Teacher Professionalism and Professional Development of EFL Teachers in China

The professionalization of teaching has had undergone a long process in China's history. The training of teachers started in 1681 when the first Normal School was set up by the early Christian missionaries. But the concept of professionalization of teaching was not put forward until 1980s, when we no longer face the problem of an inadequate number of teachers. Since then sociologists and educators have had explored the concept of teaching as a profession, and agreed that teachers are pro     

Continuous Professional Development: What Role and Who Benefits? Reflections on Teacher Development in Uganda

Continuous professional development has assumed a central role in organisational development in recent years. In the teaching profession, initial training is no longer seen as enough due to rapid changes in technology, social structures, ideologies and the increasing diversity of the classrooms. While acknowledging the empowering aspect of CPD, this article draws on both literature sources and on an ongoing empirical study on teacher professional integrity to analyse the challenges and opportunities of CPD programmes in Uganda. It also demonstrates a new approach to CPD based on research experiences with the teachers in one school in Uganda.     

Teacher Professional Development Through a Collaborative Curriculum Project – an Example of TPACK in Maine

Maine’s one-to-one laptop program provides an ideal opportunity to explore conditions that optimize teacher integration of technology-focused curriculum into the classroom. EcoScienceWorks (ESW) is an ecology curriculum that includes targeted simulations and a code block programming challenge developed through an NSF-ITEST grant. The project was designed as a collaboration that included simulation software developers; middle school science teachers; the Maine laptop program; environmental educators; an external evaluator; and a lead organization experienced in teacher guided curriculum development. Thus, each of the elements of TPACK (technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge) worked together to produce the final ecology simulation-centered curriculum. In 2008–2009, the ESW curriculum became available statewide through the Maine laptop program. Partner teachers have transitioned their classrooms to more learning-centered environments through the use of technology and have become teacher leaders. The collaborative approach to technology focused curriculum development used in this project is a model for TPACK professional development.     

Who are the Science Teachers that Seek Professional Development in Research Experience for Teachers (RET’s)? Implications for Teacher Professional Development

To address the need to better prepare teachers to enact science education reforms, the National Science Foundation has supported a Research Experience for Teachers (RET’s) format for teacher professional development. In these experiences, teachers work closely with practicing scientists to engage in authentic scientific inquiry. Although there are many RET programs currently serving teachers, there is only a small body of research describing these programs and their outcomes. Just as science learning depends on both cognitive and affective factors of learners, the success of teacher professional development also depends on the cognitive and affective factors of the participants. Thus, the intent of this mixed method research is to better understand how the nature of professional development experiences shape the kinds of teachers that apply, and what this means for the design of such experiences. This study focused on describing the cognitive and affective characteristics of applicants for two different RET programs offered at the same institution. Findings suggest that the profiles of teachers who seek out these professional development programs vary based on the programs’ objectives. The findings also suggest that recognition of who is being served in professional development must be considered in the construction of those professional development experiences.     

Urban Teachers’ Perspectives of Strengths and Needs: The Promise of Teacher Responsive Professional Development

The Urban Review - This study examines urban high school teachers’ perceptions (N?=?50) of their strengths and needs in supporting diverse students in their classrooms....     

Understanding Teacher Candidates’ Engagement with Inquiry-Based Professional Development: A Continuum of Responses and Needs

Teacher educators recognize that teacher candidates must have authentic, scaffolded opportunities to transform knowledge into practice. This study explores teacher candidates’ engagement with teacher inquiry as a method for supporting professional development. Findings suggest teacher candidates differ tremendously in their responses to the inquiry process, creating a continuum of proficiency. This study extends the literature by providing concrete examples of the variation in readiness, sophistication, and quality in teacher candidates’ attempts to engage in teacher inquiry. Implications for teacher educators include the importance of providing differentiated support through structured, sequenced experiences that build an inquiry stance in teacher candidates.     

