Emerging Organizations When Implementing a Collaborative Professional Development Program

In this article, we explore an emerging organization that unfolds during the implementation of a collaborative and practice-oriented professional development program (PD) called Action Learning. In Action Learning, local mathematics supervisors facilitate meetings where mathematics teachers collaboratively discuss and develop interventions in their own teaching. Thereafter, teachers carry out their interventions and are observed by the team, who afterwards provide feedback in an evaluation meeting, thereby taking on a central role in the PD program. Drawing on qualitative interviews of teachers, local supervisors, and school managers and observations of meetings in the PD program, we investigate what roles emerge for local supervisors, and how their contributions are framed by colleagues and school managers. This identifies three simultaneously present logics among the stakeholders, positioning the supervisors in roles as project leaders, academic beacons, and equal coaches, confronting each of them with different and mutually exclusive expectations. The impact sheet to this article can be accessed at 10.6084/m9.figshare.16610119.

Self-Examination of Music Methods Teaching in a Reggio Emilia-Inspired Learning Community

Music teacher educators have taken different approaches to enrich teaching-specific reflective practice through peer collaboration. In this study, three music teacher educators examined their experiences with the process of pedagogical documentation, a form of collaborative professional development from the Reggio Emilia Approach (REA). They met via video conferencing over the course of a semester to review key concepts related to the REA, share student artifacts, and discuss teaching contexts and considerations. Through this collaboration, participants found space for sharing successes, supporting personal reflection, troubleshooting, and revisiting ideas related to teaching and learning. They deepened their attunement to how teaching contexts continually shift and the affordances and challenges of incorporating the hundred languages (a concept from REA) in higher education.

The Effects of Computerized Versus Collaborative Professional Development on Teachers’ and Students’ Performance Related to the Concept Anchoring Routine

Two studies investigated the effects of a live, collaborative Professional Development (PD) program versus individualized PD with a multimedia software program. For both studies, teachers were randomly assigned to either a Virtual Workshop (VW) group that used the software program or to an Actual Workshop (AW) group that participated in a face-to-face workshop that included collaborative activities. The same teaching routine, the Concept Anchoring Routine, was taught to the teachers in both studies. In Study 1, teachers’ scores on a knowledge test about the routine and written plans for using the routine significantly improved from pretest to posttest in both groups. The groups’ posttest scores were not significantly different. Similarly, in Study 2, both groups’ posttest scores with regard to their knowledge of the routine, their written plans for use of the routine, and their implementation of the routine in their classes were significantly higher than their baseline scores. There were no differences between the teacher groups after training. The posttest knowledge scores of the whole groups of students being taught by both groups of teachers were also significantly higher than their pretest scores. Similar significant results were achieved by the students with LD. Moreover, the whole groups of students of VW teachers earned significantly higher posttest scores than the whole groups of students of AW teachers. Both teacher groups were satisfied with the training they received and with the routine. The students of both groups were satisfied with the way their teachers used the routine to help them learn.

Professional Mindset in Troubled Times

Globally, COVID-19 has stressed social and personal tensions in professional life. This chapter focuses on the networked dimension to highlight the workers need for social connections. Some suggestions are proposed to implement an epistemic community to sustain creative and collaborative professional development in disruptive time. Two points are discussed to scaffold epistemic communities in the organisation: 1) the inter-professional dimension to embrace complex topic and 2) the emotional dimension as resources to embrace professional transformation.

Our maiden voyage: implementing virtual exchange as a collaborative professional development

Undertaking a Virtual Exchange (VE) project for the first time is supported by introductory online training and mentoring offered through the European Commission’s Erasmus+ programme, and can be a source of teacher Professional Development (PD). This study based on Exploratory Practice (EP) describes aspects of the planning and implementation of an initial VE by partners from technical universities in Łódź, Poland and Berlin, Germany, who completed the online EVOLVE training in October 2018. The current study offers a basic framework of four distinct phases of the VE as a collaborative PD project. This novel framework can support teachers engaging in their first exchange as well as contribute to an understanding of VE adoption and implementation for mentors, trainers, and researchers.