Great expectations: Teacher learning in a national professional development programme

This paper reports findings from an evaluation of a national continuing professional development (CPD) programme for teachers in England. Data showed that the localised implementation, opportunities for interactive learning, and ‘collective participation’ were positive factors. Research participants reported difficulties, however, in ‘cascading’ knowledge to colleagues and in sustaining and developing their learning. It is argued that these limitations were rooted in an inconsistent theory of learning that underpinned the programme and a failure to conceptualise teachers as ‘lead learners’ in schools. Wider implications for the design of teachers’ professional development are considered.     

Teacher learning in a combined professional development intervention

The study examines geometry teachers' video club discussions in a two-year professional development intervention that combined lesson study, video clubs, and animation discussions to promote teacher noticing of students' prior knowledge. Most discussions pertained to student conceptions (78%), followed by pedagogy (19%). Discussion of students' prior knowledge surfaced only when talking about student conceptions or pedagogy. There was statistically significant evidence that teacher-initiated discussions of students' prior knowledge were more substantial than facilitator-initiated discussions. The findings suggest that the professional development model and the facilitators’ moves promoted and sustained teacher noticing of student thinking throughout the intervention.     

Teacher professional leadership in support of teacher professional development

Counteracting perceptions of teaching as a profession with a flat career trajectory may require professional leadership opportunities for experienced teachers that differ substantively from those typically available. This evaluation study investigated the results of a professional development initiative for subject specialist teachers seconded to a leadership role in their curriculum areas. Interview and survey data supported teacher growth in subject expertise and leadership capacity attributed to the opportunities provided by the new teacher-leadership role. The findings of this study indicate expanded leadership roles may further develop experienced professionals while simultaneously supporting teacher knowledge during a period of embedding educational reform.     

Blended teacher professional development: A synthesis of three program evaluations

This study synthesized the findings of three program evaluations of teacher blended professional development programs from the perspective of situated design and implementation, development of community, changes in teacher practice, and impact on students. We found that the blended programs were effective in providing teachers with an opportunity for learning on the job and collaborating with other teachers, and they influenced teacher classroom practice moderately and affected student learning to a limited extent. Our study supports the contention that blended learning is a viable model for teacher professional development.     

The role of reflection on preservice teachers’ development in the context of a professional development school

As a faculty member teaching in an innovative, two-year Master's of Teaching program, I found myself reexamining my beliefs and assumptions about the role of reflection in preparing preservice teachers to become reflective practitioners. In the first semester of a four semester program, I introduced a three-part reflective framework (Loughran, 1995, Windows into the thinking of an experienced teacher. A paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, April.) designed to guide the preservice teachers in systematically reflecting on their lessons before, during and after teaching. The preservice teachers, mentors and I practiced and used the reflective framework for three semesters. In the fourth semester, during which preservice teachers taught in a paid internship position, I conducted individual interviews with the preservice teachers (interns) to explore their understanding and use of reflection. The results of the study suggest that use of the framework helps develop preservice teachers who actively think about their practice to improve their teaching and their students’ learning. Implications for using the reflective process in teacher education programs, particularly in professional development school contexts, are discussed.     

From isolation to symphonic harmony: Building a professional development community among teacher educators

Professional development among teacher educators requires a framework in which collaborative learning can support growth and change. This study describes a professional development project modeled on a professional development community focused on thinking education in a teachers college. Qualitative measures revealed a multilayered process consisting of breaking personal and professional isolation through interdisciplinary collaboration, talk about student learning, improvement of teaching through skill acquisition, and professional development with the adaptation of new teaching dispositions and a sense of efficacy. The community was characterized by a safe environment which encouraged risk taking and mutual support, enabling significant change in college courses.     

Reflective Practice as a Means for Preparing to Teach Outdoors in an Ecological Garden

Although teachers are engaged in many field-trips, they seldom have the pedagogical knowledge and experience to enact them. This article presents an effort to support reflective practice of teachers in the outdoors. The teaching experience of five pre- and in-service teachers included preparation for teaching in the outdoors, designing learning materials, teaching elementary and junior-high school students in an ecogarden, and reflecting upon these teaching experiences. The data collected by teachers and researchers highlighted challenges such as lack of confidence, class management and inadequate student motivation. The group and the instructors’ support and collaboration and careful preparation yielded a positive outdoor teaching experience. We suggest that supported field experience followed by individual and group reflection are promising in encouraging teachers to carry out outdoor learning activities.     

