Support Teacher Learning Research Articles

Improving intentions to teach in inclusive classrooms: the impact of teacher education courses on future Learning Support Teachers

Educational research is giving much attention to implicit variables such as teachers’ attitudes, self-percepts of efficacy, concerns and intentions for the successful implementation of inclusive classroom practices, thus becoming core targets in course programme planning. This study was conducted to assess the possible impact of a teacher education course for future Learning Support Teachers (LSTs) on the variables involved in planning intentional behaviour aimed at fostering school inclusion. Using the Theory of Planned Behaviour as the guiding framework, it was hypothesised that LSTs with lower degree of concerns, higher levels of teaching efficacy, and favourable attitudes are likelier to have positive intentions to implement inclusive practices. Results show that the course may have influenced these variables positively. The authors conclude that further research needs to be conducted on the teaching strategies to be used in these courses. Promuovere l’intenzionalita ad agire in favore dell’inclusione: l’impatto della formazione sugli insegnanti specializzati per il sostegno La ricerca educativa ha gia da tempo focalizzato l’attenzione sullo studio delle variabili implicite che influenzano l’agire didattico dei docenti, come gli atteggiamenti, le percezioni di auto-efficacia, le preoccupazioni e le intenzioni ad implementare pratiche didattiche inclusive. In questo filone di ricerche si inserisce il presente studio che ha come obiettivo la valutazione del possibile impatto di un corso di formazione rivolto a futuri insegnanti specializzati per le attivita di sostegno sulle variabili che intervengono nella pianificazione di comportamenti intenzionalmente volti a promuovere l’inclusione scolastica. Assumendo la Teoria del Comportamento Pianificato come framework teorico di riferimento, l’ipotesi da cui muove lo studio e che gli insegnanti che mostrano minori preoccupazioni, livelli piu elevati di auto-efficacia e atteggiamenti favorevoli, rivelino un’intenzionalita maggiore nell’attuazione di pratiche inclusive. I risultati evidenziano che l’attivita di formazione potrebbe aver influenzato positivamente queste variabili, invitando ad ulteriori approfondimenti circa le strategie didattiche da impiegare nei percorsi formativi.

Challenges and Opportunities in the Implementation of School-Based Teacher Professional Development: A Case from Kenya

This study investigated how a school-based professional development programme, designed by the Headteacher and staff of a Kenyan primary school, and delivered by a Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) team, supported teacher learning and growth. The TESSA team observed teaching in the classroom before the implementation of the school-based teacher professional programme. This was followed by the training of the teachers in the school. The TESSA team did an evaluation of the school-based training programme through classroom observation, an interview schedule and a teacher questionnaire. The evaluations were done three months and one year, respectively, after the school-based training. The findings indicate that teachers experienced professional growth through collaborative learning with colleagues, used a greater range of approaches and learned to self-reflect on their classes with more use of active learning. Teachers made productive use of textbooks as well as accessing and using TESSA OER in teaching.

The impact of multimedia educative curriculum materials (MECMs) on teachers’ beliefs about scientific argumentation

ABSTRACTRecent reform efforts in science education include a focus on science practices. Teachers require support in integrating these practices into instruction. Multimedia educative curriculum materials (MECMs), digital materials explicitly designed to support teacher learning, offer one potential resource for this critical need. Consequently, the authors investigated how teachers used MECMs and whether that use impacted their beliefs about the practice of scientific argumentation. They conducted a randomised experimental study with 90 middle school science teachers in the USA. Control and experimental groups taught the same curriculum, using a web-based teacher’s guide. Additionally, experimental teachers received MECMs including 24 videos and 17 interactive reflective prompts. The authors collected multiple data sources: pre-surveys, backend website curriculum use, self-report curriculum use and post-surveys. Results suggest that enacting a curriculum with a focus on argumentation is associated with positive changes in teachers’ beliefs about this practice. Furthermore, the authors observed a wide range in how teachers used the curriculum. In terms of self-efficacy, this differential use was associated with differences in changes to teachers’ beliefs about argumentation. Teachers who enacted more lessons became more confident in their ability to teach argumentation. Additionally, experimental teachers had smaller improvements in self-efficacy, perhaps because the MECM videos problematised what teachers thought counted as argumentation.

