Improving Learning In A Professional Context

Improving Learning in a Professional Context provides vital new evidence on exactly how teachers learn to be teachers; evidence that is likely to affect and influence the profession for many years to come. Demonstrating that learning in schools is more than simple ‘cognitive’ knowledge of the curriculum and teaching skills, this book suggests that we need to pay more attention to the emotional, relational, ethical, material, structural and temporal dimensions of the teaching experience. Based on empirical research, including interviews with new teachers, by teachers themselves, on a scale rarely seen before, the book reveals the complexity of learning in a professional context and gives some basic truths about what really matters in teaching. This book offers a fundamental critique of policy but also the prospect of constructive change for the better as the authors present accounts of what the ‘real’ experience of beginning teaching may be like, as well as lines for future research. Key questions are answered, such as: Do we really understand what beginners go through in the workplace? What is the experience of new teachers as they join one of the largest workforces in the developed world? What do teachers learn in the school, one of our universal institutions? Becoming a teacher is a transformative search by individuals for their teaching identities and, with this book, teachers and teacher educators can at last begin to understand this complex developmental process. IMPROVING LEARNING SERIES The Improving Learning series supports evidence-informed professional practice and policy-making in education. Each book showcases findings from the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) - one of the world’s largest coordinated educational research initiatives. For those with a commitment to the improvement of outcomes for learners, these books are essential reading.

Improving Learning in a Professional Context provides vital new evidence on exactly how teachers learn to be teachers; evidence that is likely to affect and influence the profession for many years to come. Demonstrating that learning in schools is more than simple ‘cognitive’ knowledge of the curriculum and teaching skills, this book suggests that we need to pay more attention to the emotional, relational, ethical, material, structural and temporal dimensions of the teaching experience. Based on empirical research, including interviews with new teachers, by teachers themselves, on a scale rarely seen before, the book reveals the complexity of learning in a professional context and gives some basic truths about what really matters in teaching. This book offers a fundamental critique of policy but also the prospect of constructive change for the better as the authors present accounts of what the ‘real’ experience of beginning teaching may be like, as well as lines for future research. Key questions are answered, such as: Do we really understand what beginners go through in the workplace? What is the experience of new teachers as they join one of the largest workforces in the developed world? What do teachers learn in the school, one of our universal institutions? Becoming a teacher is a transformative search by individuals for their teaching identities and, with this book, teachers and teacher educators can at last begin to understand this complex developmental process. IMPROVING LEARNING SERIES The Improving Learning series supports evidence-informed professional practice and policy-making in education. Each book showcases findings from the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) - one of the world’s largest coordinated educational research initiatives. For those with a commitment to the improvement of outcomes for learners, these books are essential reading.

Improving Learning Transfer in Organizations features contributions from leading experts in the field learning transfer, and offers the most current information, ideas, and theories on the topic and aptly illustrates how to put transfer systems into action. In this book, the authors move beyond explanation to intervention by contributing their most recent thinking on how best to intervene in organizational contexts to influence the transfer of learning. Written for chief learning officers, training and development practitioners, management development professionals, and human resource management practitioners, this important volume shows how to create systems that ensure employees are getting and retaining the information, skills, and knowledge necessary to accomplish tasks on the job. Improving Learning Transfer in Organizations addresses learning transfer on both the individual and organizational level. This volume shows how to diagnose learning transfer systems, create a transfer-ready profile, and assess and place employees to maximize transfer. The book includes information on how to determine what process should be followed to design an organization-specific learning transfer system intervention. The authors focus on the actual learning process and show how to use front-end analysis to avoid transfer problems. In addition, they outline the issues associated with such popular work-based learning initiatives as action learning and communities of practice, and they also present applications on learning transfer within e-learning and team training contexts.

In America, the average person will spend 90,000 hours at work, or about a quarter of his or her adult life. Job satisfaction, then, can have an enormous influence on quality of life. Unfortunately, many in the workforce will spend all or a portion of their work life feeling stagnant and lacking passion for their job. The choices organizational leaders make about staff development can influence the organization’s success. Being proactive and intentional about how professional learning opportunities are selected and incorporated into the learners’ professional lives will optimize the benefits for employers, employees, and the students, customers, or clients they serve. The topic of this book, proactive professional learning, is a way to create a rewarding, highly effective work environment that makes people want to get the most out of their work experience, and in doing so, optimize the effectiveness of the organization that employs them.

The book discusses the idea of the learning community as a vehicle for professional learning and school development. As the authors show, the learning community develops in response to building capacity in three domains: personal, interpersonal and organizational. In the personal domain, educators deconstruct and reconstruct their professional narratives to enhance student learning and professional practice. In the interpersonal domain, educators generate norms and values that foster experimentation and critical analysis of educational practice and that promote collective and individual learning. In the organizational domain, visible and invisible structures are constructed that enable community members to enact educational practices in support of profound improvement in teaching and learning. This revised and updated edition of Profound Improvement not only brings this important work up-to-date but also shows how the authors thinking has changed and developed since the book was originally written. The book focuses on the life of educators as it relates to professional learning and growth. It is concerned with human growth and development, human cognition and affect and human interactions and actions in the context of a school community. For the new edition the authors also: elaborate more fully the notion of learning communities based on living systems and ecological perspectives develop their capacity building model They show that building a learning community is a dynamic process that engages the individual, the group and the organization in embedded interdependencies and mutual influences. As the authors clearly demonstrate: education is a living system as opposed to a managed system.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

Learning how to learn is an essential preparation for lifelong learning. Whilst this is widely acknowledged by teachers, they have lacked a rich professional knowledge base from which they can teach their pupils how to learn. This book makes a major contribution to the creation of such a professional knowledge base for teachers by building on previous work associated with ‘formative assessment’ or ‘assessment for learning’ which has a strong evidence base, and is now being promoted nationally and internationally. However, it adds an important new dimension by reporting the conditions within schools, and across networks of schools, that are conducive to the promotion, in classrooms, of learning how to learn as an extension of assessment for learning. There is a companion book, Learning How to Learn in Classrooms: Tools for schools (also available from Routledge), which provides practical resources for those teachers looking to put into practice the principles covered in this book.

Across the western world, there is a growing awareness of the importance of workplace learning, seen at the level of national and international policy, as well as in the developing practices of employers, training providers and Trades Unions. Authoritative, accessible, and appealing, it presents key findings on work-based learning, bringing together conclusions and investigating a variety of workplace contexts to show how such learning can be improved. An extensive practical treatment, brought to life with illustrations from both the public and private sectors, this book has a unique combination of breadth of coverage and depth of understanding. Grounded in rich and detailed empirical studies, this volume challenges conventional thinking. An important new addition to the Improving Learning series, it focuses on guidelines for improving learning by marrying the very best theory and practice to provide an accessible and authoritative guide to workplace learning. Practitioners, policy makers, students and academics with an interest in learning at work will find this an invaluable addition to their bookshelves.