Achieving Teacher Professional Growth Through Professional Experimentation and Changes in Pedagogical Practices

To facilitate the professional learning of teachers and bring about changes in pedagogical practices, it is necessary to understand the process by which teachers grow professionally. Professional growth can be achieved when teachers work together to engage in professional experimentation and see results in terms of salient outcomes for their students. This paper reports on a study of teachers’ pedagogical practices as they introduced adaptations to focus on personalising students’ learning in mathematics. Two cases are presented to demonstrate how teachers in two schools used student mathematics test data to determine students’ strengths and needs, in order to personalise learning experiences. The findings highlight how shared responsibility and purposeful use of student data can lead to positive professional growth for teachers and improved learning outcomes for students.

Strangers No More: Collaborative Inquiry Through Narrative as Teacher Reflective Practice

Two teachers and a professor engaged in collaborative inquiry through narrative as a form of reflective practice, pedagogical growth, and practitioner research. Using a Deweyan lens and elements of narrative inquiry, we consider our stories of teaching through a supportive, growth-based sharing process. Viewing pedagogical experiences through this lens enabled us to enter each other’s worlds and engage in reflection—together. Our work speaks to the situations that arise when expectations conflict with reality. The process of reflecting and re-reflecting led us to the conclusion that engagement in this fashion is a valuable reflexive method for teacher professional growth.

Thinking Outside the Box

Despite the fact that they are all unique, rural school districts/divisions (in Canada and elsewhere) face similar challenges when it comes to providing effective professional development (PD) for teachers. Issues related to funding, geography, staffing, and contextual differences impact the availability of PD opportunities for educators in rural contexts; however, rural school divisions possess many strengths from which solutions to these challenges might be fashioned. The question of how rural divisions might construct local teacher PD models that draw on local strengths, mitigate local challenges, and support teacher professional growth is critical to the provision of quality education for rural students. Through a single-case study design, this study examined the effectiveness of a rural initiative, the Numeracy Cohort, that was locally constructed to mitigate challenges and improve mathematics instruction and student numeracy outcomes in a school division in Manitoba, Canada. Findings from the study suggest that (a) the Numeracy Cohort model was effective in accommodating contextual differences and mitigating challenges related to funding, geography and staffing through several promising practices; (b) the PD provided to teachers was effective in supporting teacher professional growth in several ways; (c) attention to the multiple nested and dynamic contexts in which teachers worked was an important and effective element of the model; (d) fostering social interaction (among teachers and with more competent others) was important for teacher learning; and (e) finding ways to foster human engagement through mediating tools for learning (e.g., dialogue, reflection, and action research) was critical to the model’s success.

Teacher Professional Growth in Summative Assessment and Meaningful Learning: A Case Study in Pre-Vocational Geography Education in The Netherlands

Teachers’ classroom assessment practices tend to encourage rote learning instead of meaningful learning. To enhance teachers’ classroom assessment practices, teacher involvement in assessment construction appears necessary. To foster teacher professional growth in relation to this issue, a professional development programme on summative assessment and meaningful learning in pre-vocational geography education in the Netherlands was designed. In 2016, a prototype of the programme was tested and evaluated in a small-scale case study. The results suggest that the programme was feasible and practical and contributed to change in teachers’ knowledge, skills and practices.

INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISMS OF UNIVERSITY TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Purpose of the study: Conditions of qualifications’ dynamic development, rapid obsolescence of existing competencies actualize the need to create a system of continuous professional growth of teachers on staff training. The purpose of the article is to develop organizational mechanisms that contribute to the professional growth of the teacher inflexible response conditions of education to socio-economic changes. Methodology: The research methodology relies on the lifelong education concept, defining the design principles of a teacher professional growth system: consistency, continuity, self-development, participative nature, pedagogical reflexing Results: The system of the teacher’s professional growth in the educational institution possessing properties of hierarchy, flexibility, and dynamism is developed. The principles and organizational mechanisms for this system’s implementation are revealed: corporatism as a way to create targeted educational platform based on digital technology; tutoring as the insurance of the teacher’s and the educational organization’s interests through the accompany of career advancement; branding as a result of the teacher’s and the educational organization’s competitiveness in the market of educational services; road maps for planning, monitoring and support of the teacher’s career development. Applications of this study: The article is intended for teachers, managers, employees of personnel services of educational organizations. Novelty/Originality of this study: For the first time the self - learning system of the teacher professional growth is offered which is capable to exist and productively function in modern dynamic conditions at the expense of adaptive organizational mechanisms of reaction to social and economic changes.

Theory of action for resourcing professional growth

Purpose Organizational characteristics and systemic structures that prioritize and resource teacher professional growth and collaboration are central to the role of districts in developing the ongoing professional growth of teachers. Yet, a key challenge facing districts is a lack of existing systemic structures to support professional growth to foster large-scale instructional improvement. The purpose of this paper is to explore how an organizational resourcing model might be used to build districts’ collective capacity to implement the cornerstones of a professional growth system. Design/methodology/approach An explanatory case study, in the context of a partnership between a university-based intermediary and three California school districts, is used to illustrate how districts applied a theory of resourcing as a sustainable capacity-building approach. Findings The findings of this paper demonstrate that, to varying degrees, participating districts were able to enact elements of professional growth systems through a recursive interaction of schema shifts, resource use, and intentional actions, supporting a practice-based theory of organizational resourcing. While university intermediaries can both mediate and enable the success of locally designed professional growth systems through a supported resourcing model, the key to sustaining change efforts are cross-role organizational schema shifts and actions taken to operationalize underutilized existing, latent resources. Research limitations/implications Case studies do have limitations including not being able to make generalizations from the findings and conclusions. Originality/value The corpus of research on educational reform and organizational learning in educational research situates the school as the organizational unit of change. This study contributes to the research by elevating districts as the lever of organizational change for resourcing teacher professional growth systems.