Section archive - Professional Development

This study examined how teacher professional development could be conceived and conducted to support take up of digital game-based learning in the context of a 3-week social studies unit on governance and citizenship. The findings indicate that preparing teachers to appropriate curricula innovations involves deeply personal transformations that intersect with the core of their professional identity. The teachers, who play the game, face dilemmas and conflicts in making professional and personal decisions. This study suggests that teacher professional development through reflective, reflexive guided appropriation is vital.

The purpose of this study aimed to gain an understanding of teachers' expertise. It also aimed to determine the extent to which improvisation was a facet of advanced professional practice. The findings reveal that teacher’s expertise is best expressed as continually evolving practice. The participants argued that advanced practitioners use their expertise to adapt and to interact with their pupils in order to create the conditions in which learning can, and does, take place. The findings also showed that teacher expertise is seen as fundamentally improvisatory through being socially constructed and that this has a positive impact on the quality of teaching. The author found that the primary concern of the teachers was to develop relationships with pupils in order to maximise interaction in the classroom.

The present study investigated differences in contextual factors across schools and their influence on teachers’ decisions about science instruction. The findings show the influence of context on the sustainability of professional development outcomes. Additionally, it was found that principal support and collegial support are particularly important to teachers in sustaining science instruction. Finally, the study found that variations in school context also influence the extent to which state-level factors affect teachers’ decisions about science instruction.

This study focused on how elementary teachers described their professional growth after being involved in lesson study in a professional learning community with other teachers and university professors. The study also examined how they described the impact the program had on their teaching of mathematics. The results indicated that the participants valued the collaboration within the community of learners. The sharing of ideas, planning lessons together, and reflecting on teaching and student learning in a supportive environment appears to have been critical to teacher growth. The authors conclude that the findings indicate that while involvement in professional development to deepen teachers’ understanding of mathematics and their knowledge of how to teach mathematics is important.