How Teachers Experience Collaboration

2020 ◽  
pp. 002205742090806
Author(s):  
Tamara Olena Tallman
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
School Districts ◽  
School Reform ◽  
Teacher Knowledge ◽  
Teacher Collaboration ◽  
Instructional Collaboration

Collaboration has been found to be a powerful tool for professional development and central for creating opportunities for teachers to reflect on their practice. However, school districts continue to have difficulty both implementing and sustaining collaboration. The purpose of this research was to investigate the experience of the teacher in a creative, instructional collaboration. The teachers in this study found that teacher-initiated collaboration offered them trust and they were more open with their partners. The results also supported the claim that teacher collaboration can facilitate school reform. Participating teachers felt less isolation and developed more teacher knowledge.

Teacher Knowledge in Transition Planning: Does Locale Matter?

2021 ◽  
pp. 875687052110279
Author(s):  
Malarie E. Deardorff ◽  
Corey Peltier ◽  
Belkis Choiseul-Praslin ◽  
Kendra Williams-Diehm ◽  
Melissa Wicker
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Students With Disabilities ◽  
Teacher Knowledge ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Transition Planning ◽  
Individualized Education Program ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Transition Plans ◽  
Education Act

The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act mandates transition planning to occur in conjunction with the individualized education program for secondary age students with disabilities beginning by age 16, or earlier. To fulfill this mandate, teachers must possess a depth of content and pedagogical knowledge related to the transition planning process. However, the majority of special educators do not receive coursework dedicated to transition in their undergraduate programming. Furthermore, teachers in under-resourced and underserved rural districts may have inequitable professional development opportunities to bolster their transition planning knowledge. This lack of transition-related education potentially leads to inadequate and noncompliant transition plans for students with disabilities. The current study examined differences in teachers’ knowledge based on locale: rural ( n = 75), suburban ( n = 48), and urban ( n = 64) from one southern state. Determining whether differences are identified by locale can inform the allocation of resources to provide high-quality, evidence-aligned professional development models to improve teacher knowledge in underserved and under-resourced rural locales. In addition, identifying gaps in teacher knowledge will inform pre-service and in-service teacher preparation. We provide an avenue of needed future research to improve transition-planning processes for students with disabilities.

scholarly journals Teachers Who Reflect, Teach Better: Reflective Practice at The Heart of Teachers’ Professional Development Programs

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-227
Author(s):  
Zuraimi Zakaria ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Reflective Practice ◽  
Student Performance ◽  
Teacher Collaboration ◽  
Development Programs ◽  
Teaching Improvement ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Teachers Professional Development ◽  
The Relationship

While there is a significant amount of research and literature to explain the role of reflective practice in teaching, there is little research that reported the extent of such practice on classroom instructions and its spill effects on student learning outcomes. For this reason, this paper looks at the magnitude of reflective practice in shaping classroom instructions and how it facilitates for better student performance within the context of teachers’ professional development (PD) programs. Hence, the focus of the paper is two-fold: examining teachers’ PD programs that promoted reflective practice; and the relationship between reflective practice and student performance. The discussion on teachers’ reflective practice is timely. In particular, with the growing educational research and increasing body of evidence that pointed towards PD as having a significant influence on student achievement (Achinstein & Athanases, 2006; Fullan, 1990; Little, 2001). In addition, most PD efforts focused on teacher collaboration as a strategy for teaching improvement and eventually better academic performance of the students (Achinstein & Athanases, 2006). Many educators (Fendler, 2003; Loughran, 2002; Schon, 1983; Walkington, 2005) viewed reflective practice as situated at the heart of PD programs that sought teachers to examine their practice for improvement. This paper assists policy makers and education reformists in re-examining their PD efforts in targeting for variables that matter.

scholarly journals Blog-based professional development of English teachers in Mumbai: The potential of innovative practice under scrutiny

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atiya Khan
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Teacher Collaboration ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
English Teachers ◽  
Information And Communications Technology ◽  
Learning Networks ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Interactive Workshop

