scholarly journals Promoting critical thinking in higher education in the context of teacher professional development

Author(s):  
Amanda R. Franco ◽  
Rui Marques Vieira

Critical thinking is profusely recognized as a key-skill for today's higher education students, who are simultaneously future employees/employers and forever local-global citizens. Yet, critical thinking must be deliberately, explicitly, and systematically promoted if it is expected to arise and expand. Such a promotion may be stimulated by teachers through the application of strategies that are oriented to critical thinking. Alas, recurrent evidence shows that teachers themselves need teacher professional development on how to do so, seeing that, as a rule, teacher education does not address the promotion of critical thinking open-handedly. With such in mind, the present paper presents a proposal of a teacher continuing professional development program consisting of five two-hour sessions, aimed at enabling university teachers to learn about critical thinking and how to think critically and, in turn, to learn how to teach their students for critical thinking. This program shall be implemented in 2019, with teachers at a public university located in the northern-central region of Portugal. Considerations are made about how the promotion of critical thinking in higher education may be performed via university teacher continuing professional development, bearing in mind the characteristics of this specific public and the principles of teacher professional development itself.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friyatmi

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of the boarding Teacher Professional Development Program (PPG SM-3T) in State University of Padang (SUP). This research was an evaluation study using a part of the CIPP model, namely the process evaluation. The research questions for this study were 1) how is the effectiveness of the implementation of PPG SM-3T boarding program? 2) what are the weaknesses in implementing the PPG SM-3T boarding program in SUP? Data in this study were collecting using questionnaires and interview techniques. Informants of this study were the participants of the PPG SM-3T PSU and managers program. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistic techniques. The results of this study revealed that all over management of program implementation was considered less effective by the participants. The weaknesses of the program implementation are as follows. 1) The boarding education programs was less-organized, causing some programs were not function properly and often the schedule were not followed strictly; (2) Lack of coordination between the management and weakness supervision/controlling manager on the boarding activities resulted in less well executed program. (3) Meals service agent were less professional, resulting in the low quality and less variation food being served to the participants.


Author(s):  
Tania Heap ◽  
Ruthanne Thompson ◽  
Adam Fein

AbstractFrom a design perspective, this paper offers a response to the impact, value, and application of a manuscript published by Philipsen et al. (Improving teacher professional development for online and blended learning: A systematic meta-aggregative review. Educational Technology and Research Development, 67, 1145–1174. 10.1007/s11423-019-09645-8, 2019). Philipsen et al. (2019) reviewed what constitutes an effective teacher professional development program (TPD) for online and blended learning (OBL), with our response focusing on its value and application in light of an emergency shift to digital to address a global pandemic. This paper also proceeds to examine limitations in previous research into the subject and future research opportunities to investigate important components that inform the design of a resilient and scalable TPD for OBL.


Author(s):  
Davinia Sánchez-García ◽  
Emma Dafouz

Given the internationalization process of higher education across the globe, continuing professional development (CPD) of academic staff is vital to ensure the quality of teaching and learning. Under such scenario, the European Erasmus+ project “Educational Quality at Universities for Inclusive International Programmes” (EQUiiP) identifies the role of the internationally-oriented educational developer (ED) as crucial to higher education institutions (HEIs) and provides these institutions with the means to support academic staff and hereby enhance the quality of internationalized programs taught in international classrooms. Consequently, this chapter provides the conceptual rationale behind the EQUiiP project, delves into the needs of teacher education programs and the role played by the EDs, and describes the EQUiiP project and its outcomes by providing concrete examples of its inclusive CPD program. Finally, some implications and recommendations for teacher professional development, with specific reference to the Spanish setting, are offered.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-49
Author(s):  
Pamela Moen ◽  
Kelley Walters

Data collected within this qualitative, multiple-case study included teachers' knowledge building preferences for written speech in a virtual community of practice (VCoP), blended learning, teacher professional development program. This data was analyzed using the theoretical tenets of Vygotsky's social constructivist learning theory. Through heterogeneous sampling, six sites were selected from 11 program participating schools, with 11 participating teachers purposively selected from these sites. Following semi-structured participant interviews, data were coded and analyzed, where the findings indicated that participants preferred the audiovisual learning content to the written activity format in the blended learning, VCoP teacher professional development program. Program developers may use the research findings to guide the development of VCoP content alternatives to singularly text based online professional development delivery models. Recommendations for future research include studies that address the impact of audiovisual VCoP content on knowledge building.


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