Evaluating the quality of learning environments and teaching Äpractice in special schools

This article reports on findings of a study which objective is the development of an instrument for systematic evaluation and improvement of the quality of teaching in special schools. The article describes the research process which led to the construction of the instrument as well as the way teachers can use the instrument to improve the quality of their teaching. The article advocates a practice perspective to professional development in special schools, as special schools in Denmark are under pressure by three international educational agendas: the agenda of accountability, the agenda of standards and the agenda of inclusion. The instrument suggests that professional development is teacher driven and not driven by the accountability agenda. The research approach was collaborative as 35 teachers and principals from 16 special schools participated in the research process. Their perceptions of quality in the practice of teaching in special schools and research literature on the quality of teaching in both mainstream schools and special schools have shaped the development of the instrument. Thus, the instrument is based on the finding, that teaching methods in general and special education are not as different as assumed. This finding is reflected in the instrument.     

Development of an instrument for exploring preservice technology teachers’ maker-based technological pedagogical content knowledge

With the development of the maker movement, more and more teachers are applying a broad range of technological tools in their pedagogy, instead of only information technology. This study details the development and validation of the Teachers Maker-based TPACK Survey Instrument (TMTSI), a revised model designed to measure technology teachers’ maker-based technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) in utilizing maker-based tools to support their teaching. We recruited 165 preservice secondary technology teachers in Taiwan for this study and confirmatory factor analysis was applied to validate the instrument. Our findings suggest that TMTSI provided a valid and highly reliable research-based instrument that also serves as a professional development model to help scaffold the development of K-12 technology teachers. This paper details the theoretical foundations of TMTSI, reports on its reliability and validity, and discusses the application and implications of TMTSI for teacher education and professional development.     

The development of a small-scale survey instrument of UK teachers to study professional use (and non-use) of and attitudes to social media

This paper documents the creation, implementation and analysis of a survey instrument designed to reveal patterns of use and attitudes towards the value of social media by UK teachers. The study was motivated to discover which teachers use social media professionally, how they use it (both personally and professionally) and attitudes to social media as a professional tool (for their students' and their own professional use). The instrument was created from verbal data from two focus group discussions regarding the use of social media in education. Attitude statements were included verbatim when practical. This instrument was placed online and practising teachers invited to complete it (n?=?216). Exploratory factor analysis and hierarchical clustering identified 9 factors from 54 attitude statements and 5 distinct teacher groups. The rich data allowed each group to be carefully defined, providing potentially invaluable information to school leaders when developing social media projects to recognize and accommodate the full range of teacher concerns and experience. The paper also addresses methodological concerns regarding instrument creation, dealing with missing data and the impact of missing data on subsequent analysis.     

Professional development for practicing mathematics teachers: a critical connection to English language learner students in mainstream USA classrooms

This article examines the effects of changing teacher self-efficacy on student achievement. Results from a quantitative study of mathematics teachers in a USA mid-Atlantic state showed that teachers experienced reduced self-efficacy when working with English language learner students (ELLs) relative to non-ELLs. Further, the article explores professional development opportunities for strengthening teachers’ effectiveness with ELLs. The study utilized a four-part survey instrument based on the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES). All participants (n = 181) were mathematics educators from the highlighted state, and 94 % of them were preK-12 public school practicing classroom teachers. Study results indicate that teachers’ participation in professional development on ELL instruction is positively correlated to their heightened sense of self-efficacy. This finding points to continuing education as a potentially viable approach to reducing academic challenges for ELL students in mainstream mathematics classrooms by developing ever more effective practicing teachers.     

The importance of networks for newly qualified teachers in upper secondary education

Background and purpose:?The interest in raising the competence of teachers through networks and network activities is increasing. This article is based on the voices of four newly qualified teachers who give us the opportunity to listen to experiences in authentic surroundings. The purpose of this article is to gain better insight into the type of networks newly qualified teachers maintain, develop and create to develop as teachers. The research question is: What is the importance of networks for the professional development of newly qualified teachers in upper secondary education?

Main argument:?The main finding of the article, based on in-depth interviews with four newly qualified teachers, is that being acknowledged by colleagues is decisive for professional development. Furthermore, the school’s programme of meetings to some extent contributes to developing the respect and trust of the newly qualified teachers, who also need to find time and opportunities for reflection in personal networks outside school. The relational and emotional aspects of the teaching profession produce a need for guidance processes where the ethical dilemmas of the profession can be raised. When these dilemmas arise, the newly qualified teachers actively look outside school to grasp opportunities for professional development. The teachers appear to be very active in their own professional development, and they have ambitions to develop as teachers for the benefit of the pupils and the school.

Conclusions:?Systematic guidance is highlighted as fundamental for these teachers’ learning.     