The professional development of teachers in India is still, by and large, based on formal and outdated professional learning traditions, often characterised by crash courses and one-off workshops. In education, blogs have proven to be an effective means of establishing and maintaining collaborative learning networks and helping members reflect on their professional practices. Information and communications technology (ICT) enabled practices of teacher professional development is still in its infancy in India. Moreover, there is limited research in India to secure foundational understanding of how and in what ways teachers of English in India use blogs for their professional development. This study explores the use of teacher reflective practice, teacher networking, and teacher collaboration, beyond formal ICT training, through blog-based professional development of English teachers in the Mumbai region of India. Using data collected from 32 teachers from three private schools in Mumbai, through ICT interactive workshop observations, questionnaires, interviews, and blog comments, this action case study explains whether and why blogging, as a learning community, has the potential to add significant value to existing professional development of English teachers in Mumbai.

scholarly journals When the Walls Come Down: Evidence on Charter Schools’ Ability to Keep Their Best Teachers Without Unions and Certification Rules

2021 ◽  
pp. 016237372110472
Author(s):  
Nathan Barrett ◽  
Deven Carlson ◽  
Douglas N. Harris ◽  
Jane Arnold Lincove
Keyword(s):  
School Districts ◽  
Charter Schools ◽  
School Reform ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Average Quality ◽  
Teacher Labor Markets ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Best Teachers ◽  
The Relationship

Theories of market-based school reform suggest that teacher labor markets may be inefficient because schools lack autonomy to incentivize performance in hiring, retention, and compensation. We test this empirically by comparing teacher exits in the deregulated market of New Orleans with neighboring traditional school districts. We find that the relationship between teacher performance and retention is stronger in the deregulated market. We also find positive associations between salary and performance, but only when teachers transfer from one charter school to another. While teacher retention is more closely tied to performance in New Orleans, this did not yield a net gain in teacher quality, because new teachers in New Orleans were of lower average quality than their peers in neighboring districts.

scholarly journals AN EXAMINATION OF ONE FACTOR IN SCHOOL REFORM: INCREASED TEACHER ACCOUNTABILITY IN TWO URBAN SCHOOL DISTRICTS

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (27) ◽  
pp. 329-344
Author(s):  
Nadine Bonda
Keyword(s):  
Student Achievement ◽  
School Districts ◽  
School Reform ◽  
Standardized Testing ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban School Districts ◽  
Case Study Approach ◽  
Study Approach

Beginning in 2009, and with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, school districts across the United States began to be held to higher standards and their progress publicly reported.  Student achievement began to be measured by standardized testing and great efforts were being made to reduce the achievement gap. This paper is based on a five-year study of teacher evaluation in two urban districts in Massachusetts where improving teacher practice was seen as an important factor in raising student achievement. This research studied efforts to address those teachers who were identified as underperforming and were supported through individual improvement plans.  This paper used a case study approach to show what the practices of a sampling of these teachers looked like, teachers’ reactions to being rated unsatisfactory, and teachers’ reactions to the improvement planning process.

Repetita Iuvant? A Repeated Randomized Controlled Trial on the Effectiveness of an At-Scale Teacher Professional Development Program

2021 ◽  
pp. 0193841X2110553
Author(s):  
Giovanni Abbiati ◽  
Gianluca Argentin ◽  
Andrea Caputo ◽  
Aline Pennisi
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Teacher Collaboration ◽  
Program Implementation ◽  
Program Effectiveness ◽  
Controlled Trial ◽  
Development Program ◽  
Professional Development Program ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
The Impact

Background A recent stream of literature recognizes the impact of good/poor implementation on the effectiveness of programs. However, implementation is often disregarded in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) because they are run on a small scale. Replicated RCTs, although rare, provide a unique opportunity to study the relevance of implementation for program effectiveness. Objectives Evaluating the effectiveness of an at-scale professional development program for lower secondary school math teachers through two repeated RCTs. Research Design The program lasts a full school year and provides innovative methods for teaching math. The evaluation was conducted on two cohorts of teachers in the 2009/10 and 2010/11 school years. The program and RCTs were held at scale. Participating teachers and their classes were followed for 3 years. Impact is estimated by comparing the math scores of treatment and control students. Subjects The evaluation involved 195 teachers and their 3940 students (first cohort) and 146 teachers and their 2858 students (second cohort). Measures The key outcome is students’ math achievement, measured through standardized assessment. Results In the first wave, the program did not impact on students’ achievement, while in the second wave, a positive, persistent, and not insignificant effect was found. After excluding other sources of change, different findings across waves are interpreted in the light of improvements in the program implementation, such as enrollment procedure, teacher collaboration, and integration of innovation in daily teaching. Conclusions Repeated assessment of interventions already at-scale provides the opportunity to better identify and correct sources of weak implementation, potentially improving effectiveness.

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