Section archive - Professional Development

Using a broad-based assessment for understanding what teachers learn in historic site-based professional development (HSBPD), this study follows 29 teachers from a HSBPD at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello to see how their work at historic sites affected their practice upon return to their classrooms. Influenced by the Interconnected Model of Teacher Growth and Complexity theory, this study considers the complex outcomes of teachers as individuals, professionals, and learners in communities of practice. Results explore a range of outcomes related to content, pedagogical content knowledge, working with peers, interactions with the historic site, and a willingness to reconsider historical information. The discussion offers a consideration of the network of HSBPDs as a cumulative system and the ways in which teachers’ on-site work can deepen our understanding of working with complex historical sources and make larger curricular changes.

Based on a conceptual framework applying recent research knowledge, this study investigates the relationships between teacher participation in school-based professional development and its individual and school contextual antecedents and effects on teachers and teaching in the context of mainland China. A total of 1506 secondary school teachers responded to a questionnaire survey. The results show that teachers’ willingness to attend teaching research activities and supportive principal leadership facilitated teacher participation. Among the three dimensions of teacher participation, it was collective lesson planning and teacher collegiality, not the frequency of participation, that improved teacher efficacy and the adoption of desirable teaching strategies. These results enrich the knowledge about the characteristics and effectiveness of teacher professional development in China. The implications of the findings are discussed.

This research explores evidence-based teaching portfolios as authentic and continuous professional development involving cross-sectoral and cross-contextual teacher collaboration. Qualitative data analysed from teachers with experience teaching at post-primary, in a national teacher support service, in higher education and in teacher education are discussed. The original claim this paper makes is that many process and practice outcomes elicited during the process of portfolio development are useful for teachers working together across sectors, and therefore valuable for teachers and learners, along and across the education continuum. Key findings indicate that a cross-sectoral group can create knowledge, which is personalised and contextualised to each teacher’s teaching philosophy, yet informed by practitioners from different sectors. The merging of a research design through dual structuring of collaborative workshops with individualised mentoring and self-study inquiry enabled meaningful dialogue and reflection among the teachers’ from varied settings. Finally, the creation of a personalised and contextualised written teaching portfolio, afforded the teachers evidence of their own professional learning during and following the research process. This collective and individualised learning informed realisations and plans for relational and pedagogical change among the cross-sectoral group.

Drawing on interviews with a diverse sample of teachers, this study uses the frame of professional identity to interpret the heterogeneity among teachers’ perceptions of professional development. Specifically, it examines how teachers’ “anchoring beliefs” might be reflected in or refracted by their accounts of powerful professional learning. An analysis of three case studies of teacher identity and teacher learning reveals three distinct “learning affinities”: for the what (content), the who (facilitation), and the with whom (community). This learning affinity framework may better model teachers’ experiences of professional development and thus could point the way toward improved research and design.