How an orientation to learning influences the expansive–restrictive nature of teacher learning and change

This study examined teachers’ learning situated in a school to reveal factors that support and hinder learning in the workplace. The investigation analyzed teachers’ orientation to learning, examining beliefs, practices, and experiences about teachers’ learning in relation to change in the workplace. A hypothesis is that teacher learning and change is complex and unable to be fully understood outside of practice. Evidence is provided on the factors and forms of learning activities that appear to strengthen an expansive learning environment and those which contribute to a more restrictive learning environment. A distinctive finding was that teachers’ orientation to learning is related to self-reported change. Another promising finding with the potential of better understanding the interrelated combination of how teachers’ beliefs, practices, and workplace factors influence change was related to dissonance for learning. The implications for practice involved determining how to continue to support and strengthen an expansive workplace learning environment.     

Understanding teacher design practices for digital inquiry–based science learning: the case of Go-Lab

Designing and implementing online or digital learning material is a demanding task for teachers. This is even more the case when this material is used for more engaged forms of learning, such as inquiry learning. In this article, we give an informed account of Go-Lab, an ecosystem that supports teachers in creating Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILSs). These ILSs are built around STEM–related online laboratories. Within the Go-Lab ecosystem, teachers can combine these online laboratories with multimedia material and learning apps, which are small applications that support learners in their inquiry learning process. The Go-Lab ecosystem offers teachers ready–made structures, such as a standard inquiry cycle, alternative scenarios or complete ILSs that can be used as they are, but it also allows teachers to configure these structures to create personalized ILSs. For this article, we analyzed data on the design process and structure of 2414 ILSs that were (co)created by teachers and that our usage data suggest have been used in classrooms. Our data show that teachers prefer to start their design from empty templates instead of more domain–related elements, that the makeup of the design team (a single teacher, a group of collaborating teachers, or a mix of teachers and project members) influences key design process characteristics such as time spent designing the ILS and number of actions involved, that the characteristics of the resulting ILSs also depend on the type of design team and that ILSs that are openly shared (i.e., published in a public repository) have different characteristics than those that are kept private.

     

Mapping a complex system: what influences teacher learning during initial teacher education?

Despite a growing body of knowledge about what content, processes and arrangements for learning may result in more effective initial teacher education, there remains a problem with the variability of outcomes from teacher education programmes. This paper reports on a multi-perspective exploration of what influences learning to teach in valued ways during initial teacher education. Framed by complexity theory, which emphasises the non-linear nature of social phenomena, the paper presents an analysis of 76 maps of influences on learning to teach (made by teacher candidates, teacher educators, mentor teachers and policy makers), looking for differences and patterns that might point the way to explanations about teacher candidates’ varying ability to enact practice that improves outcomes for all learners.     

Grounding practice in scholarship,grounding scholarship in practice: Knowledge of a mathematics teacher educator–researcher

Despite the acknowledged complexity of the expertise of teacher educators (Cochran-Smith, M. (2003). Learning and unlearning: the education of teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19, 5--28), there is limited research attending to what teacher educators need to know and how they develop this expertise. This self-study draws from multiple frameworks of teacher knowledge to investigate knowledge content, structure, and growth of a novice mathematics teacher educator-researcher (MTE-R) from her doctoral program into her third year of a tenure-track faculty position at a large southwestern United States university. Narrative inquiry was used to both examine past artifacts and create new data. The findings highlight how the multiple roles of MTE-Rs elicit different kinds of knowledge and how frameworks for studying mathematics teachers can be utilized for studying teacher educator-researchers.     

