Teachers’ self-initiated professional learning through Personal Learning Networks

It is widely acknowledged that to be able to teach language and literacy with digital technologies, teachers need to engage in relevant professional learning. Existing formal models of professional learning are often criticised for being ineffective. In contrast, informal and self-initiated forms of learning have been recently recognised as meaningful and relevant but little is known about these authentic learning experiences for professional purposes. This article investigates three teachers’ self-initiated professional learning about digital technologies through their Personal Learning Networks. The analysis identified that the participants’ everyday digital literacy practices provided opportunities for a range of professional practices that supported learning about digital technologies: information retrieval and resources aggregation, cooperation, collaboration, reflections and socialising. It also revealed that the teachers considered this form of learning as valuable. The article concludes by discussing how knowledge about self-initiated professional learning might be used to draw out some implications for teachers’ professional development.     

Teachers’ knowledge base for implementing response-to-intervention models in reading

This study examined the knowledge base of 142 elementary-level educators for implementing response-to-intervention (RTI) models in reading. A questionnaire assessed participants?? professional background for teaching reading, as well as their familiarity with specific assessments, research-based instructional models, and interventions potentially useful in RTI approaches. A multiple-choice knowledge survey patterned after a teacher licensure exam, including items situated in classroom contexts, assessed participants?? knowledge about different components of reading, assessment, and RTI practices. Overall, participants obtained the highest scores on a knowledge survey subscale involving fluency/vocabulary/comprehension and the lowest on a subscale involving assessment/RTI practices, with a subscale involving phonemic awareness/phonics in the middle. Mean percentages correct on the subscales ranged from about 58?C65% correct. However, participants who said they had prior code-focused professional development outperformed other participants on all survey subscales. General elementary certified teachers performed comparably to special education certified teachers on two out of three subscales, with both groups outperforming unlicensed participants; on the assessment/RTI subscale, only the special educators outperformed unlicensed participants. Most participants were familiar with basic features of RTI such as the three tiered model but were unfamiliar with the research-based instructional approaches and interventions named in the study questionnaire, although participants who had experienced code-focused PD were significantly more likely to be familiar with certain interventions. The study suggests that professional development will be important to enable many educators to implement RTI effectively in reading.     

On constructs and the construction of teachers’ professional knowledge in a post-Soviet context

This paper examines the understandings (‘constructs’) of teachers’ professional knowledge and its sources that underpin current practice in initial teacher education in Kazakhstan and in particular the way in which pedagogika contributes to these. Drawing on empirical data collected over four years, the paper illustrates the ways in which professional knowledge and professional preparation of teachers in pre-service institutions are constructed within the Kazakh and Soviet pedagogical traditions, albeit with some reference to international scholars. Teachers’ professional knowledge is formed from pedagogic theory mediated by academic staff in what is seen by many from outside and inside the country who are engaged in educational ‘reform’ in Kazakhstan as a largely didactic style with little or no critical engagement or exploration of the implications for practice. This stands in contrast with two recent professional development programmes: the Collaborative Action Research and Center of Excellence, which are focused on interactive learning and teaching, reflective practice, classroom action research, and teachers’ collaboration as sources for teachers’ professional knowledge. This paper highlights this contrast and begins to explore what happens when these two different approaches to the construction of teachers’ professional knowledge encounter each other.     

Teaching Thinking Skills in Context-Based Learning: Teachers’ Challenges and Assessment Knowledge

For an educational reform to succeed, teachers need to adjust their perceptions to the reform’s new curricula and strategies and cope with new content, as well as new teaching and assessment strategies. Developing students’ scientific literacy through context-based chemistry and higher order thinking skills was the framework for establishing a new chemistry curriculum for Israeli high school students. As part of this endeavor, we developed the Taste of Chemistry module, which focuses on context-based chemistry, chemical understanding, and higher order thinking skills. Our research objectives were (a) to identify the challenges and difficulties chemistry teachers faced, as well as the advantages they found, while teaching and assessing the Taste of Chemistry module; and (b) to investigate how they coped with teaching and assessing thinking skills that include analyzing data from graphs and tables, transferring between multiple representations and, transferring between chemistry understanding levels. Research participants included eight teachers who taught the module. Research tools included interviews, classroom observations, teachers-designed students’ assignments, and developers-designed students’ assignments. We documented different challenges teachers had faced while teaching the module and found that the teachers developed different ways of coping with these challenges. Developing teachers’ assessment knowledge (AK) was found to be the highest stage in teachers’ professional growth, building on teachers’ content knowledge (CK), pedagogy knowledge (PK), and pedagogical-content knowledge (PCK). We propose the use of assignments designed by teachers as an instrument for determining their professional growth.     

