Facilitating Culturally Responsive Teaching Through Online Courses and Coaching

Teacher professional development and education programs are enhancing job-embedded experiences to address the disparity between theory and implementation. Simultaneously, higher education is now offering online courses to attract geographically distant educators, especially in high-needs fields such as teaching English Learners and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse students. There is a need to investigate what online teacher professional development and education programs can do to promote teachers’ application of what they learn. This pilot study utilized the Inventory of Situationally and Culturally Responsive Teaching (ISCRT) to investigate 23 in-service teachers’ culturally responsive teaching (CRT) practices before and after receiving online coursework and coaching. When compared to the control group, treatment teachers’ scores on four of the five ISCRT standards—Joint Productive Activity, Language and Literacy Development, Challenging Activities, and Instructional Conversations—as well as the composite were statistically significant. Findings suggest online CRT coursework with complementary instructional coaching supports teachers’ implementation of new knowledge and pedagogy.

Using Twitter to Form Professional Learning Communities

Social media has become an important tool for informal teacher professional development. Although there is a growing body of research investigating issues across the US, there is a lack of research on teacher professional development taking place on Twitter in Georgia, USA. In this research, the authors applied digital methods to analyze 5,425 entries from educators participating in a state-level, weekly, synchronous chat about educational technology (#TECHTalkGA) on the social media platform Twitter. Findings include that participants utilized the chat for organization, planning, and classroom technologies, with a predilection toward specific hardware and software topics. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.

Innovations in Teacher Professional Development

The professional development needs of teachers have changed dramatically over the last 25 years. When constructed to reflect best practices evidenced in the research literature, micro-credentials and other 21st century innovations provide accessible, meaningful, professional learning experiences for educators. This chapter discusses two cases that affected personal transformation and pedagogical change for in-service teachers by an institution of higher education (IHE). A preliminary analysis of these alternative experiences established that when teacher professional development is founded on the context-sensitive integration of social and cultural competencies, meaningful, empowering, and enduring learning can take place.

Bilingual and Multilingual Education for Deaf Students, Linguistic Minorities

This chapter discusses some of the language issues and challenges that deaf and hard of hearing students (DHH) face in the school environment and argues that successful bilingual and multilingual education programs are necessary for DHH students, including professional training in deaf education around of the world. The chapter includes subtitle topics such as the historical development of bilingual education, deaf learners and deaf bilingual education, multilingual and multicultural education. The author concludes the chapter by making recommendations regarding the effectiveness of bilingual and multilingual education for DHH students. The goal is to support educators and professionals in the deaf education field to pay attention to bilingual deaf education through teacher professional development based on the field needs.

Professional Learning That Works

Chapter 1 kicks off the introductory chapters and provides readers the opportunity to become familiar with current research on the state of teacher professional development in the United States. The authors present and provide commentary on the literature over the past two decades showing the prevalence of “one-and-done” professional development sessions and the lack of individualized and meaningful learning experiences for educators. The authors highlight some barriers systems face in providing the kind of professional development that research shows is best for educator and student learning, and invite readers to think about the state of professional development in their own systems. The authors also highlight and define key terms that are important for building an understanding of the VECTOR model and the challenges it addresses.

Developing Professional Teacher to Improve Madrasah Student Character

This study was aimed at investigating research and development (R&D) model applied to Akidah-Akhlak subject teachers in strengthening their students’ character in madrasah in South Jakarta. This research applied R&D using ADDIE version which consisted of: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. The research subjects were selected purposively involving 30 teachers. The results of the study show that the training model for the teachers was carried out with an emphasis on empowering the teachers’ professionalism. The development program was implemented through training and mentoring based on the modules. The results of the module-based teacher professional development can build the students’ character. The syntax for the training program started from preliminary studies, model descriptions compilation, model development, and professional teacher outcomes (compiling lesson plan, carrying out learning activities, conducting classroom action research). The implementation of the module-based teacher professional development had a significant impact on increasing the teachers’ pedagogic competence. They demonstrated a teaching vision that emphasized the importance of teaching the subject to their students. Teaching and learning activity which is based on the teachers’ professionalism can build students’ positive character in madrasah in South Jakarta.

Unexplored Potential in Online In-Service Teacher Professional Development towards Teaching with Technology: Teacher Perceptions, Challenges and Spill-Over Effects in Kenya

Online courses can provide a worthwhile alternative to on-site Teacher Professional Development (TPD) especially in developing countries such as Kenya. This study was based on a training intervention which helped teachers to cope with the sudden turn of events that came after the government closed schools as one of the COVID-19 containment measures. A private university in Kenya designed and launched an online in-service course to respond to the needs of teachers amidst the pandemic. The university’s Teacher Enhancement Programme (TEP) realized that the training proved to be a game changer for the group of teachers who participated. The online training intervention enabled the teachers to get in touch with learners who were otherwise inaccessible. This study is a descriptive survey with both quantitative and qualitative data from a post survey questionnaire and a focused group discussion. The outcomes of the study indicated that online teacher enhancement programmes are an uncharted potential option for TPD even though there were challenges. The training intervention boosted teacher confidence in using technology to teach, and encouraged them to venture and discover more technology-based teaching tools on their own. The training intervention also led to improved teacher performance in the employment of emergency remote teaching within their learning institutions.

Reflective Teaching as a Tool for Teacher Professional Development

Reflection has long been known as an important component for teacher professional development, and it has been widely researched. However, little is known about how teachers reflect on their teaching. Aiming at finding out how in-service English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers reflect on their teaching activities and how their self-reflection impacts their professionalism, the current study employs a qualitative case study as its research design. It involved six in-service EFL teachers at various levels of education, such as kindergarten, elementary, junior, and senior high schools, who were taking the postgraduate program in English Education at FKIP Universitas Tanjungpura as the research participants. The data for this study were obtained through questionnaires and interviews, as well as the written analysis of participants' teaching videos. After being analyzed qualitatively, the findings of this study indicate that most respondents reflect on their teaching activities at a very basic level. In relation to the impact of their reflective teaching on their professionalism, however, overall, respondents thought that their reflection activities helped them know their weaknesses and strengths in teaching, which encouraged them to become better teachers.