Is teacher attrition a poor estimate of the value of teacher education? A Swedish case

Far from all who complete teacher education end up working as teachers throughout their entire career. At first sight the value of teacher education, in terms of efficiency, seems to be a failure. In the present article we argue that teacher attrition, when defined as whether one is working as teacher or not, is a too blunt measure to gauge whether teacher education has been valuable. With a unique dataset, where we have detailed information on 87 Swedish teacher graduates’ working life across 23 years, we can consider whether activities and/or experiences point to an apparent use of teacher education. In conclusion, we find that in order to get informative estimates of its value it is important to consider it from different perspectives and to consider attrition related to the total working time spent in educational settings across a career rather than percentage leaving teaching after a set of years     

Self‐determined blended learning: a case study of blended learning design

Higher education has been actively encouraged to find more effective and flexible delivery models to provide all students with access to quality learning experiences yet also meet institutional imperatives for efficiency and accountability. Blended learning, commonly defined as an integration of traditional face‐to‐face and online approaches to instruction (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004 Garrison, D.R. and Kanuka, H. 2004. Blended learning: Uncovering its transformative potential in higher education. Internet and Higher Education, 7(2): 95–105.  [Google Scholar]; Graham, 2006 Graham, C.R. 2006. “Blended learning systems: Definition, current trends and future directions”. In Handbook of blended learning: Global perspectives, local designs, Edited by: Bonk, C.J. and Graham, C.R. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.  [Google Scholar]; Macdonald, 2008 Macdonald, J. 2008. Blended learning and online tutoring , (2nd ed.), Hampshire, UK: Gower.  [Google Scholar]), is now proposed as one solution that addresses both student learning and higher education organisational needs. Successful blended learning, however, is more than a simple integration of information and communication technologies with face‐to‐face approaches. This paper proposes, describes and evaluates a pedagogical approach to blended learning focused on learners and learning. First, we interrogate the literature related to blended learning to show how various constructions of blended learning may be driven by teacher‐centric or learner‐centric conceptions. Next, planning a learner‐centric blended learning design for a core unit in a first year higher education course is described. The design is then evaluated using a mixed methodology in which the students’ voices illuminate their experiences of blended learning unit design with regards to engagement, learning and self‐determination.     

The activities of a school‐based teacher educator: a theoretical and empirical exploration

Teacher education all over Europe is increasingly becoming school‐based oriented. This implies new roles for those who support student teachers learning in school. This article describes the way four school‐based teacher educators fulfill their role as educators of student teachers who learn how to teach while participating in the workplace. Based on theoretical notions derived from the literature on teacher education and workplace learning, the Cognitive Apprenticeship Model was specified and used in a case study as a framework to describe the activity of these school‐based teacher educators. They use tools (e.g., apprenticeship assignments) developed within the teacher education institute and rely on their professional knowledge as experienced schoolteachers. This results in student teachers being provided with useful tricks which, however, hardly helps them to interpret and elaborate their experiences from a more conceptual or theoretical perspective. Also the possibilities of the social context of the school as a learning environment are not systematically used.     

Portable computers: a catalyst for collaboration? a study of how the use of multimedia portable computers in primary schools can affect teacher and pupil collaboration

Abstract

This article arises from an evaluation of the Welsh Office Multimedia Portables Project1998–1999, in which two teachers from each of 54 primary and junior schools and one special school in Wales were provided with multimedia portables to explore the impact of their introduction. A particular aim was to improve pupil attainment in the area of Key Stage 2 literacy through the use of information and communications technology. From this evaluation different stages of development in collaborating and networking emerge and the factors that contribute to progression in both teachers and pupils are identified and examined. The article discusses some of the issues surrounding the use of technology in the primary years and goes on to relate features of the project to conditions for change and McDougall & Squires's (1997) framework for evaluating teacher professional development. It concludes by suggesting that the use of portables in the primary school can lead to wider collaboration and networking and identifies factors that may influence this progression.     