An investigation of supporting teacher learning in the context of a common decomposition for leading mathematics discussions

An investigation of supporting teacher learning in the context of a common decomposition for leading mathematics discussions

Developing a trellis of practices that support learning in the workplace

ABSTRACTVocational Education and Training (VET) teachers often begin teaching without teaching qualifications, and much of their learning necessarily takes place in the workplace. VET teaching is recognised as complex and requiring a broad range of skills and capabilities. At the same time, support for VET teacher learning in the workplace has been limited and ad hoc, with little focus on what workbased arrangements might better support teacher learning. Drawing on a study of novice VET teachers, this paper highlights the importance of VET teacher learning in the workplace and considers the site-based arrangements that enable and constrain novice teacher learning. The paper argues that when practices that support learning are interconnected to form a trellis, teacher learning is better supported than when practices that support learning are isolated and do not interconnect with each other. The paper concludes that novice teacher learning in the workplace needs to be supported through a range of site-based arrangements, and that these will be most effective if they form a strong trellis of inter-related practices that support learning in the workplace.

Compiling video cases to support PD facilitators in noticing productive teacher learning

BackgroundResearch studies on facilitating professional development describe the knowledge and skills facilitators need to effectively attend to teachers’ learning processes. In this context, some studies gave rise to the question how to design learning opportunities to prepare facilitators to support teachers’ learning during professional development. The approaches share putting mathematics specialized content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge on the professional development level and facilitation moves in the center. Research findings also highlight the role of video-based learning opportunities to qualify facilitators respectively. In particular, structured approaches that guide facilitators noticing toward advancing teacher learning have to be proven effective. Although research highlights using video-based material as a training tool for facilitators, what exactly the learning opportunities should consist of is up for discussion. In this article, we report on a validation study concerned with designing video cases, taken from a videotaped teacher professional development. We explored how eight experienced facilitators perceived the representativeness and the quality of the video cases for using them in facilitator professional development with respect to specialized content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge on the professional development level, and facilitation moves. Additionally, we investigated what facilitation moves are noticeable in the video cases, and what noticing prompts can enhance these learning opportunities.ResultsOur results indicate that all video cases present vital opportunities to discuss how to support teacher learning in terms of specialized content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge on the professional development level and facilitation moves. Our analyses provide insights into facilitators thinking processes, thus enriching their ratings by ideas and concerns considering the final implementation of the video cases in facilitator professional development. On the basis of our validation study, we were able to carefully check the learning opportunities that the chosen video cases can provide for facilitator professional development.ConclusionsThis paper provides information on how to design video-based learning opportunities for facilitator professional development. Although our results are of course bound to the six video cases we selected, our approach can be transferred to other contexts. The procedure of compiling the video cases and validating them takes up the most prominent research findings on designing facilitator professional development and pays careful attention to experiences facilitators thinking. We exemplarily show how the empirical evidence can be used to prepare facilitator PD.

Lesson study design features for supporting collaborative teacher learning

Teacher learning communities have been promoted as a promising approach to promote systemwide improvement of teaching and student learning. However, our knowledge about what design features of collaborative learning processes in teacher groups support teacher learning is still limited. Based on a teacher survey of lesson study, this study found that facilitators’ focus on student thinking, the quality of materials, and duration of lesson study were significantly associated with teacher participation in an effective inquiry process, which in turn is associated with perceived positive changes in teacher knowledge, self-efficacy, and expectation.

Facilitating learning about academic phraseology: teaching activities for student writers

Academic Phrasebank is an online, open-access compendium of formulaic phrases for academic writers, created and continuously developed at the University of Manchester. Originally developed for student writers whose first language is not English, data suggests that over half of the many users are in fact native speakers of English. Underpinned by current approaches to academic text analysis and to understanding the phraseological nature of language, the Academic Phrasebank has become a well-known and widely-used resource which many learning support teachers recommend to students at all levels of study, mainly as a self-study or quick reference tool. In order to explore ways to facilitate learning about academic phraseology, this paper seeks to demonstrate how exercises developed from Academic Phrasebank can be used to help student writers to better understand the nature and role of academic phrases and to improve their academic writing. The usefulness of different exercise types is discussed, drawing on comments from learning developers. The implication of the study is that such teaching activities can facilitate student engagement with academic phrases and help them to write more effectively.