Teachers’ perceptions of assessments of their mathematical knowledge in a professional development course

The purpose of the project reported in this article was to evaluate how assessing teachers’ mathematical knowledge within a professional development course impacted from the teachers’ perspective their learning and their experience with the course. The professional development course consisted of a 2-week summer institute and the content focus was geometry. We had decided to assess the mathematical learning of the teachers during this professional development course for various accountability reasons, but were concerned about possible negative by-products of this decision on the teachers and their participation. Thus, we worked to design assessment in ways that we hoped would minimize negative impacts and maintain a supportive learning environment. In addition, we undertook this evaluation to examine the impacts of the assessment, which included homework, quizzes, various projects, and an examination for program evaluation. Seventeen grade 5–9 teachers enrolled in the course participated in the study by completing written reflections and by describing their experiences in interviews. We learned that while our original intent was “to do no harm,” the teachers reported that their learning was enhanced by the assessment. The article concludes by describing the various properties of the assessments that the teachers identified as contributing to their learning of the geometry content, many of which align with current recommendations for assessing and evaluating grade K-16 mathematics students.

Developing Preservice Teachers’ Expertise in Equitable Assessment for English Learners

This study illustrated a pathway of growth that a preservice teacher might traverse when learning to use and develop equitable assessments (EA). The study is rare in that it looks at the development of preservice teachers’ understanding and ability to design EA. I examined the understanding and implementation of EA of 23 secondary preservice teachers within two classes. The methods classes focused on the academic content area of science. Participants’ journals, teaching philosophies, and inquiry-based science units served as data sources. Participants progressed from a simple view of EA as “fairness” to a more sophisticated view of EA, including: ways to increase fairness, the importance of challenging students, and using assessments for learning. Results also showed changes in preservice teachers’ views of learners and the purpose of assessment. While understanding developed robustly, teachers’ assessment plans in their units were not as strong. Teacher education programs need to place more emphasis on developing critical understanding of EA practices to meet the needs of diverse learners.     

Teachers’ sources of knowledge for field trip practices

Teachers draw from many personal and professional experiences when organising and leading field trips. In order to identify the influences on teachers?? field trip practices, I used surveys, interviews, artifacts and observations gathered from teachers who led trips to an aquarium. Findings clarified the types of influence and the impact that these influences had on practice. For example, teachers adapted knowledge acquired for use in their field trips from four types of training (1) informal mentoring, (2) past experience on various trips, (3) various outdoor education training and (4) traditional classroom education training. A focus was the nature of each of these training types and how teachers acquire and adapt their knowledge. Previous research has shown that, while a variety of cognitive and affective outcomes often results from field trips, there is also a pattern of underutilised resources and missed learning opportunities during trips. This study offers insight regarding strengths and weaknesses of teachers?? preparation for leading field trips by documenting how and what skills are learned and applied. Therefore the findings presented here are suggestive of ways in which efforts to formally support and enhance teachers?? trip-leading skills by means of professional development might build on teachers?? existing sources of knowledge.     

Teachers’ professional selves and motivation for continuous professional learning amid education reforms

Promoting in-service teachers’ continuous professional learning is indispensable to educational reforms that demand knowledge acquisition and practice innovation. Addressing this issue, this mixed-method study examined the relationship between teachers’ professional selves and continuous professional learning. Two hundred and nighty-one practicing teachers completed a questionnaire that assessed their current and future professional selves, learning motives, strategy use, self-efficacy, control beliefs, learning interests and intentions. Cluster analyses found that strongly-committed teachers who held strong professional selves had the most engaged patterns of learning followed by teachers who had moderate and weak levels of professional selves. Study two was a follow-up interview study with eight selected teachers who held contrasting professional selves. Strongly-committed teachers discussed their hoped-for selves while weakly-committed teachers expressed concerns about heavy workload and the selves that they feared. These two groups of interviewees differed in the strategies they employed to complete course assignments.     

Teachers’ Workplace Learning and the Learning Portfolio

During the years 1994‐1996 the Federal Government of Australia conducted the National Professional Development Program (NPDP) for teachers. This paper reports on a project concerned with investigating the views of significant stakeholders about the issue of accreditation of teacher learning in NPDP projects and developing a means by which such accreditation could take place. The project was carried out in the final year of the NPDP and sought to provide a vehicle for teachers to gain university credit for their workplace learning in many of the projects conducted during the three years of the NPDP.     