When does the researcher (should) also become a resource for the bricoleur teacher? A review of Ajay Sharma’s Portrait of a science teacher as a bricoleur : A case study from India

This paper provides a critical review essay of Ajay Sharma’s Portrait of a science teacher as a bricoleur: A case study from India. The main focus is two fold. First, arguments are presented to draw attention to how little advances in science teaching and science learning research have impacted teachers’ practice and student achievement in the last 40 years. Second, the paper describes how the researcher’s traditionally detached role and truncated agency may inadvertently contribute to preserving the status quo by only documenting the Other’s struggles and challenges. I suggest that researchers need to re-conceptualize their roles as co-agents of change if we are to assist the Other effect positive and long-lasting change in the increasingly complex and demanding contexts in which teachers are expected to teach and students to learn.

Governing teacher learning: understanding teachers’ compliance with and critique of standardization

This paper examines how policy pressure for increased performance on standardised measures of student achievement influenced the teacher learning practices that arose in a school setting in Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon research and theorising of governing by numbers, and applications to the governance of education, and particularly teachers’ learning, the research analyses how a group of Year 3 teachers collaborated to better inform themselves about the nature of their students’ learning. The research reveals that the governance of teachers’ learning under current policy conditions was manifest through both teachers’ compliance with and critique of a strong focus upon school, regional, state and national data – specifically, students’ attainment in ‘leveled’ readers and other school-based standardised measures of reading and mathematics, and school, state and regional results on national literacy and numeracy tests. There is little research that highlights the tensions around these numbers as governing technologies in relation to specific formal, ongoing instances of teacher professional development practices. The research cautions against the influence of such governing processes for how they potentially narrow teachers’ attention to more standardized measures of students’ learning, even as teachers may critique these more reductive effects.     

Redefining ‘community’ through collaboration and co-teaching: a case study of an ESOL specialist,a literacy specialist,and a fifth-grade teacher

This article explores the development of a professional learning community through a case study of three teachers – an ESOL specialist, a literacy specialist, and a fifth-grade teacher – who engaged in co-teaching and collaboration. The emerging community of practice offered these teachers a space to learn and problem-solve by utilizing their specialized disciplinary knowledge of students and expanding the application of reading strategies during language arts. Concurrently, opportunities for revising curriculum and instruction remained unrealized, as teachers struggled to negotiate roles and responsibilities within the top-down administratively initiated collaboration that required redefining their professional community. Implications and recommendations are discussed.     

Emotional geographies of teacher–parent relations: three teachers’ perceptions in Taiwan

This article attempts to use Andy Hargreaves’ theoretical framework of emotional geographies to analyze teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with parents in Taiwan. Based on the qualitative interviews with three primary teachers, the research findings show that teachers’ emotional distances from parents were intertwined with parents’ sociocultural status, teachers’ moral purposes, teachers’ notions of professionalism, teachers’ political pretense, and the frequency to contact parents. Thus, Hargreaves’ framework could be a useful tool to explore teacher–parent interactions. The paper closes with suggestions for policy considerations.     

Preparing teachers for professional learning: is there a future for teacher education in new teacher induction?

Today the quality of teachers is held to be increasingly important yet there continue to be doubts about whether teacher education programs graduate teachers ready to meet the challenges of their initial years of teaching. In some jurisdictions, other agencies (Ministries of Education, school districts, and private providers) are supplementing the work of teacher education through the introduction of new teacher induction programs which have become favoured policy initiatives to enhance new teacher transition, retention and quality. Evidence suggests that induction and mentoring increase teacher retention and ensure more effective socialisation of new teachers into the school culture. In spite of their growing popularity, the degree to which induction programs complement teacher education and/or impact new teacher professional learning remains unclear. In this paper the authors report a secondary analysis of data from an evaluation of the New Teacher Induction Program in Ontario, Canada to consider the implications for the future of teacher education by asking: What are the challenges facing new teachers? In what ways does the induction program support new teacher professional learning? What are the major implications for the future of teacher education?     