From Checklists to Heuristics: Designing MOOCs to Support Teacher Learning

BackgroundAlthough much is known from educational research about factors that support K–12 teacher professional learning, it has been an ongoing challenge to incorporate these factors into practice in new contexts and environments. We argue that these factors are too often treated like a checklist of discrete elements, either present or not, insufficiently attending to the complexities of design and experience. To understand how Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) might support K–12 teacher learning, it is critical to move beyond application of discrete factors to nuanced navigation of the interplay among researcher examination and theorization, designer intention and implementation, and learner use and experience—balancing considerations of learning theory, instructional objectives and specific learning context, and the desires, needs, and experiences of participants.Focus of StudyThis study examines MOOCs as a medium for supporting teacher professional learning. What did K–12 teachers identify as meaningful about their participation in the Creative Computing Online Workshop (CCOW), a large-scale, constructionist, online learning experience for teachers? How do the teachers’ experiences relate to each other, to learning research, and to the affordances of MOOCs?Research DesignThis qualitative, interview-based study draws on 15 semistructured interviews with participants 1 year after they completed CCOW, as well as course artifacts. We used an iterative approach to develop common themes reflecting what teachers found meaningful and key tensions present in these themes.FindingsTeachers described four qualities as most meaningful to their learning: activity, peers, culture, and relevance. Although these qualities were often mutually supporting, three key tensions among the qualities and the implications for the design of online teacher learning experiences are discussed: autonomy, with structure; diversity, with commonality; and experimentation, with validation.ConclusionsThis article challenges the notion that implementing successful professional development for K–12 teachers is simply a matter of following a checklist of design elements. This study presents qualities that teachers found meaningful in an online learning experience, offering heuristics that designers might consider when designing for their specific contexts. Future research might assess to what extent the qualities and tensions identified in this study apply to other contexts, and explore the reasons why contextual changes may or may not influence results.

Educational infrastructure, professional learning, and changes in teachers’ instructional practices and beliefs

School systems around the world are adopting more intellectually ambitious academic content in the hopes of improving their educational productivity. In the United States, these efforts have required significant changes to teachers’ instructional practices, and increased attention to teachers’ formal and on-the-job professional learning opportunities. Focusing on the initial implementation of a reform-oriented approach to teaching mathematics in two local school systems in the United States, this paper examines whether – and under what circumstances – elementary teachers’ professional learning opportunities predict changes in their instructional practices and beliefs related to mathematics. Our findings reveal that teachers’ on-the-job interactions during the first year of reform predicted changes in their instructional practices; further, these changes were associated with the infrastructures that local school systems created to support teacher learning in mathematics. Teachers’ participation in formal professional development, in contrast, predicted changes in their instructional beliefs, but not their practices. These findings have implications for future efforts to design formal and on-the-job professional learning opportunities that support ambitious educational reforms.

Learning progressions as tools for supporting teacher content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge about water in environmental systems

AbstractResearch on learning progressions has led to advances in understanding student learning about big ideas in science, but teachers struggle to leverage the full potential of learning progressions for classroom instruction. Because learning progressions lay out how students' ideas change over a long period of time, learning progressions could help teachers build better understanding of student thinking, appropriate learning goals, and instructional moves for supporting students in developing more sophisticated ideas. In this study, we explored the potential of learning progression‐based curriculum materials to support teachers in developing more sophisticated content knowledge (CK) and pedagocial content knowledge (PCK) for teaching about water in environmental systems. Teachers participated in professional development that introduced them to a learning progression for water in environmental systems and curriculum materials based on this learning progression. Teachers completed written assessments of their CK and PCK prior to the workshops and a year later. Analyses showed that teachers who taught lessons using the learning progression‐based curriculum materials showed modest increases in CK, knowledge of learning goals, and knowledge of student thinking. These increases were greater than analogous changes evident for teachers who did not use the curriculum materials. However, even among those who implemented the curriculum materials, teachers' post‐assessment performance did not yet reflect knowledge for supporting students in developing model‐based reasoning about water. These results show that learning progressions have potential for supporting teacher learning, but that the ubiquity of traditional school science discourse may limit their potential for both student and teacher progress toward model‐based reasoning.

