Assessing Teaching Practices Development With Multimodal Narratives

Abstract

This chapter focuses on teachers' professional development, on the task design and on experimental work, as well as on the role of the teachers' mediation in the quality of student learning. The research problem was how the teacher can promote self-directed professional development, namely, improving the quality of teaching practices to influence the quality of students' learning, in their engagement in experimental tasks and epistemic practices. A longitudinal research methodology was followed during 10 years, based on a qualitative case study, from a curricular approach in secondary education. The analysis of data collection on teaching practices and students' learning over time and the teachers' professional pathways allow to formulate the following conclusions: (1) new traits of teaching practices were identified that promote students' productive engagement; (2) changes to the task design were enough to trigger differences in teachers' mediation, with consequences for students' epistemic practices and their productive engagement.