Teacher Learning and Perceptions Across the Professional Continuum

Abstract

Learning occurs throughout a teacher's career and as the result of engagement with a multitude of experiences, both within and outside of formal teacher education venues. This volume of Journal of Education contains seven articles that inform the teacher education community about teacher learning across the professional continuum. Within these pages, readers will consider three studies about effective professional development for inservice teachers (Slavit, Nelson, & Deuel; Wager & Foote; Shultz & Ravitch), one study about alternative field placements for preservice teachers (Brayko), two studies about teacher perceptions of their preparation for teaching (Smith, Corkery, Buckley, & Calvert; Eckert), and one study about teacher learning whose participants span the professional continuum (Kleickmann, Richter, Kunter, Elsner, Besser, Krauss, & Baumert). Also of note with regard to this collection of studies is the inclusion of two studies conducted outside the United States--one conducted in Germany and the other in New Engaging teacher teams in the process of collecting, analyzing, and acting on the interpretation of student data has become a widespread professional development activity in American schools; however, to date, very little empirical research has focused on that domain. In their article titled Teacher Groups' Conceptions and Uses of Student-Learning Data, David Slavit, Tamara Holmlund Nelson, and Angie Deuel make an important contribution to the literature by examining how teacher groups spend time when working with student data as well as the types of inquiry activities in which they engage. The conceptual underpinnings for the study come from a two-dimensional framework that depicts the inquiry orientation of the group as a whole as well as the dialogic interactions that occur among group members. In the second article, Locating Praxis for Equity in Mathematics: Lessons from and for Professional Development, Anita Wager and Mary Foote contribute to an emerging line of inquiry in mathematics education that considers the role of teacher education and professional development in equitable mathematics pedagogy. Using the constructs of figured worlds and praxis, the authors analyzed teachers' participation in professional development focused on both mathematics and issues of equity and diversity. The article offers compelling case studies of three teachers, selected from a larger set of teachers in the year-long professional development, to illustrate a variety of experiences and how these teachers developed identities within the figured worlds of standards-based mathematics, multicultural education, and equitable mathematics pedagogy. Particularly noteworthy is how the teachers located praxis--potential sites for transformative action--in different spaces: their own classrooms, their schools or districts, and the society at large. Investigations of preservice teachers' perceptions continue to enhance our understandings of the types of experiences that impact their learning. In the third article, Lisa Smith, Gaynor Corkery, Judy Buckley, and Amanda Calvert present findings from a study of the relationship between preservice teachers' concerns and teaching efficacy in Changes in Secondary School Preservice Concerns About Teaching in New Zealand. Through analyzing data from two survey instruments and follow-up focus group interviews, these authors contribute to the teacher education community's understandings of preservice teachers' perceptions of themselves as teachers--useful information that has implications for teacher education programs around the world. Although content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) have been linked with teachers' instructional practice and student outcomes in previous studies, little is known about the impact of teacher education on CK and PCK. The article by Thilo Kleichmann, Dirk Richter, Mareike Kunter, Jurgen Eisner, Michael Besser, Stefan Kraus, and Jurgen Baumont, Teachers' Content Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge: The Role of Structural Differences in Education, contributes to our understanding of how differences in three phases of teacher education (university studies, induction, and inservice) impact these two aspects of teacher knowledge in mathematics. …