A Teacher Professional Development Program on Using a Constructivist Multimedia Learning Environment

This paper describes a professional development program using an interactive multimedia program to develop teachers' understanding of a constructivist epistemology in science education. The aim of this study was to describe teachers' reflections on and perceptions of a series of professional development workshops and how teachers changed their classroom practices after having participated in the workshops. The software, developed with the cooperation of teachers and students, is based on the Birds of Antarctica database (Maor & Phillips, 1996). This database was designed as an interactive program which requires teachers to use a constructivist-oriented approach to teaching and learning in order to promote the development of inquiry skills particularly higher-order thinking skills. A series of workshops for teachers was conducted to empower them to become comfortable with using computers in science classrooms and to enable them to enhance their understanding of, and ability to use, personal and social constructivist approaches. Teachers' perceptions of the process of learning with the multimedia program and their reactions to their experiences were assessed using a new instrument, the Constructivist Multimedia Learning Environment Survey (CMLES). The results of the study suggest that teachers who participated as learners in the professional development program became familiar with a constructivist-oriented multimedia learning environment; understood the context, problems, and issues faced by students in the classroom; and were better able to facilitate students' needs and understanding in this learning environment. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Teachers’ professional development: a theoretical review

Background and purpose:?The article reviews studies that focus on the professional development of teachers after they have completed their basic teacher training. Teacher professional development is defined as teachers’ learning: how they learn to learn and how they apply their knowledge in practice to support pupils’ learning. The research question addressed in the article is: How do experienced teachers learn?

Main argument:?The review is framed by theories within the constructivist paradigm. From this perspective, knowledge is perceived as the construction of meaning and understanding within social interaction. The social surroundings are seen as decisive for how the individual learns and develops. It is argued that courses and lectures, or ‘times for telling’, and teachers’ development of a metacognitive attitude are decisive factors for teachers’ learning within a constructivist frame of reference.

Sources of evidence and method:?To attempt to answer the research question, a search was conducted of the subject of pedagogy in the ISI WEB of Science (search undertaken 9 August 2011) using the search strings ‘teacher learning’, ‘teacher development’ and ‘teacher professional development’, and covering the period from 2009 to 2011 to probe the most recent decade of research. Articles that dealt with basic education, primary and secondary school, were selected, and articles that dealt with learning using digital tools and the internet and newly trained teachers were rejected. A set of 31 articles was selected from this search. To ensure width and depth of coverage, this was supplemented by a selection of review studies and research on further education in respect of teachers’ learning. The texts were analysed by means of open and axial coding, developing main and sub-categories.

Conclusions:?The review of articles shows that both individual and organisational factors impact teachers’ learning. Teacher co-operation has importance for how they develop, and some of the teachers can lead such learning activities themselves. Moreover, a positive school culture with a good atmosphere and understanding of teachers’ learning, in addition to co-operation with external resource persons, may impact the professional development of teachers. The article concludes with the reflection that learning in school is the best arena for further development of teachers.     

Early Childhood Teachers' Curriculum Beliefs: Are They Consistent With Observed Classroom Practices?

Research Findings: This study examined the consistency between early childhood teachers' self-reported curriculum beliefs and observations of their actual interactive behaviors with children in classrooms. Also tested was the hypothesized moderation by teacher and classroom characteristics of the association between beliefs and practices. A total of 58 preschool teachers completed a survey describing their professional backgrounds and curriculum beliefs. Their classroom practices were observed using a newly developed instrument that documented teacher interactions with children. Most teachers in this sample strongly endorsed child-initiated learning beliefs, although their beliefs about teacher-directed learning varied considerably. The most frequently observed teacher behaviors in the classroom were giving directions to children, responding to children's initiations, and engaging in non-interactive classroom management activities. Overall, teachers' curriculum beliefs and observed classroom practices were weakly correlated. However, there were moderation effects. Stronger congruence between teacher-directed learning beliefs and observed teaching behaviors was found among teachers who had more professional training and more years of teaching experience. Practice or Policy: These results support the importance of early childhood teacher professional development. They suggest that teacher preparation and professional development programs should focus on the intellectual transformation between teacher knowledge and teacher practice, promoting both aspects of development.     

Our teachers want to be the best: on the necessity of intra‐professional reflection about moral ideals of teaching

Teaching is a significant social good and therefore teachers as well as the state have to take responsibility for guarding the moral quality of the teaching practice. Based on this premise, the article describes and defends the view that these parties have their own particular role by means of literature review and theoretical and practical arguments.

The role of the state is necessarily limited to defining minimal moral rules and obligations, because in liberal Western democracies morality is codified in law to a minimal degree. The state also has practical reasons for such a confined position, among which are the complexities of professional practice and its implied tacit knowledge.

