Teacher S Professional Development

This book focuses on the professional development of teacher educators, forming a definitive and expert resource for all those interested in this area of professional learning. It offers an in-depth overview of existing international research and professional development initiatives in the area of teacher educators' learning. The book highlights relevant research on the topic, identifies the lessons learnt from recent initiatives, and indicates ways forward for teacher educators' professional learning internationally. It provides a unique combination of six years of pan-European collaborative work, resulting in a book with clear relevance and appeal to both academics and practitioners internationally. The book conceptualizes teacher educators' professional development, in order to deepen understanding of how and why learning occurs and conducts empirical research into the professional development needs of teacher educators internationally using quantitative and qualitative methods in order to redress gaps in existing research. This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of teacher education and professional development and learning.

This book makes a major contribution to knowledge and theory by drawing implications of teacher effectiveness research for the field of teacher training and professional development. The first part of the book provides a critical review of research on teacher training and professional development and illustrates the limitations of the main approaches to teacher development such as the competence-based and the holistic approach. A dynamic perspective to policy and practice in teacher training and professional development is advocated. The second part of the book provides a critical review of research on teacher effectiveness. The main phases of this field of research are analysed. It is pointed out that teacher factors are presented as being in opposition to one another. An integrated approach in defining quality of teaching is adopted. The importance of taking into account findings of studies investigating differential teacher effectiveness is argued. Another significant limitation of this field of research is that the whole process of searching for teacher effectiveness factor was not able to have a significant impact upon teacher training and professional development. For this reason it is advocated that teacher training and professional development should be focused on how to address grouping of specific teacher factors associated with student learning and on how to help teachers improve their teaching skills by moving from using skills associated with direct teaching only to more advanced skills concerned with new teaching approaches and differentiation of teaching. The book refers to studies conducted in different countries illustrating how the proposed approach can be used by policy and practice in teacher education. Specifically, the book provides evidence supporting the validity of the theoretical framework upon which this approach is based. Moreover, experimental and longitudinal studies supporting the use of this approach for improvement purposes are presented and suggestions for further research utilising and expanding the Dynamic Approach for teacher training and professional development are provided.

This book illustrates the experiences of elementary school teachers across one year's time as they participated in a teacher development seminar focused on mathematics, and as a result changed their beliefs, their knowledge, and their practices. It explores these experiences as a means of understanding the learning that takes a teacher from a more traditional teaching practice to one that is focused on the ideas and understandings that students and teachers have of the subject matter. The work emerges from and reports on a unique data set from a two-year study of teacher learning that was funded by the Spencer and MacArthur foundations. The teachers, whose work is at the center of this study, were participants in the Developing Mathematical Ideas seminar (DMI), a mathematics teacher development seminar for elementary school teachers. This seminar is one example of intensive, domain-specific professional development. In this seminar teachers study elementary mathematics content to deepen their own understanding of it, they study the development among children of the ideas central to elementary mathematics, and they experience a teaching and learning environment consistent with the pedagogy envisioned by the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics' Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. The seminar is a nationally available teacher development curriculum, thus interested educators can gain access to the resources necessary to offer similar seminars in their own communities. Teachers' Professional Development and the Elementary Mathematics Classroom: Bringing Understandings to Light will be widely interesting to a broad audience, including mathematics teacher educators, teacher education researchers, policymakers, and classroom teachers. It will serve well as a text in a range of graduate courses dealing with teacher cognition/knowledge for teaching, mathematics methods, psychology of learning, and pedagogical theory.

A central aspect of teachers’ professional knowledge and competence is the ability to assess students’ achievements adequately. Giving grades and marks is one prototypical task in this context. Besides giving grades, assessments for school placements or tracking decisions belong to these tasks. Relevant students’ characteristics which influence teachers’ assessments do not only involve academic achievement but also students’ responses to different task demands as well as non-academic characteristics such as learning motivation or school anxiety. Closely associated with the investigation of teachers’ assessment competences and, more specifically, the investigation of conditions associated with high quality of assessments is the development and evaluation of teacher training programs to improve professional competences. In recent years, there has been considerable progress in the domain of professional teacher training; however, only a very limited number of studies are dedicated to the question to what extend training programs might offer valuable approaches to improve the quality of assessments and to implement high assessment competences. Another important field which is closely related to teachers’ competences concerns the question how teachers’ professional development is linked to students’ learning and learning outcomes. In recent years, the societal demand for evidence that teachers’ professional development will result in improved student learning outcomes is increasing. This volume brings together questions on assessment, training, and learning in the professional development of teachers which have not been fully discussed yet. The identification of these research gaps was the reason for dedicating a series of lectures given at the University of Luxembourg 2012 to the topic of professionalization of teachers in these domains. Therefore, this book contains contributions from outstanding international scholars in different academic disciplines to present ideas about open research questions concerning the domains of assessment, training, and learning in the professional development of teachers.