What’s the Technology For? Teacher Attention and Pedagogical Goals in a Modeling-Focused Professional Development Workshop

This paper explores the role that technology can play in engaging pre-service teachers with the iterative, “messy” nature of model-based inquiry. Over the course of 5 weeks, 11 pre-service teachers worked in groups to construct models of diffusion using a computational animation and simulation toolkit, and designed lesson plans for the toolkit. Content analyses of group discussions and lesson plans document attention to content, representation, revision, and evaluation as interwoven aspects of modeling over the course of the workshop. When animating, only content and representation were heavily represented in group discussions. When simulating, all four aspects were represented to different extents across groups. Those differences corresponded with different planned uses for the technology during lessons: to teach modeling, to engage learners with one another’s ideas, or to reveal student ideas. We identify specific ways in which technology served an important role in eliciting teachers’ knowledge and goals related to scientific modeling in the classroom.     

Teachers’ Learning Journeys: The Quality Learning Circle as a Model of Professional Development

Worldwide, teachers struggle to keep pace with demands for learning. Educational reforms mandated at a national level require teachers to reconsider their teaching, curriculum and assessment philosophies and practices. This reliance on national policy initiatives increases teachers’ dependence on others knowing what their learning needs might be. Such dependence creates problems for sustained learning because teachers are not encouraged to help themselves. This article introduces an alternative approach to professional development, known as the Quality Learning Circle (QLC), to show how it can empower teachers to become agents of change able to meet both local needs alongside national agendas.     

“I Just Love Black People!”: Love,Pleasure, and Critical Pedagogy in Urban Teacher Education

With concern to critical pedagogy, the concept of love is fairly frequently (ab)used, yet under-theorized. In this exploratory study, I ask: How does a critical pedagogy of love—or critical pedagogical love—look, sound, and feel? Regarding feeling, how does a critical pedagogue engage the sensations of pleasure attendant to love? Lastly, how does the pedagogue invite love and pleasure into the pain-filled field of urban teacher education? Using Black feminist theorizing of love as an analytic filter, I investigate a university-based urban teacher educator’s navigation of the nexus of love, pleasure, and critical (specifically, antiracist) pedagogy. Extrapolating from the resultant narrative portrait, I consider the affordances of a critical pedagogy of love that accesses embodied pleasure, emphasizing how such a pedagogy might present racially marginalized persons—particularly urban teacher educators of Color—with opportunities for reprieve from the suffering that characterizes many of our experiences with/in teacher education.

     

“Yes And”: The Uses of Improvisation for Early Childhood Professional Development

In their teacher preparation and professional development training, early childhood teachers learn about the importance of play for children’s development; yet they are rarely taught how to play with children. Once in the classroom, many teachers do not interact responsively to children’s play; instead they ignore, interpret, or dominate the activity. Building on the theory that play is a collective activity similar in form to improvised performances, and that teachers can develop their ability to play collectively, this article presents findings from a pilot project that explored the use of improvisational (“improv”) theatre workshops as a professional development tool for preparing teachers to be better players. The analysis of the data suggests that the skills associated with responsive teaching can be taught through participation in improv workshops and that learning to improvise can give teachers new ways to understand their role in the classroom.     

Teacher Enactment Patterns: How Can We Help Move All Teachers to Reform-Based Inquiry Practice Through Professional Development?

The purpose of this study was to investigate high school teachers’ beliefs about inquiry instruction and determine how their beliefs influenced their use of inquiry after a professional development program. Thirty-six high school science teachers participated in this study. The professional development program consisted of a 2-week summer institute as well as academic year support. The summer program included discipline-specific content lessons that utilized inquiry-based instruction, pedagogical practice involving the use of a summer high school enrichment program, and reflection on this practice-teaching in content area groups. Both in-depth qualitative interview and written reflection data were collected as well as data from the teachers’ classroom implementation of inquiry. Based on the analysis of the teachers’ interviews and classroom enactments, the teachers were placed into four enactment categories: Integrated, Emerging, Laboratory-based, and Activity-focused. We used Windschitl’s (Rev Educ Res 72(2):131–175, 2002) four constructivist dilemmas as a framework to understand the teachers’ enactments. We describe the teachers’ beliefs and practices in each enactment category as well as the components of the professional development model that were important to making changes in the teachers’ practices. In the conclusion, we connect the enactment levels to the professional development experience and suggest future directions for professional developers to move teachers toward more integrated inquiry practices.     