Teachers have to take responsibility for constructing the full width of professional morality, but particularly for defining its optimal or aspirational dimension. This dimension comprises the virtues deemed important for teachers as well as their professional ideals. Whereas the literature on professional ethics of teachers is relatively silent about professional ideals, several arguments are provided for the importance of ideals for teachers.

The final part of the article defends the claim that teachers have to articulate their professional ideals through intra‐professional dialogue. Again, theoretical and practical arguments are provided, for instance that such a debate provokes teachers to think about the best aims and means of their profession and that it contributes to the sense and meaning of their work. The article ends with some practical implications of the theoretical exposé.     

Learning through remote practical experiments over the internet: a case study from teacher education

Abstract

The article focuses on a cross-national Internet module employing a remote device for learning about control and intended to promote the professional development of a group of student teachers from England and the Netherlands. The practical activity was one component of an integrated conferencing package that sought to encourage shared pedagogical discussions of the teaching of control technology in schools. Microanalysis of the activities highlighted a number of difficulties affecting the execution of the tasks. An instrument of analysis based on the non-neutrality of technology is described which offered a particular lens with which to interpret participant actions and the extent to which learning took place. The article addresses ways in which remote access transformed those practical experiments and affected the learning experiences.     

The role of schools’ perceived human resource policies in teachers’ professional development activities: a comparative study of innovations toward competence-based education

The change toward competence-based education has implications for teachers as well as school management. This study investigates which professional development activities teachers undertake related to this change and how these activities differ among schools with various human resource (HR) policies. Two types of HR policy were involved: (1) a government-enforced, national system of Integrated Personnel Management and (2) a voluntary, integrative approach of Schooling of teachers, Organizational development of schools and teacher training institutes, Action- and development-oriented research, and Professional development of teachers. Semi-structured interviews with 30 teachers in nine schools with different HR policies were held and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Findings show that teachers undertake professional development activities in five categories: maintaining knowledge base, applying and experimenting, reflection, collaboration, and activities indirectly related to teaching practice. Teachers’ professional development activities were found to be relatively similar across schools with different HR policies. It is concluded that neither government-enforced nor voluntary HR policies seem to play much of a role in the participation by teachers in professional development activities. Implications for further research and school practice are discussed.     

Beliefs as filters for comparing inclusive classroom situations. Connecting teachers’ beliefs about teaching diverse learners to their noticing of inclusive classroom characteristics in videoclips

Insight in the way teachers' beliefs filter their interpretation of inclusive classrooms is vital to support teachers’ competences to teach diverse learners. This study explores how three types of teacher beliefs about teaching diverse learners (i.e., professional beliefs about diversity, beliefs about differentiating the curriculum, and growth mindset) are associated with their noticing of two key aspects of effective inclusive classrooms (i.e. positive teacher-student interactions (PTSI) and differentiated instruction (DI)). Data was collected in a sample of secondary education teachers (N = 462) in Flemish schools (N = 23). Teacher beliefs were measured by survey scales, while teachers’ noticing of PTSI and DI was assessed by a standardised video-based comparative judgement instrument. Survey and video data were combined in a multivariate multilevel framework. Findings indicate that teachers’ professional beliefs about diversity and beliefs about differentiating the curriculum serve as filters for noticing PTSI and DI in videoclips. For teachers’ growth mindset no significant relationship was found. These associations did not change when taking into account teachers’ sex, age, educational background or experience. Furthermore, a small part of the differences in teachers’ noticing DI is explained by the school level, suggesting that teachers within a school can share a vision. Results are discussed in the light of teacher thinking for inclusive classrooms and implications for teacher professional development.     

Science Teachers’ Professional Development and Changes in Science Practical Assessment Practices: What are the Issues?

This paper considers the circumstances under which science teachers can respond positively and productively to educational policy reforms in the area of science practical assessment. To understand what might be involved in linking science teachers’ assessment capacities and their professional development, we present illustrative data from recent research studies conducted in Singapore and Hong Kong showing contrasting approaches taken in the implementation of reforms in science practical assessment. In Singapore, teachers worked together to select, discuss, clarify and refine their practices as they made decisions about what to teach and assess. In Hong Kong, teachers took a critical stance towards the new policy and learnt from their own experiences in order to build their confidence. With the same policy initiative, one group of teachers focused more on the technicalities of complying with requirements imposed on them while in the other group had their professional consciousness of what they thought was best for their students provoked so that their practices would be transformed. In an attempt to draw lessons for other contexts in supporting the implementation of assessment policy reforms through professional development work, we identify and discuss a range of factors in science teachers’ professional development that arise once in situ professional development work has started. Overall, our intent in this article is to recast assessment reform as a driver or pivot in teachers’ professional development and learning. To do this it is necessary, we argue, to afford teachers’ experiences and the processes involved in learning from them greater emphasis in order to ensure the continuance of innovation in the assessment of laboratory-based work.     