Hopkins, Bruce Joyce, Michael Huberman, Matthew Miles, and Virginia Richardson. But we have chosen to present our own experience and empirical data first and then, in Part 3, to show how this experience and data relates to models which have been proposed by others. We will address here methodological issues concerned with collecting and interpreting evidence of relationships amongst the many individual and situational factors associated with PD, and re-visit the arguments about ‘process-product’ research on PD. In the light of our experience, we will interrogate models of PD which have been proposed by others and attempt to move forward our total understanding of the process of the professional development of teachers for educational change. In conclusion, we will look at some current national practice in professional development, concentrating on the recent English experience of introducing ‘strategies’ into schools but referring also, by way of contrast, to the situation in the United States. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM? Why has the professional development of teachers already exercised so many good minds for so long? And how can we justify adding another book to this field? The answer to both questions must lie in the continuing demand from society in general (at least as interpreted by politicians and newspaper editors) for improvements in the quality of education.

Develop transformational professional development programs that build and sustain your school community In The PD Book, bestselling author Elena Aguilar and co-author Lori Cohen offer seven habits—and a wealth of practical tools—that help you transform professional development. In this book, you'll learn how to inspire adult learners, the importance of having clear purpose, and how to navigate power dynamics in a group. You'll also learn a new way to plan PD that allows you to attend to details and be a responsive facilitator. The dozens of tips and tricks, anecdotes and research, and tools and resources will enable you to create the optimal conditions for learning. You'll also: Craft effective outcomes for your adult students and design an agenda that aligns with adult learning principles Use storytelling as a tool for effective workshops and trainings Plan backwards from evaluations and outcomes to create powerful and lasting educational experiences Ideal for educational leaders and administrators, professional development facilitators, coaches, and positional leaders in both K-12 and higher education, The PD Book is an incisive resource offering concrete strategies for educators at all levels.

To many academics, composition still represents typewritten texts on 8.5” x 11” pages that follow rote argumentative guidelines. In Toward a Composition Made Whole, Jody Shipka views composition as an act of communication that can be expressed through any number of media and as a path to meaning-making. Her study offers an in-depth examination of multimodality via the processes, values, structures, and semiotic practices people employ everyday to compose and communicate their thoughts. Shipka counters current associations that equate multimodality only with computer, digitized, or screen-mediated texts, which are often self-limiting. She stretches the boundaries of composition to include a hybridization of aural, visual, and written forms. Shipka analyzes the work of current scholars in multimodality and combines this with recent writing theory to create her own teaching framework. Among her methods, Shipka employs process-oriented reflection and a statement of goals and choices to prepare students to compose using various media in ways that spur their rhetorical and material awareness. They are encouraged to produce unusual text forms while also learning to understand the composition process as a whole. Shipka presents several case studies of students working in multimodal composition and explains the strategies, tools, and spaces they employ. She then offers methods to critically assess multimodal writing projects. Toward a Composition Made Whole challenges theorists and compositionists to further investigate communication practices and broaden the scope of writing to include all composing methods. While Shipka views writing as crucial to discourse, she challenges us to always consider the various purposes that writing serves.

​This book examines the implementation of inquiry-based approaches in science teaching and learning. It explores the ways that those approaches could be promoted across various contexts in Europe through initial teacher preparation, induction programmes and professional development activities. It illustrates connections between scientific knowledge deriving from the science education research community, teaching practices deriving from the science teachers’ community, and educational innovation. Inquiry-Based Science Teaching and Learning (IBST/L) has been promoted as a policy response to pressing educational challenges, including disengagement from science learning and the need for citizens to be in a position to evaluate evidence on pressing socio-scientific issues. Effective IBST/L requires well-prepared and skilful teachers, who can act as facilitators of student learning and who are able to adapt inquiry-based activity sequences to their everyday teaching practice. Teachers also need to engage creatively with the process of nurturing student abilities and to acquire new assessment competences. The task of preparing teachers for IBST/L is a challenging one. This book is a resource for the implementation of inquiry-oriented approaches in science education and illustrates ways of promoting IBST/L through initial teacher preparation, induction and professional development programmes.