Teaching machine learning in robotics interactively: the case of reinforcement learning with Lego® Mindstorms

Preparing students for dealing with a world more and more densely populated with physical machines that possess learning capabilities, e.g. intelligent robots, is of the utmost importance in engineering. In this paper, we describe and analyse a design of interactive sessions devoted to the application of some machine learning (ML) methods within a master degree subject named “Cognitive Robotics”, in particular, reinforcement learning (RL), a technique that allows the machine to autonomously learn decision-making in a physical environment. The paper contains a complete depiction of the interactive teaching sessions, implemented with reasonable cost and resources thanks to a suitable mixture of the constructivist and instructivist paradigms. It also gathers the experiences of students and teachers through both qualitative and quantitatively indicators.     

Patterns of control over the teaching–studying–learning process and classrooms as complex dynamic environments: a theoretical framework

In this theoretical paper the role of power in classroom interactions is examined in terms of a dominance continuum to advance a theoretical framework justifying the emergence of three ways of distributing power when it comes to dealing with the control over the teaching–studying–learning (TSL) pattern of teacher domination, pattern of empowerment and pattern of student domination. It is argued that these patterns affect the nature of interactions in the classroom, and thus provide the initial conditions for the emergence of three complex dynamic classroom environments: classroom as an environment of order, classroom as an environment at the edge of chaos and classroom as an environment of chaos. In the conclusion the implications of these emerging patterns and environments for teachers, especially for student teachers’ reflective practice, and the need for teacher educators and researchers to be aware of them are advanced.     

Historicising teachers’ learning: a case study of productive professional practice

This paper reveals the significant historical traces which informed the learning practices of teachers at one particular school site in a rural and regional educational district in Australia. Drawing upon recent theorising into professional practice, the paper argues that teacher learning practices are intrinsically ‘ecologically’ related to teachers’ practices at specific sites. However, extending beyond this theorising, the research also reveals how teacher learning – in the case presented, in relation to classroom dialogue – is also significantly influenced by earlier learning experiences of the teachers involved. In this way, teachers’ practices are revealed as not only influenced by present-day, site-specific, whole-school teacher learning, but also by particular events encountered by teachers at an earlier phase of their careers. The research argues for a conception of teachers’ learning which is not only site-informed and ecologically arranged, but also deeply temporally embedded.     

Exploring teacher–student interactions: communities of practice,ecological learning systems – or something else?

A small-scale action research project was used to consider the policy and rhetoric surrounding development of the ‘expert learner’ and how this might be further explored to provide opportunities for learners to have greater direct involvement in reflection and discussion with teachers. The research was based within a further education setting, using participants from an ‘HE in FE’ curriculum area: teacher education. It sought to explore how involving students as partners in the peer observation process might be used to engage with student voice and enhance the teaching and learning experience for all involved. To evaluate the creation, sharing and development of teaching and learning that might be generated in such circumstances, the research used two theoretical frameworks to analyse the data: communities of practice and ecological learning systems. This article reviews the literature around these two frameworks and critically reflects on the influences of these approaches in communities of teaching and learning. Analysis of interviews, and the interactions and dialogue contained within these, revealed something else happening within these connections. As such, it considers the opportunities facilitated in this context and how development of a newly-devised continuum of practice may be used to enable professional dialogue to enhance student–teacher interactions.     

What’s in a name: dimensions of social learning in teacher groups

Induced by a literature review, this paper presents a framework of dimensions and indicators highlighting the underpinning aspects and values of social learning within teacher groups. Notions of social networks, communities of practice and learning teams were taken as the main perspectives to influence this social learning framework. The review exercise resulted in four dimensions: (1) practice, (2) domain and value creation, (3) collective identity and (4) organization. The indicators corresponding to these dimensions serve as the foundation for understanding social learning in practice. The framework of dimensions and indicators can be of assistance for researchers as well as teacher groups that aim to assess their views on social learning and analyse whether these views fit the learning goals of the group or that adjustments are required. In this way, learning processes within groups of teachers can be improved.