IN SUPPORT OF PRACTICE-BASED TEACHER PROFESSIONAL LEARNING (original) (raw)

Assumptions underpinning the conceptualization of professional learning in teacher education

South African Journal of Higher Education, 2016

This article outlines different approaches to the development of pre-service student teachers' professional knowledge of and for practice. Key debates and positions are identified in the literature regarding aspects of the theory-practice relationship. These include: different theories of knowledge and skills transfer; assumptions about the type of expertise future teachers should possess and about 'what counts' as the knowledge underpinning the practice of teaching; and different positions on the relationship between pedagogical knowledge and subject knowledge. The article considers how these various conceptualisations and assumptions influence curriculum thinking, and how these are linked to contemporary debates and policy frameworks on teacher education in South Africa.

Pedagogical Reasoning and Action: Affordances of Practice-Based Teacher Professional Development

Teacher Education Quarterly, 2015

A common theme has been consistently woven through the literature on teacher professional development: that practice-based designs and collaboration are two components of effective teacher learning models. For example, Marrongelle, Sztajn, and Smith (2013) found that teacher learning contexts are optimal when they are "intensive, ongoing, and connected to practice, focus on student learning, and address the teaching of specific content" (pp. 203-204). Additionally, "by focusing on practices that are directly connected to the work that teachers do in their classrooms, teachers have the opportunity to develop knowledge needed for teaching by investigating aspects of teaching itself" (pp. 206-207). In terms of collaboration, Whitcomb, Borko, and Liston (2009) suggested that "professional development experiences are particularly effective when situated in a collegial learning environment, where teachers work collaboratively to inquire and reflect on their teachi...

Tracing complexities of teacher professional learning to evidence of transformed practice

2015

The inquiry with which this thesis is concerned examines the complex interactions involved in teachers’ professional learning experiences and the expression of such learning in transformed teaching practice. In this study, teachers described the interactions that they believed had influenced their learning about their teaching work. They were required to select and demonstrate evidence of their learning, and to reflect on the ‘fit’, as they perceived it, between their learning and their evidence. The study is temporally situated when, for the first time in the history of Australian teachers’ working lives, they are working with both a national curriculum and a set of national professional standards which bring with them expectations of transformed teaching, expressed through notions of ‘quality’ and ‘21 century learning’(ACARA, 2012b; AITSL, 2012c). The centralised, managerial agenda, particularly as it relates to professional standards, creates a view of teacher learning as an acti...

Policy and Practice in the Professional Development of Teachers

International Studies in Sociology of Education, 1993

This paper is intended as a contribution towards understanding recent developments in government policy for teacher education by providing an account of the dilemmas and issues the authors are encountering in the course of developing practice in three key areas in the education of teaching. These are: the implementation of school‐based forms of initial teacher education in partnership with schools; the development of higher education involvement in and responsibility for teachers’ professional development in their first year of teaching; the development of profiles of competence by which to evaluate and assess the progress of beginning teachers. Opportunities for the creation of coherent, principled progression in the early years of teaching are identified, as are sources of confusion and tension in current policy changes.

Teacher Professional Development within a Community of Practice

The focus on teaching for understanding and application challenges traditional methods of rote learning. It requires teachers to develop technology, pedagogy and content knowledge (TPACK). This is described by Mishra and Koehler (2006) as a complex issue for many teachers and challenging to the design of professional development programmes. This Paper presents a narrative inquiry which involved four teachers of different subject disciplines. They taught in a rural school in the West of Ireland and succeeded in developing TPACK in a situated learning environment while at the same time inadvertently developing a community of practice (CoP). They found common ground through storytelling pedagogy and an interest in learning a new technology tool known as Digital Story (DS). Collaborative workshops on how to use Digital Storytelling for instruction (IDS) enabled each teacher to develop a personal style of IDS appropriate for their subject.The focus concentrated on the narration of each teachers' experience. The research comprised the development of two forms of story as data. The first form used the IDS developed by each teacher. The second took the form of a Reflective Digital Story (RDS) based on the experience of creating and using the IDS in the classroom. Teacher narrative was complemented by thematic analysis across the four cases in relation to the TPACK framework. Findings indicated the professional development of learning a new technology tool is dependent on teacher ability to see a connection between the technology and content as well as its pedagogical uses. When ideas and innovations are shared over a period of time, a type of membership evolves which in turn becomes linked to a CoP. Membership can inspire and influence teachers to maintain TPACK development in a situated learning environment.

An Examination of an Approach to Teacher Professional Learning

This article reports research findings i into an initiative known as the Teacher Professional Learning Initiative (TPLI). The TPLI was developed in an Australian teacher education faculty with the express purpose of preparing classroom teachers (who acted as 'mentors' for undergraduate teacher education students while on practicum) for; a new partnership arrangement that underpinned a rethought teacher education program at that university and the new realities of classroom teaching practice, circa 2005, as an adjunct to this new teacher education program partnership arrangement. More readings from Dr. Tina Doe www.primrosehall.com International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change. www.ijicc.net Volume 1, Issue 3, May 2014 This article reports research findings ii into an initiative known as the Teacher Professional Learning Initiative (TPLI). The TPLI was developed in an Australian teacher education faculty with the express purpose of preparing classroom teachers (w...

Critiquing teacher professional development: teacher learning within the field of teachers' work

2010

This study is an empirical account of the professional development ('PD') practices which constituted part of the work of a group of teachers and school-based administrators working together in a cluster of six schools in southeast Queensland, Australia, during a period of intense educational reform. The data comprise meeting transcripts and interviews with teachers and administrators involved in a reform-oriented professional development initiative over an 18 month period. To analyse these teacher learning practices as teachers' work in this context, the article draws upon Bourdieu's theory of practice, particularly his understanding of the social world as comprising multiple social spaces, or 'fields', each characterised by contestation over the practices of most value. The data reveal the field of teachers' work, in which much of the teacher learning transpired, as influenced by a broader instrumental culture; this culture developed in response to teachers' concerns about how to respond to state educational provision initiatives in a more neoliberal global era. These instrumental logics were evident in superficial compliance with and reflection upon educational reform, and the continuation of individualistic, workshop-based PD practices. However, at the same time and in keeping with fields as contested, there is also evidence of teachers' participation in more sustained PD practices-involving teachers actively engaging with the content of educational reform, participating in robust reflection about their practice, and collaborating in substantive communities of learners. The findings also suggest the need to explicitly support substantive PD within the field of teachers' work in order to challenge more administrative and instrumental pressures to engage in reform. Such a response will assist in fostering the conditions for the generation of a more truly studentcentred, collaborative and reflective habitus amongst teachers.

A New way to Think about Teacher Professional Learning.pdf

In this book, Tina Doe tells the story of how schools and teachers are coming under increasing pressure to meet the new expectations that a fast changing technologically based and global world is demanding. She argues teachers have to meet the learning needs of all students, not just those who can “do schooling”. However, as Doe outlines, the teacher education literature and anecdotes from teachers and education systems across Australia (and elsewhere) about teacher professional learning suggest there must be a better way. This book is a case study of one such approach teacher professional learning that works.