers’ developed technology integration competencies. The study provides guidelines that can serve as a benchmark for implementing strategies in the design of a subject-specific teacher education programme in preparing pre-service teachers to integrate technology in teaching.