Profession, “performance”, and policy: teachers,examinations, and the state in England and Wales, 1846–1862

Abstract

When historians discuss the impact of examinations on elementary education in mid-Victorian England and Wales they typically focus on the Revised Code of 1862. The Revised Code is famous for instituting a policy of “payment-by-results” for teachers in state-supported voluntary schools. “Payment-by-results” made government grants to schools – and, by extension, for teachers’ salaries – contingent upon student attendance and pass rates in reading, writing and arithmetic. As this article emphasises, however, “payment-by-results” was not the first, or even the most significant, instance in which competitive examination was used by the state as an instrument for establishing the pedagogical fitness and salaries of teachers. Less often explored by historians is the formative role that state-mandated competitive examinations for teachers played in developing a professionally aspirant body of schoolteachers and, consequently, the schoolteachers’ later role in developing competitive examination as a broad-scale national accreditation apparatus. But while the use of competitive examinations came to shape modern British academic and professional life in fundamental ways, the strengthening effects that they had for certain occupations and institutions, such as physicians, civil servants and middle-class secondary schools, were in fact ultimately denied to state teachers and the elementary education sector generally. With the introduction of “payment-by-results” in 1862, competitive examinations were converted into an instrument that weakened rather than strengthened teachers’ professional identity and policy influence. This article explains how the nineteenth-century English state structured examinations and examination results to manipulate the professional status of teachers in order to suit state priorities during different stages of national development. This historical narrative is framed in reference to present-day examination-based reforms of teacher compensation systems such as performance-related-pay and value-added modelling.     

Teaching motivations,characteristics and professional growth: results from the Great Expectations (GE) programme in the United States

This present study sought to explore reasons given by K-12 teachers about their motivation to remain in teaching, their motivation for engaging in professional development, and characteristics of their teaching. Participants (N = 151) were public teachers of different grade levels from the USA enrolled in a one-week professional development training. Respondents’ ratings on reasons for continuing teaching revealed that four key-specific factors were the main influences for continuing to teach, namely intrinsic reasons, extrinsic reasons, job perception, and extended reasons. Further analysis indicated that their reasons for teaching were correlated with specific incentives for attending the professional development training, with teachers’ instructional beliefs, and with professional development programme outcomes. Study results are discussed in relationship with teaching motivation and implications for teachers’ professional growth.     

Transformational professional development: (re)claiming agency and change (in the margins)

With performativity and evidence-based teaching, the development of action research (AR) by teachers brings tensions and challenges as teachers move outside their comfort zones and question their practice. This article draws on a small-scale research study developed with teachers. It was funded as part of a professional development initiative by a Teaching School Alliance to support partner schools with university support to build teacher-led systematic research into everyday practice. The dataset combined interviews with teachers about their motivations and experiences, field notes from the sessions, the teachers’ final written reports and their evaluation surveys about the project. This article offers a unique perspective on teachers as researchers in a new age of work-based AR with the risk of research by teachers in schools being regarded as part of an uncritical ‘tick box’ performative and celebratory culture. However, the authors argue that teacher research can contribute to a transformational approach to professional development working as an antidote and a source of (re)professionalization based on the outcomes of collaboration, reflection and attention to the singularity of their ‘contexts-for action’ and specific pupils’ needs.     

Drama and arts-based professional learning: exploring face-to-face,online and transmedia models

Australian and international research has identified that many generalist teachers have limited confidence and experience in teaching the Arts in the early years of schooling and education. There is also a significant gap in the provision of quality professional learning programs for teachers. Research has identified that appropriate training and professional learning programs need to provide teachers with practical experiences, informed by sound pedagogical theory and some form of ongoing support and potential for collaboration and shared learning. This article reports on the development of a professional learning programme which sought to support arts-focussed professional development of early years teachers. The project, known as The Open Storybox, lead to the development of a model which could be called a ‘transmedia’ learning model, as it utilises different media, and flows of content across digital platforms and technologies as well as the embodied and material.     

HOW MUCH PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IS NEEDED TO EFFECT POSITIVE GAINS IN K–6 STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT ON HIGH STAKES SCIENCE TESTS?

This paper is a report of a study that examines the relationship between teacher participation in a multi-year, K–6 professional development effort and the “high stakes” science test scores of different student groups in 33 rural mid-west school districts in the USA. The professional development program involved 1,269 elementary school teachers and utilized regional summer workshops and distance delivery technologies to help the teachers learn science concepts, inquiry teaching strategies, and how to adapt science inquiry lessons to teach and reinforce skills in the language arts. Regression analyses revealed a significant positive relationship between the professional development hours experienced by teachers and student gains on high stakes test scores. But the analyses also suggest that primary grade teachers need less professional development than upper grade teachers on instructional strategies where the focus is on the integration of language arts and science inquiry. The implications for funding and implementing professional development projects are discussed.