When the “Other” Is the Teacher: Implications of Teacher Diversity in Higher Education

The Urban Review - Using qualitative methods, I explore these questions: What is it like for women of color to teach in predominantly white universities? What happens in the classroom of a...     

“Just another emperor”: Understanding action in the past

This paper reports part of an investigation of children's ideas about explanation and enquiry in history carried out by project CHATA in 3 primary and 6 secondary schools in England. Three sets of tasks were administered on three separate occasions to children aged from 7 to 14 years of age (N=320). Responses to one task exploring children's ideas about the explanation of action in history are discussed. Almost all children (including the 7 year olds) could offer plausible reasons for individual action in history, and there was a progression from emphasis on personal desires to an awareness of the need to explain action by relating purposes to the agent's situation.     

One Science Teacher’s Professional Development Experience: A Case Study Exploring Changes in Students’ Perceptions of Their Fluency with Innovative Technologies

The purpose of this case-study is to narrate a secondary science teacher’s experience of his professional development (PD) education and training in innovative technologies (IT) in the context of engaging students in environmental research projects The sources from which the narrative is derived include (1) the science teacher’s reflective reports during three summer institute programs and (2) the science teacher’s reflective reports while subsequently engaging students in IT-embedded environmental research projects in his classroom. The science teacher’s explanations for changes in students’ perception of their IT fluency illuminate his personal narrative. The science teacher attributed his growth and significant changes in students’ perceptions of their IT fluency to the following mechanisms: (a) a personal commitment to developing his own and his students’ IT abilities in the context of doing environmental research projects, and (b) an increase in class time devoted to science education due to school-time scheduling policy. The study implies that immersive professional development opportunities have the potential to produce significant increases in students’ perceptions of their IT fluency.     

Turbulence in Bolivia’s normales: Teacher education as a socio-political battlefield

In line with broader politics of change at the national level, the Morales government aims at a radical restructuring of the governance mechanisms for the teacher education sector and a socio-political redirection of its curriculum, as teachers are perceived to be potential agents for decolonization and for developing social justice—or vivir bien (to live well). Morales’ policies are not uncontested, and the tense socio-political state of affairs and political power plays are reflected in Bolivia’s normales, teacher education colleges. They have become a socio-political battlefield where political affiliations, union strategies, and historically embedded institutional cultures all influence the way new generations of teachers are trained, and the way former and current policy initiatives are mediated and adopted. Given the complex and historically embedded socio-political context of struggles and tensions at and around the institutional level, the government still has a long way to go to change the continuing habits of the normales and to put its government’s new ideals of transformation and decolonization into practice.     

A “Deleterious” Driver: The “First Teacher” Reform in Sweden

This article investigates the implementation of the “förstelärare” or “First teacher” reform in Sweden. We draw upon the insights of a superintendent, union official, principal, three First teachers, and two of their colleagues in one school, and recent literature on career development reform. We employ Michael Fullan’s overview of the “right” and “wrong” drivers of educational reform to analyse the extent to which the First Teacher initiative cultivated productive “professional capital.” The research reveals: how broader national policy aims were in clear tension with municipal-wide school development, and school-level development efforts; the perverse effects of a strong focus upon salary on professional conduct; and how an emphasis upon teachers’ roles per se undermined the espoused policy focus on enhancing teaching. The research cautions against the problematic effects of the initiative on more profession-oriented prerogatives, and how more external, “deleterious,” drivers of reform militate against more productive professional capital.