Science Professional Learning Communities: Beyond a singular view of teacher professional development

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are frequently being used as a vehicle to transform science education. This study explored elementary teachers' perceptions about the impact of participating in a science PLC on their own professional development. With the use of The Science Professional Learning Communities Survey and a semi-structured interview protocol, elementary teachers' perceptions of the goals of science PLCs, the constraints and benefits of participation in PLCs, and reported differences in the impact of PLC participation on novice and experienced teachers were examined. Sixty-five elementary teachers who participated in a science PLC were surveyed about their experiences, and a subsample of 16 teachers was interviewed. Results showed that most of the teachers reported their science PLC emphasized sharing ideas with other teachers as well as working to improve students' science standardized test scores. Teachers noted that the PLCs had impacted their science assessment practices as well as their lesson planning. However, a majority of the participants reported a differential impact of PLCs depending on a teacher's level of experience. PLCs were reported as being more beneficial to new teachers than experienced teachers. The interview results demonstrated that there were often competing goals and in some cases a loss of autonomy in planning science lessons. A significant concern was the impact of problematic interpersonal relationships and communication styles on the group functioning. The role of the PLC in addressing issues related to obtaining science resources and enhancing science content knowledge for elementary science teachers is discussed.     

Personal,professional, political: an exploration of science teacher identity development for teaching climate change

Abstract

Climate change presents societal and environmental challenges, as well as educational ones. Obstacles abound within teaching and learning climate change, related to its complex nature, the proliferation of misinformation, and its absence from many science curricula. Efforts have previously been made to study teacher content knowledge and beliefs on climate change with varying results. This study employed identity as a theoretical framework to examine aspects of climate change teaching. This study followed a reflexively iterative process that enabled the construction of a conceptual model for identity development. This model demonstrates multifaceted influences including personal, professional, and political elements, and the dynamism these elements exhibit over time. This conceptual model is best described via five trends: Personal Valuation of Nature; Experiences in Science Teaching and Learning; Teacher Instructional Support and Agency; Epistemic Evidence-based Instruction; and Civic and Social Awareness via Socioscientific Literacy. The presence and strength of enactment of each trend led to the development of four possible constructions of identity: Passionate Environmentalist, Student Interest Engager, Content First Educator, and Civic and Epistemic Skills Promoter. Most frequently teachers exhibited combinations of identities and often created a unique amalgam of multiple dimensions of identities in action.     

The role of professional obligations in working to change one's teaching practices

Teaching practices do not change easily. In this article, we explore this phenomenon by viewing teaching as a cultural activity in which teachers' decisions are influenced by professional obligations. We present the cases of two secondary mathematics teachers and share data regarding their expressed goals, their perceived obligations, and their instructional practice. Our findings suggest that perceived obligations hindered the teachers' efforts to change their practice. We argue that efforts to help teachers realize their goals need to acknowledge, and perhaps position as resources, the obligations that teachers perceive as inherent in their professional role.     

Features and strategies of supervisor professional community as a means of improving the supervision of preservice teachers

This article explores whether features associated with effective professional communities among K-12 teachers are relevant and sufficient for improving the practice of supervisors in teacher education programs. Interview and observational data from nineteen supervisors in one teacher education program illuminate what supervisors want in order to improve their professional practices and how their needs could be met through ongoing collaboration. The article proposes five features of professional communities that can help supervisors improve their work: norms promoting collaboration; trust and familiarity; activities deprivatizing practices; access to logistical information and shared expectations about the role of supervisors; and time for collaboration.     

Developing a communal identity as beginning teachers of mathematics: Emergence of an online community of practice

The aim of this study is to investigate how a community of practice focused on becoming a teacher of secondary school mathematics emerged during a pre-service teacher education programme and was sustained after students graduated and began their first year of full-time teaching in schools. Bulletin board discussions of one pre-service cohort are analysed in terms of Wenger’s (1998) three defining features of a community of practice: mutual engagement of participants, negotiation of a joint enterprise, and development of a shared repertoire for creating meaning. Emergence of the online community was associated with our own role in facilitating professional dialogue, the voluntary and unstructured nature of participation, initial face-to-face interaction that created familiarity and trust, and the convenience of using email rather than logging on to a website. The study shows that the emergent design of the community contributed to its sustainability in allowing the pre-service and beginning teachers to define their own professional goals and values.

