Measuring innovation in education with a special focus on the impact of organisational characteristics

Innovations created by teachers, teacher communities and schools in their daily practice play a key role in improving the quality and effectiveness of education. As protocols, central regulations, ready-made teaching materials do not provide solutions to all problems emerging in daily practice the invention of new, original solutions are necessary to respond the challenges teachers and schools encounter in their everyday work. Similarly to other knowledge intensive professions creativity and innovativeness are necessary skills for teachers and teacher communities to work effectively. In many countries schools are encouraged to support innovative work behaviour and they are expected to manage effectively change and innovation processes. The increasing importance of innovations and innovation processes in education raises the question of how to measure innovation in this sector and how decision makers can use innovation data. This article presents some of the outcomes of an education sector innovation survey conducted in Hungary in 2018. It demonstrates the possibility to design data collection instruments that allow capturing school/department level innovation processes. The article focuses on one specific problem area: the relationship between organisational characteristics and innovation activity/behaviour.

Science and mathematics teacher communities of practice: social influences on discipline-based identity and self-efficacy beliefs

Background Teacher communities of practice, identity, and self-efficacy have been proposed to influence positive teacher outcomes in retention, suggesting all three may be related constructs. Qualitative studies of communities of practice can be difficult to empirically link to identity and self-efficacy in larger samples. In this study, we operationalized teacher communities of practice as specific networks related to teaching content and/or pedagogy. This scalable approach allowed us to quantitatively describe communities of practice and explore statistical relationships with other teacher characteristics. We asked whether these community of practice networks were related to identity and self-efficacy, similar to other conceptualizations of communities of practice. Results We analyzed survey data from 165 in-service K-12 teachers prepared in science or mathematics at 5 university sites across the USA. Descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analyses indicated that math teachers consistently reported smaller communities of practice and lower identity and self-efficacy scores. Correlations revealed that communities of practice are more strongly and positively related to identity than self-efficacy. Conclusion We demonstrate that teacher communities of practice can be described as networks. These community of practice networks are correlated with teacher identity and self-efficacy, similar to published qualitative descriptions of communities of practice. Community of practice networks are therefore a useful research tool for evaluating teacher characteristics such as discipline, identity, self-efficacy, and other possible outcomes (e.g., retention). These findings suggest that teacher educators aiming to foster strong teacher identities could develop pre-service experiences within an explicit, energizing community of practice.

Survey on Vietnamese teachers’ perspectives and perceived support during COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented damage to the educational system worldwide. Besides the measurable economic impacts in the short-term and long-term, there is intangible destruction within educational institutions. In particular, teachers – the most critical intellectual resources of any schools – have to face various types of financial, physical, and mental struggles due to COVID-19. To capture the current context of more than one million Vietnamese teachers during COVID-19, we distributed an e-survey to more than 2,500 randomly selected teachers from two major teacher communities on Facebook from 6th to 11th April 2020. From over 373 responses, we excluded the observations which violated our cross-check questions and retained 294 observations for further analysis. This dataset includes: (i) Demographics of participants; (ii) Teachers' perspectives regarding the operation of teaching activities during the pandemic; (iii) Teachers' received support from their schools, government bodies, other stakeholders such as teacher unions, and parents' associations; and (iv) teachers' evaluation of school readiness toward digital transformation. Further, the dataset was supplemented with an additional question on the teachers' primary source of professional development activities during the pandemic.

Teacher Talk in Professional Learning Communities

Professional learning communities can be important sites for teacher learning depending on the quality of the conversations in these communities. This paper shows how different activities in teacher communities support different kinds of conversation at different levels of depth, through examining the conversations of four professional learning communities of mathematics teachers over two years. Our analysis suggests three key findings. First, there were strong relationships between different activities and the content of the conversations in the communities. Second, the depth of the conversation in the communities was constant across activities and over time. Third, conversations about learner thinking, a key goal of the project, did not increase over time, but there were increases in talk about mathematics and practice. We explore the implications of these findings for teacher learning.