A New Role for Teachers in Autonomous Learning Contexts

在自主学习环境下,教师不仅是管理者、组织者,而且是辅导员、评估者、教材开发者、观察者和研究员。要推动自主学习,教师首先要转变传统观念.更为重要的是,教师必须帮助学生树立对自己的学习负责的态度,培养学生的独立学习能力,并且为学生创造自主学习的环境。     

Teachers’ racialised habitus in school knowledge construction: a Bourdieusian analysis of social inequality beyond class

This article examines the school experiences of Chinese Canadian youth, a population often ignored by the academy under the model minority discourse. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theoretical insights, I raise and discuss the concept of teachers’ racialised habitus. I explore how teachers’ racialised habitus structures their practices of knowledge construction via formal and hidden curricula, and how it consequently affects Chinese Canadian youth’s identity construction. I argue that habitus, as an important theoretical tool that links the social and the individual as well as past, present and future, can also be used to study other forms of social inequality beyond class. This article makes both theoretical and empirical contributions to the research on habitus by highlighting teachers’ racialised habitus in relation to the perpetuation of racism in the educational field.     

Teachers’ knowledge and confidence for promoting positive mental health in primary school communities

This paper reports an investigation into Australian primary school teachers’ knowledge and confidence for mental health promotion. Questionnaires were delivered to 1397 teachers. In-depth interviews were held with 37 teachers. Quantitative results showed that half to two thirds of teachers felt efficacious and knowledgeable about selected components of mental health promotion. Independent judgments by staff about students’ mental health status concurred with students’ scores on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in about 75% of cases, indicating a good level of staff awareness about students’ mental health status. Exposure to the KidsMatter Primary mental health promotion initiative was associated with improvements in teachers’ efficacy, knowledge and pedagogy, with small to medium effect sizes. Qualitative analysis indicated that teachers’ subject-matter and pedagogical knowledge were heavily reliant on curriculum resources. Implications of the findings for the implementation of school-based mental health promotion initiatives are discussed.     

Investigating Teachers’ Skills in Interpreting Evidence of Student Learning

This study measured and explored the relationships among elementary mathematics teachers’ skill in (a) determining what an item measures, (b) analyzing student work, (c) providing targeted feedback, and (d) determining next instructional steps. Twenty-three elementary mathematics teachers were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: analyzing items and student responses without rubrics, analyzing items and student responses with rubrics, or analyzing items and student responses with rubrics after watching a professional development program on providing feedback to students. Findings show there is a moderate to strong relationship between teachers’ abilities to analyze student responses to infer what a student knows and can do and their abilities to take action based on that information through either providing the student feedback or making appropriate instructional adaptations. Findings show it was relatively more difficult for teachers to provide feedback that was likely to move students forward in their learning than it was for them to analyze a student's response or to determine next instructional steps. No teacher skill differences associated with the different treatment conditions were found.     

Vocational knowledge in motion: rethinking vocational knowledge through vocational teachers’ professional development

The paper presents empirical data to consider some of the current debates concerning the nature of vocational knowledge taught in Further Education colleges to students following craft, vocational and occupational courses. The concept of ‘knowledge in motion’ and workplace learning theories are employed as a conceptual framework to examine the continuing professional development (CPD) activities of vocational teachers. This is used to shed light on the ways in which teachers use CPD as a means of accessing and transporting vocational knowledge from occupations to classrooms. Empirical data were gathered through questionnaire, in-depth interviews and participant observation. The findings are presented around five themes: (1) the range of CPD engaged with by vocational teachers; (2) the limitations of propositional, explicit knowledge; (3) engaging with and capturing tacit knowledge; (4) managing the temporality of vocational knowledge; and (5) networking within and to the occupation. Findings suggests that vocational knowledge is distributed and networked and this conceptualisation makes visible some of the ways teachers are able, through CPD activity, to transport vocational knowledge from occupations to classrooms.     

Teachers’ attitudes about professional development in high-SES and low-SES communities

Practicing teachers in high-SES and low-SES communities completed a survey that assesses the strength of teachers’ support for professional development (PD), with the goal of determining the extent to which PD initiatives in low-SES communities face obstacles not evident in more affluent areas (N = 150). A multiple regression analysis was conducted on the factor scores produced by the survey, Teachers’ Attitudes about Professional Development (TAP). Support for PD was higher in high-SES communities than low-SES ones, and higher among elementary teachers than secondary teachers in both communities. To the extent that teachers’ attitudes about PD influence the effectiveness of PD initiatives, these attitudes present difficulties in low-SES communities beyond those evident in high-SES areas. Needed are professional-development models, and research that tests them, to determine how best to overcome obstacles that teachers’ attitudes likely cause in PD initiatives in low-SES communities.