Teacher agency and professional learning in cross-cultural teaching contexts: Accounts of Chinese teachers from international schools in Hong Kong

This study examined how teacher agency shaped professional learning in cross-cultural teaching contexts. Interviews with 14 Chinese language teachers showed that teacher agency varied in different dimensions of professional learning. Social suggestions, power relations, teachers' professional and social positioning and the imposed identity and social roles in the school contexts interacted to shape teacher agency. The findings suggest both creating school cultures and structures that value and share diverse discursive and pedagogical practices and managing teachers' professional identity and self-positioning to enhance teachers' agency to engage in mutual learning and remaking of their work practices.     

Innovation,research and professional development in higher education: Learning from our own experience

This paper describes and analyses an innovative experience carried out by a group of lecturers from the Psychopedagogy Faculty of the University of Alcala, involved in an action research process with the purpose of reflecting about our own practice and constructing alternative teaching strategies to facilitate students’ reflective, autonomous and critic learning. The experience consists of a didactical proposal through which we intend to establish connections and interdisciplinary relationships among courses, in order to break down the isolation that usually characterizes the work of university teachers, and move towards a more global and complex formula for curriculum development. We also propose the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as tools to support the learning process and expand opportunities for reflection, dialogue and collaboration beyond the classroom activities. The results of this experience show a dialectic interaction amongst innovation, research and professional development processes.     

A phenomenological study of an international teaching practicum: Pre-service teachers' experiences of professional development

This article reports a research project planned and organized by the School of Educational Studies of Universiti Sains Malaysia to provide an international teaching practicum experience to six pre-service teachers for six weeks in Maldives. Using qualitative data from an open-ended questionnaire and reflective journals, the six pre-service teachers' experience of professional development during their international teaching practicum is examined, analysed and described. The findings show that the six students experienced beneficial and meaningful professional development. Some challenges and limitations of the international practicum are also highlighted. Based on this study, implications for teacher education/training of TESOL/TESL teachers are suggested.     

Reassembling teacher professional development: the case for Quality Teaching Rounds

Conventional professional development, while still in full swing in many places, has been widely maligned for its passive approach to learning, its failure to address local differences, and its often single-event format. While the corrective move to more collaborative models of professional learning has been heralded, few empirical studies to date have demonstrated impact on classroom practice or student learning outcomes. What is missing in both approaches, we argue, is a focus on pedagogy that guides teachers’ efforts at improvement. To address this absence, we elaborate our ‘reassembled’ approach to professional development, Quality Teaching Rounds. We argue that bringing together approaches to teacher development that privilege collaboration, community, and context with a substantive pedagogical framework will deliver more powerful professional development that makes a substantial impact on practice and produces measurable effects.     

The paradox of administrative control in fostering teacher professional development

In this case study, we use a consensus model as a framework for examining the professional development component of a standards-based reform effort initiated by a school district in the United States. We describe the district's actions, analyze the extent of adherence to the model, and identify reasons for what occurred. Although administrators intended to adopt key design principles of effective professional development, specific implementation strategies undermined and contradicted these principles. Their response to increasing bureaucratic controls at the state and national levels translated into increased regulation and control at the district and school levels, which paradoxically restricted the very attributes they sought to enhance.     

The adoption of student-centered teaching materials as a professional development experience for college faculty

Efforts to promote the use of student-centered learning environments in STEM education have been tempered by a lack of professional development strategies that help faculty overcome common barriers to reform. This study investigated the impact that adopting a suite of student-centered teaching materials had on the teaching practices and beliefs of eight geoscience faculty at a variety of US institutions. Each instructor adopted 18 class lessons that were developed as part of the InTeGrate (Interdisciplinary Teaching about the Earth for a Sustainable Future) project into a semester-long course. The Teaching Practices Inventory (TPI) and Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) were used to collect data on teaching practices whereas instructor beliefs were captured with the Teacher Beliefs Interview (TBI). Data were collected over three semesters, a control semester using traditional materials, a pilot semester using the new materials, and a final treatment semester. While the TPI survey showed no self-reported changes in the practices, RTOP observations recorded the incorporation of more student-centered teaching practices. TBI results confirm that most of the instructors also made at least moderate shifts toward more student-centered beliefs about teaching and learning. These findings demonstrate that the adoption of well-crafted, student-centered instructional materials can have a positive impact on both the teaching practices and beliefs of college faculty.     