Designing Online Learning Environments for Flipped Approaches in Professional Mathematics Teacher Development

Aim/Purpose: Our research aims to explore which design elements and aspects of online learning environments are relevant for teachers when introduced to educational innovations such as flipped learning and, thereby, to enable facilitating the dissemination of these innovations. Background: Integrating educational innovations from academic discourses or professional teacher development into teachers’ classroom practices is challenging. Sustaining and reinforcing their effects on professional development is also difficult especially because of the lack of continuous support and inspiration for long term pedagogical changes. Online learning environments could facilitate such assistance, inspiration, and assist in developing supportive teacher communities. The current coronavirus pandemic and the associated homeschooling illustrate that supportive off- and online teacher communities and mutual support and inspiration of teachers will become increasingly significant, especially in virtual learning environments. Methodology: To discover key elements and aspects of such learning environments, an online learning environment for flipped mathematics education was developed, and its application was investigated following design-based research principles. Contribution: In this paper, specifications of design elements and aspects of our online learning environments for teachers embedded into flipped education and other educational innovations will be introduced. Findings: The evaluation of the research data using grounded theory principles indicated that if online learning environments was to promote flipped approaches in mathematics education for teachers in our study the following categories were essential: (a) teachers want to be able to make decisions concerning online learning, (b) online learning environments should illustrate advantages of approaches/technologies as well as their practical relevance, (c) online learning environments should not lead to additional work for teachers, and (d) privacy and security of online learning environments. Recommendations for Practitioners: Following results of our study, teachers should be provided with a variety of high-quality learning materials and opportunities for teachers to share their own learning materials through online learning environments in professional teacher development. However, when providing a variety of learning materials, course leaders should ensure not to overburden participants of professional teacher development. Recommendation for Researchers: For researchers, it is necessary to verify results of our qualitative study quantitatively and to apply our results in other fields of online learning as well. Focusing on the contradictions between the visibility and dissemination of innovation through OLE and teachers’ request for closed OLE could be fruitful. Impact on Society: Results of our study could also have an impact on working lives as a whole, and not just schools or professional teacher development. The corona pandemic has increased the relevance of online working and related online learning for a growing part of our society. High-quality online learning environments could play important roles in this professional transformation. Future Research: Our consecutive research step will be, on the one hand, to explore how online learning environments and their elements could support teachers in their everyday professional lives and thus shifting our research focus from professional teacher development to teaching and learning mathematics in schools. On the other hand, our future research will focus on developing quality standards for learning materials for online learning environments. Furthermore, research should also be continued in regions and subjects with less favorable conditions. This enhancement of research setting should improve the generalizability of our results.

Shared Leadership of Teachers through their Interpersonal Communication Competence

This paper examines how the interpersonal communication competences of teachers can predict their shared leadership. The empirical research for this paper was undertaken with teachers working at lower and upper secondary schools in Lithuania. The conducted regression analysis revealed that interpersonal communication skills have a significant predictive power for the shared leadership behavior of teachers. Specifically, the study uncovered that the dimensions of interpersonal communication competence, such as clarity, credibility, and familiarity, have an important positive relationship with shared leadership. The results emphasize a need to focus on the development of teachers’ interpersonal communication, stimulating shared leadership in teacher communities. The theoretical and practical implications of teacher leadership and their communication are discussed in this paper.

Fulfilling Set Objectives: A Case Study of Teacher Development in Two Primary Schools in Beijing

Purpose: This study aims to reveal the recent characteristics of school-based teacher development (STD) in China since it is perceived as a key measure to achieve success in raising educational quality in the country. Design/Approach/Methods: A qualitative research approach with in-depth interviews of 18 teachers at two primary schools in Beijing was used. Findings: Through the lens of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), it was observed that the objectives adaptation of teacher communities was made under the control of the District Education Bureau. STD provides the venue for ordinary teachers to learn, understand, and implement the teaching initiatives promoted by the district. Teacher communities at school level therefore implement continuous professional development initiatives promoted by Education Bureau teaching research officers. Originality/Value: This article argues that the administrative style of local government affected teacher community’s object, rules, and division of labor. It also contributes an indigenous interpretation of the CHAT theory.