Adapting to a Design-Based Professional Learning Intervention

Barbara Brown,Ronna Mosher,Kirk Linton,Sharon Friesen,Man-Wai Chu

doi:10.15460/eder.5.2.1658

Abstract

Designing a systematic inquiry-based, and knowledge-building experience through continuous professional learning for teachers is a key challenge for school authorities. A total of 26 teachers, five principals, three researchers, one graduate student, and two contract professionals from a university were involved in a research-practice partnership. The partners engaged in a yearlong design-based professional learning series. In this study, design-based research was used as the methodology to understand the participant responses to professional learning during the design, enactment, and refinement phases used to design the professional learning series. Open-ended survey responses, researcher field notes and documents from the professional learning sessions were analyzed throughout the study and during three phases of the learning design. The results indicated there were four key shifts and corresponding adaptations made by the participants as they responded to and engaged in a continuous model of professional learning.

Highlights

An extensive body of research has documented elements of high-quality teacher professional learning and called for shifts in how ongoing professional learning is conceptualized, designed, and led (Archibald, Coggshall, Croft, & Goe, 2011; Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Gardner, 2017; Desimone, 2009; Labone & Long, 2016)
We describe how teachers responded to a non-linear and multi-occasioned design-based professional learning (DBPL) intervention to strengthen teachers’ assessment literacy and practice
We report on the data related to the specific way teachers responded to the design, enactment, and refinement phases and the resulting adaptations and shifts in thinking that occurred during the DBPL series

Summary

Introduction

An extensive body of research has documented elements of high-quality teacher professional learning and called for shifts in how ongoing professional learning is conceptualized, designed, and led (Archibald, Coggshall, Croft, & Goe, 2011; Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Gardner, 2017; Desimone, 2009; Labone & Long, 2016) These shifts in recommendation and practice are based on the recognized limitations of conventional professional development, its emphasis on single-event deliveries of activities and the mental processes of individual learners, its view of teachers as implementers of the knowledge and assurances of others, and its inattentiveness to the multiple dimensions of teacher context (Borko, Jacobs, & Koellner, 2010; Dadds, 2014; Stein, Smith, & Silver, 1999; Webster-Wright, 2009). It considers adjustments in response and participation among a group of teachers newly encountering professional learning based in iterative design cycles of collaborative study and classroom action

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Discussion

Conclusion