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.     

A Model for Staff Development in Information Technology within Initial Teacher Training Institutions

ABSTRACT

This paper reflects on the uptake of information technology (IT) as a delivery strategy in the learning and teaching processes and suggests that it is no longer satisfactory from the pupils' perspective to leave this to informal staff development strategies. The ability to use IT appropriately and effectively in the classroom must be thoroughly embedded in the pedagogy of teacher training institutions. For this to happen, these institutions need to adopt interventionist strategies for staff development so that learning through IT is a process that all student teachers experience, evaluate and learn to manage in the classroom situation. This paper examines a project for staff development in IT in a particular college and, following on the project's success, offers it as a possible model for successful staff development in IT.     

Design and Evaluation of an Algorithm Animation of State Space Search Methods

We describe the design and evaluation of an algorithm animation of artificial intelligence search algorithms. As well as the usual single step mode for assistance in learning the individual steps of an algorithm, the system supports an innovative burst mode for visualizing qualitative characteristics. A formal empirical study was conducted with the aim of determining if this algorithm animation of search methods would make a suitable alternative laboratory activity to the more traditional activity of programming implementations of search methods. Results provide good evidence that the animation laboratory activity is a viable alter native for reinforcing students understanding about state space search methods.     

Depressive Symptoms in Third‐Grade Teachers: Relations to Classroom Quality and Student Achievement

This study investigated associations among third‐grade teachers' (N = 27) symptoms of depression, quality of the classroom‐learning environment (CLE), and students' (N = 523, M_age = 8.6 years) math and literacy performance. teachers' depressive symptoms in the winter negatively predicted students' spring mathematics achievement. This depended on students' fall mathematics scores; students who began the year with weaker math skills and were in classrooms where teachers reported more depressive symptoms achieved smaller gains than did peers whose teachers reported fewer symptoms. teachers' depressive symptoms were negatively associated with quality of CLE, and quality of CLE mediated the association between depressive symptoms and student achievement. The findings point to the importance of teachers' mental health, with implications for policy and practice.