The role of teachers’ orientation to learning in professional development and change: A national study of teachers in England

This paper uses results from a national survey of teachers in England to test a hypothesised model of teacher orientation to learning (consisting of beliefs, practice and experiences about learning) and its relationship to teacher learning change. Results from a structural equation modeling process of 1126 teacher survey responses show that teachers bring an internal, external and collaborative orientation to their professional learning. The beliefs and practices associated with these orientations are also shown to have a moderate influence, via path analysis, on teacher learning change defined as a composite outcome of change in beliefs, practices and students.     

Communities of practice in higher education: professional learning in an academic career

This article focuses on the life history of a university academic, and the ways in which he learned in different communities of practice during his career. This account raises questions about the applicability of situated learning theory to a knowledge-based organisation, and argues that both the external context and the individuals within the community impinge on learning. It suggests that the role of academic staff developers may vary depending on the CoP and should include developing networks, facilitation, providing relevant expertise, improving harmony within CoPs and harnessing the benefits of internationally dispersed CoPs.     

Supporting presence in teacher education: The connection between the personal and professional aspects of teaching

This study follows one individual student teacher during a period of one single school year in which she was supported in developing ‘presence’ while teaching. The notion of ‘presence’ was formulated by the teacher herself, and coincides with the growing interest in this aspect in psychology, and in theories about becoming a teacher. In her supervision, the so-called core reflection approach was used, which strongly builds on the concept of presence and on positive psychology. Based on analyses of audio taped supervisory sessions, six stages were identified in the teacher's development. These stages are described and related to theories about positive psychology and core reflection. The supervisor's interventions leading to the transitions between the stages were identified, analysed, and related to key principles of core reflection. It appeared that the teacher's growth not only led to experiencing ‘presence’ while teaching, but also to a greater use of her personal qualities. Taken together, it appeared that after the supervision the teacher was much more ‘in flow’, and that she was more effective as a teacher. In this article, both the teacher's growth and the supervisor's interventions are described in detail, and illustrated using quotations from supervisory sessions, logbooks, and interviews. A case is made for connecting professional and personal aspects in supervising student teachers.     

Career choice among academically excellent students: Choosing teaching career as a corrective experience

The present study examined implicit motivations of academically excellent students' choice of teaching careers rather than more prestigious occupations. Open, in-depth interviews were conducted with twelve students. Findings indicate that choosing a career in teaching served as a corrective experience for painful past experiences, and revealed four types of implicit motivations: (1) The experience of helplessness and the need to strengthen the sense of self-efficacy (2) The search for interpersonal boundaries as markers of identity (3) The need to belong: Warmth, caring, and individual attention and (4) Compensation for an unjust and humiliating experience in childhood.     

Engaging student teachers in meaningful reflective practice

This paper examines the use of peer-videoing in the classroom as a tool to promote reflective practice among student teachers. Twenty pre-service teachers from a variety of subject disciplines participating in a Post-Graduate Diploma in Education programme in an Irish university participated in the study. The practice of encouraging student teachers working in the same school to participate in structured video analysis avoids the impact of external observers whose role is largely evaluative and endorses a collaborative model that promotes dialogue and shared learning. This practice promotes a culture of observation and critical dialogue in a profession which has traditionally been characterised by isolation, while at the same time fostering and validating the voice and experience of the student teacher. Locating the discussion within the framework of the theoretical literature on reflective practice, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the international debate over best practice in supporting, encouraging and scaffolding reflective practice. It comments on the implications of reflective dialogue for the modernisation of teacher education and offers guidelines on how best to scaffold and promote reflectivity.     

Exploring diversity through ethos in initial teacher education

This paper considers whether there is value in introducing student teachers to schools of different ethos as part of their initial teacher education. A 2-year study of undergraduate post-primary student teachers at a university college in Northern Ireland reveals that encounters with schools of different ethos can help student teachers to understand differences between schools and their visions of education, as well as correcting misunderstandings and challenging stereotypes. It is argued that as a result of experiencing diverse examples of ethos, student teachers may also be helped to understand the complexity of schools as organisations and to position themselves and their professional practice within wider debates about the aims of education and schools as communities of practice.     

Prospective teachers’ future time perspective and professional plans about teaching: The mediating role of academic optimism

This study aimed to examine the mediating role of prospective teachers’ academic optimism in the relationship between their future time perspective and professional plans about teaching. A total of 396 prospective teachers voluntarily participated in the study. Correlation, regression, and structural equation modeling analyses were conducted in order to examine the mediating role of academic optimism. Results demonstrated that the relationships between future time perspective and planned effort, planned persistence, and professional development aspirations were significantly and fully mediated by academic optimism; whereas the relationship between future time perspective and leadership aspirations was not.     

