Clemson University's Teacher Learning Progression Program

This chapter provides an overview of Clemson University's Teacher Learning Progression program, which offers participating middle school science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM) teachers with personalized advanced credentials. In contrast to typical professional development (PD) approaches, this program identifies individualized pathways for PD based on teachers' unique interests and needs and offers PD options through the use of a “recommender system”—a system providing context-specific recommendations to guide teachers toward the identification of preferred PD pathways and content. In this chapter, the authors introduce the program and highlight (1) the data collection and instrumentation needed to make personalized PD recommendations, (2) the recommender system, and (3) the personalized advanced credential options. The authors also discuss lessons learned through initial stages of project implementation and consider future directions for the use of recommender systems to support teacher PD, considering both research and applied implications and settings.

Using and Adapting Simulated Teaching Experiences to Support Preservice Teacher Learning

This chapter provides a set of recommendations for teacher educators interested in using simulated teaching experiences to support teacher learning of pedagogical practice in the post-COVID era. Built from existing research, the recommendations from the study come from lessons learned as five elementary mathematics and science teacher educators used a simulated teaching experience to support preservice teacher learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors begin by situating this work in the larger context of practice-based teacher education and then provide an in-depth description of how five teacher educators at different universities integrated a simulated teaching experience into their elementary mathematics or science methods course. The chapter ends with a discussion of lessons learned and how educator preparation programs and teacher educators can leverage the opportunities created by using simulated teaching experiences in the post-COVID era.

Implementation of The Thematic-Integrative Learning to Enhance Students Skill in The 4.0 Era

This research aims to describe the design of thematic-integrative learning model, its implementation in the learning process, the influence of the model on enhancing students' 4C's skill (Communication, Cooperative, Critical thinking, Creativity), and the analysis of the supporting hindering factors that may affect the implementation of the learning model. The research utilized a qualitative approach with a descriptive analytics method. This study collected its data through an interview, observation, and documentation. The result reveals that thematic-integrative learning can increase students' ability in the era of 4.0. The outcome is demonstrated by students' competency in formulating a project and its report. Thus, it is shown that students' capability in using technology, collaboration, written and spoken communication, self-management, critical and creative thinking, and problem-solving can be sharpened. Moreover, the supporting factors found in this research are a competent teacher, learning curriculum, active students, school facilities and expenses. On the other hand, the factors that may hinder the implementation are the disparity of the teachers' proficiency, the integration of curriculum, which is often inaccurate, students' unique character and capability, facilities that are not yet optimal, and an extensive cost for projects and performances.

Commodifying Teacher Learning to Recruit: A Needs Analysis of Utah's Teaching as a Profession Curriculum

Drawing from the State of Utah’s Teaching as a Profession strands and standards documents, along with documents, web sites, and videos from supporting organizations like Educators Rising and its parent entities, this intrinsic case study sought to surface the perceived and relative teacher learning needs Utah’s curriculum developers appear to hold for secondary students interested in teaching and education careers. Six central teacher learning needs were identified in the study: 1) learning about the teaching profession; 2) developing a standardized vocabulary for education and teaching; 3) understanding teaching as a cycle with measurable outcomes; 4) producing teaching materials; 5) cultivating teaching skills, and 6) identifying difference in/between students. The study includes a discussion of the above needs and how the state and its partners have commodified early teacher learning by encouraging narrow, technical view of such learning while also promoting participation in a marketplace for educational credentials.

PEDAGOGICAL COURSE PROJECTS: AN INTERPRETATION THROUGH THE KNOWLEDGE MATRIX

This article analyzes three Pedagogical Course Projects (PPC) in the area of Biological Sciences through a research instrument called Matrix of Knowledge – M(S). The methodological procedures were based on Discursive Textual Analysis (ATD). The vertical and horizontal readings of the M(S) Matrix revealed, respectively, the following distributions of the analyzed excerpts: 77.2% were in column 3 (teaching) and 85.5% were allocated in the first line (epistemic). Data analysis also revealed an important gap: it is the absence of excerpts in column 2 of the M(S), dedicated to the determinations of knowledge in relation to teacher learning. This is a worrying result, as the PPCs do not mention or provide considerations for teachers about how to conduct their classes (methodological aspects), how to think about content perspectives (epistemic aspects), finally, how to develop the conditions of the teaching action.

Restructuring mathematics teaching | learning: Co-teaching as a designed approach to teachers' collaborative inquiry

<p>This study explores how participation in collaborative inquiry opens space for an expanded set of understandings and practices for mathematics teaching | learning. It examines the affordances of collaborative inquiry to promote, or constrain, teacher learning in the context of teachers’ day to day work. Sociocultural perspectives underpin the study whereby professional learning is presumed to be situated in the social and cultural contexts of teachers’ work. A survey of the literature supports the assumption that persistent underachievement in mathematics for some groups of learners requires shifts in what teachers know and can do and reveals the importance of collaboration and inquiry for teacher learning. The study involved a participatory, design-based approach underpinned by an authentic and appreciative inquiry stance. Design-based research was chosen for its proximity to practice and its focus on connections between the enactment of learning designs and outcomes of interest. The research was iterative and cyclical whereby the researcher worked with a group of four teachers in one New Zealand primary school to design, implement and refine an approach to teachers’ collaborative inquiry. A range of data were gathered during a 6-month collaboration, including from teacher interviews, classroom observations and three-weekly group meetings. The analysis took a pragmatic and multi-theoretical approach to examine what it meant to design and enact teachers’ collaborative inquiry. Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) was employed to capture the complexity of the teachers’ collaborative inquiry activity and to analyse and interpret the contradictions that arose. A key finding was that a co-teaching inquiry approach fostered conditions that afforded teachers’ expanded access to and depth of engagement with new, and often dissonant, practice ideas. Through co-teaching, mathematics teaching | learning was restructured within three interconnected fields of practice: the teachers’ enacted practice, their talk about practice, and their noticing of student thinking within practice. The co-teaching inquiry activity was increasingly directed at a collective purpose; involved an interplay of risk and trust; supported shifts in teachers’ roles and responsibilities; and allowed teachers to constantly renegotiate the goals of their shared activity. The co-teaching arrangement disrupted practice whereby teachers’ actions served as minor interruptions to each other’s practice and thus became a resource for teacher learning. Opportunities to engage deeply with one another’s practice opened space for an expanded set of actions for each of the teachers in their own practice. This thesis adds nuanced understandings of the interrelated roles of collaboration and inquiry in improving teaching. It contributes to the growing body of literature exploring co-teaching arrangements for teacher learning, in this case in the previously under-examined context of teachers’ collaborative inquiry for their ongoing professional learning. It offers insights into how co-teaching might support teachers to enact new and challenging pedagogies aimed at addressing the persistent and considerable challenges posed by an ethical imperative to promote mathematics learning for diverse (all) students. Participating in the co-construction of a design for their collaborative inquiry enabled teachers to restructure their work and expand the possibilities for their individual and collective practice. It allowed teachers to reconstruct their identities from the lone operator whose professional reputation needs protection from exposure of any weaknesses in their mathematics knowledge or practice, to a learner whose naïve questions and gaps in practice served as a resource for all in their learning.</p>