Unifying cognition,emotion, and activity in language teacher professional development

Emotions in the learning-to-teach experience are often ignored or downplayed by teacher educators. Using content and discourse analysis of a novice language teacher's journals, we demonstrate that the pervasive emotional content, reflecting individual teacher's perezhivanie, is a motivated, structural component of teachers' processes of cognitive development. Emotional content indexes dissonance between the ideal and reality, offering potential growth points. We apply a SCOBA of language teacher learning that unifies the dynamic, dialectical relationship among emotion, cognition, and activity, in order to orient teacher educators in mediating novice language teachers' professional development responsively.     

Teacher collaboration and professional development in the workplace: a study of Portuguese teachers

This article reports on findings from research aimed at investigating teacher collaboration and professional development in the workplace. It draws upon a broader study carried out in a school in Northern Portugal. Data were collected through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and written reflective accounts. In total, 80 teachers participated in phase 1, 11 key informants participated in phase 2 and 10 teachers participated in an intervention/training project (phase 3). Findings suggest that problems and limitations in relation to collaborative work are situated at the organisational level, such as time and working conditions. Lack of training in collaboration, and issues such as motivation and personal difficulties, also emerged from the data. Teachers tend to stress the importance of interpersonal relationships at school, but they also identified formal meetings when they described the contexts and opportunities to work collaboratively in the workplace, namely department meetings and projects driven by central government or school administration initiatives. Implications for teacher collaboration and professional development are discussed.     

The National Board certification process as professional development: The potential for changed literacy practice

Using a communities-of-practice framework, this 2-year qualitative study centered on five elementary teachers the year following their participation in the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification process. Focused on teachers’ appropriation of the Board's standards and portfolio as conceptual tools related to literacy instruction, the study suggests that the National Board process does provide a learning opportunity for teachers and can positively impact teachers’ practice over time. However, personal and institutional constraints influence the degree to which teachers are able to implement instruction aligned with National Board standards.     

Portfolio appraisal: In search of criteria

Two inherently contradictory forces are pushing for reform in portfolio assessment. On the one hand there is a felt need for creating more rigid standards that operate to promote uniformity of ratings in appraisal practice to certify achievement. However, on the other hand, critical questions are being raised about separating acclaimed portfolio goals aimed both at appraising achievement while also improving quality of student learning and development. The position of portfolio assessment, which is widely used nowadays in teaching and teacher education, comes into debate. In our study, we look for actual practices in portfolio appraisal in search of criteria used for rating the quality of portfolio materials. It is our interest to find out how appraisal criteria are selected and used to evaluate achievement or to improve the quality of development and learning. In the context of teacher education, we have examined both the espoused criteria of both assessors and collectors of portfolios as well as the actual appraisal practices by looking at the judgmental orientations and supervision styles used by portfolio assessors. In addition, we offered an authentic portfolio document to be rated by different assessors to gauge and compare their quality of rating and criteria use. The actual processes we detected point to a most common practice of employing judgmental, usually normative evaluations based on assessor dependent, more or less pre-decided criteria which permit a “checkbox” approach to appraisal.     

Teacher professional development and ICT: an investigation of teachers studying a postgraduate award in ICT in education

The Schools IT2000 initiative, launched in 1997, was the first large-scale attempt to integrate information and communications technology (ICT) into teaching and learning in the Irish education system. As part of this initiative a training continuum was developed with the objective of enabling teachers to progress from novice to expert users of ICT. Short-term in-service courses were offered to all post-primary teachers in the state. Third-level institutions were invited to develop professional development programmes in the area of ICT in education to advance the training continuum. This article reports on the findings of a survey of teachers who had progressed along this training continuum and had opted to study for a postgraduate award in ICT in Education. The research aimed to determine the general profile of teachers electing to study on the programme, their current use of ICT and the types of in-service education and training in ICT they had previously been exposed to.     

The networked instructor: The quality of networks in different stages of professional development

This article focuses on the quality of instructional networks in different stages of professional development. Drawing theoretically from social capital theory and literature on teacher interaction, we conducted in-depth interviews with 30 instructors at the university level. Using qualitative social network analysis to capture and analyze networks, we found that the quality of instructors’ interactions varied across developmental stages (novice, experienced non-expert, and expert instructors), both in terms of interdependence and opportunities for value creation. These findings offer valuable leverage for shaping educators’ everyday professional development and increasing teaching capacity through quality interaction.