Section archive - Professional Development

In this article, the author argues that there is a lack of research into the role of the facilitator of discussions of video for professional development. A key purpose of this article is to expose aspects of the role of the facilitator of teacher learning, not reported in previous research in the use of video. Hence, the author documents research he undertook into the use of video as a tool for teacher learning. In analysing empirical data from one school, he suggests five key aspects or decision points in working with teachers on video: selecting a video clip, setting up the discussion norms, re-watching the video, moving to interpretation, and metacommenting. The author argues that having presented key aspects of the role of the facilitator of video use, a further look at the detail of the data from discussions serves to highlight some of the complexities involved in just one of the categories.

This is a conceptual review of the literature variously referred to as faculty development, educational development, instructional development, and academic development in higher education. The authors used different questions that queried the nature of educational development practice and the thinking underlying practice. This six-cluster framework provides a new way of thinking about the design of practice and a more meaningful basis for investigating the effectiveness of educational development practice.

The purpose of this study was to examine teachers’ reported instructional strategies for promoting science learning while supporting English language development during science instruction with diverse student groups, especially English Language Learners (ELLs), in urban elementary schools. The findings reveal that teachers across three grade levels consistently indicated similar strategies to promote science learning, such as making connections to prior knowledge or real world experiences and engaging in hands-on activities. However, teachers at all three grade levels did not report more sophisticated inquiry-based strategies. Although the reported strategies were similar in frequency across grade levels, there were significant differences among grade level and by years of teacher participation.

This study aims to understand how teachers used their existing knowledge about proportions to make sense of a representation that was new to them and the ways in which their existing knowledge proved to be helpful or unhelpful. The authors identified two knowledge components that were important to the participants’ sense-making activities. The first necessary component of knowledge for making sense of the DNL was coordination. Partitioning was the second critical concept for reasoning with the DNL. They also identified three components that impeded sense-making with the DNL representation. The authors also found three knowledge components participants invoked in these tasks that prohibited effective reasoning with the DNLs.