Context–process authenticity in learning: implications for identity enculturation and boundary crossing

This paper posits that authenticity is an aspect of both the context and the process of learning. These two aspects cannot be seen in isolation and must be analyzed as one unity. We refer to this coupling relationship as the context–process authenticity. Existing learning and instructional approaches associated with authenticity, such as simulations, participation, and co-evolution privilege the authenticity of professional practices and do not adequately tackle the issue of the transitions across contexts. To avoid demeaning the authenticity of schools, we recommend other approaches, which emphasize the identity enculturation aspect in diverse communities. Furthermore, we argue for a context–process authenticity continuum. This continuum encompasses both school and professional communities and the context–process authenticity coupling. Implications are discussed with respect to the proposed context–process authenticity continuum.     

Crossing horizons: Continuity and change during second-career teachers’ entry into teaching

Findings are reported from two studies examining from which specific backgrounds and in which ways second-career teachers make the transition to teaching. The transfer of existing competencies to teaching is shown to involve a challenging interplay between experiences of continuity and change. Continuity was found at the level of beliefs. Change predominated at the level of the work environment. Continuity as well as change were experienced at the levels of behaviour, competencies, identity and mission. Several aspects of career changers’ workplace learning are identified which deserve special attention in designing and implementing alternative certification programmes.     

“I speak prose and I now know it.” Personal development trajectories among teacher educators in a professional development community

This study explores trajectories of professional growth by teacher educators participating in a professional development community on teaching thinking. Qualitative measures revealed a four stage model of personal professional trajectories: anticipation/curiosity, withdrawal, awareness and change. The model delineates passages traversed by teacher educators grappling with complexities and challenges of an engaging professional development experience in a communal context. All participants followed the same four staged trajectory though individuals were located at different points on the path. Findings lend support to the nonlinear view of professional development, illustrating Kinchin and Cabot’s (2010) paradigm of backwards and forwards movements along career paths.     

Practice change in environmental education: lessons from professional development

Abstract

The field of environmental education (EE) strives to develop innovative practices to address emergent issues such as equity, climate change, and urbanization. Through facilitating workshops and ongoing networks for the exchange of ideas, professional development programs may foster innovation or practice change among environmental educators. This study investigates change in practice among environmental educators who participated in one of three online and face-to-face professional development programs. Drawing from practice theory, we measured elements of EE practice including goals, audiences, settings, activities, resources, and ideas. The results showed that across all three programs participants incorporated new resources and ideas into their practices whereas changes in other practice elements varied among programs. Participants in all three programs produced eBooks or ongoing networks that can be used as indicators of practice innovation. This study suggests that practice theory can be used to inform studies of professional development outcomes and examine EE practice, but that practice innovations may be more readily measured at the group rather than individual level.     

Participation in the figured world of graffiti

This article is based on ethnographic work with two “crews” of young graffiti artists in southern Mexico City. The crews share certain characteristics with gangs or urban tribes, but more with “communities of practice”: they live in the “figured world” of graffiti, a community of practice at the local and global level. Through participation, including observation and the study of fanzines, group members learn the language, technical and social skills, and values of this figured world. Their reasons to paint and the topics they express are varied, but authentic expression is fundamental. Graffiti allows these young people to establish an interesting interplay of identities in the world of graffiti versus their ordinary lives.     

A new sustainable change theoretical framework for the professional disciplines

This paper contends that one key reason for the lack of adoption of comprehensive change models based in higher education (HE) teaching and learning is that they lack a strong theoretical underpinning, thus potentially impeding their effectiveness in dealing with the complexities of human and organisational behaviour. Change theories that articulate the specific roles and influences of context, time and key actors in the change process are interrogated to highlight barriers to sustainable change in HE. A new theoretical framework for sustainable change is proposed that integrates these change theories in the context of HE professional disciplines. The findings provide several recommendations for university management in implementing change models including the provision of reciprocal feedback loops, enhanced learning for staff and students through scaffolding, developing workplace and professional networks, and implementing study and work unit flexibility.     

Examining the aesthetic dimensions of teaching: Relationships between teacher knowledge,identity and passion

Having an appreciation for the subject, their students and what the subject can offer their students has both cognitive and emotional dimensions for teachers. This paper uses empirical data to explore the efficacy of a Deweyan inspired framework called “Aesthetic Understanding” to scrutinise relationships between teacher knowledge, identity and passion. The paper uses case study data of three teachers of maths and/or science generated from a video study to illustrate the relationships between the three elements of Aesthetic Understanding. The need to value the aesthetic dimensions of teaching when examining the subject-specific nature of secondary teaching is discussed.