Fostering Impactful Research Experiences for Teachers (RETs)

The National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States funds Research Experiences for Teachers (RETs) for K-12 science teachers. The RET program seeks to provide science teachers with research experiences so they can provide enhanced science or engineering inquiry experiences for their students. One form of RET that focuses on science pedagogy has resulted in some promising changes in teachers’ thinking and lesson design. This case study examines how a cohort of ten secondary science teachers’ inquiry conceptions and lesson design changed after participating in a science pedagogy RET, and analyzes the relationship between the components of the program and changes seen in teachers’ inquiry conceptions and lessons. Significant changes in teachers’ inquiry conceptions and particularly their lessons were a result of teacher adoption of the inquiry-based instructional modeled during the science pedagogy RET. A theory of action is proposed for RET design that would better promote and support teacher learning and foster changes in classroom instruction.

Teachers' learning to facilitate high‐level student thinking: Impact of a video‐based professional development

AbstractAttaining the vision for science teaching and learning emphasized in the Framework for K‐12 Science Education and the next generation science standards (NGSS) will require major shifts in teaching practices in many science classrooms. As NGSS‐inspired cognitively demanding tasks begin to appear in more and more science classrooms, facilitating students' engagement in high‐level thinking as they work on these tasks will become an increasingly important instructional challenge to address. This study reports findings from a video‐based professional development effort (i.e., professional development [PD] that use video‐clips of instruction as the main artifact of practice to support teacher learning) to support teachers' learning to select cognitively demanding tasks and to support students' learning during the enactment of these tasks in ways that are aligned with the NGSS vision. Particularly, we focused on the NGSS's charge to get students to make sense of and deeply think about scientific ideas as students try to explain phenomena. Analyses of teachers' pre‐ and post‐PD instruction indicate that PD‐participants began to adopt instructional practices associated with facilitating these kinds of student thinking in their own classrooms. The study has implications for the design of video‐based professional development for science teachers who are learning to facilitate the NGSS vision in science classrooms.

Elementary Teachers’ Use of an Educative Curriculum Document to Support Teacher Learning: Based on 2015 revised National Social Studies Curriculum

Elementary Teachers’ Use of an Educative Curriculum Document to Support Teacher Learning: Based on 2015 revised National Social Studies Curriculum

Examining the design features of a communication-rich, problem-centred mathematics professional development

ABSTRACTWhile there is considerable scholarship describing principles for effective professional development, there have been few attempts to examine these principles in practice. In this paper, we identify and examine the particular design features of a mathematics professional development experience provided for middle grades teachers over 14 weeks. The professional development was grounded in a set of mathematical tasks that each had one right answer, but multiple solution paths. The facilitator engaged participants in problem solving and encouraged participants to work collaboratively to explore different solution paths. Through analysis of this collaborative learning environment, we identified five design features for supporting teacher learning of important mathematics and pedagogy in a problem-solving setting. We discuss these design features in depth and illustrate them by presenting an elaborated example from the professional development. This study extends the existing guidance for the design of professional development by examining and operationalizing the relationships among research-based features of effective professional development and the enacted features of a particular design.

Effects of professional development on the quality of teaching: Results from a randomised controlled trial of Quality Teaching Rounds

Robust evidence of the effectiveness of professional development for teachers is limited. This study tested a pedagogy-based, collaborative PD approach for impact on the quality of teaching. A cluster randomised controlled trial involving eight teachers at each of 24 schools found significant positive effects on teaching quality (d = 0.4), independent of school type (primary/secondary), school location (urban/rural), and years of teaching experience. These effects were sustained six months later. Qualitative data are used to illustrate mechanisms underpinning the success of the intervention. This study illuminates how to support teacher learning for measurable positive impacts on teaching quality and teacher morale.

Mathematics teachers’ self-captured video and opportunities for learning

Numerous video-based programs have been developed to support mathematics teachers in reflecting on and examining classrooms interactions without the immediate demands of instruction. An important premise of such work is that teacher learning occurs at the time that the video is viewed and discussed with teachers. Recent advances in technology, however, offer new approaches for the use of video with teachers. We claim that these new technologies provide important opportunities for teacher learning prior to the viewing and discussion of video with colleagues. In particular, we believe that important teacher learning can occur from the activities of (1) capturing video from one’s own classroom and (2) selecting clips to share with others. The goal of this article is to introduce key strategies that three groups of middle and high school mathematics teachers use prior to, during, and after instruction as they engage in this work. We believe that increased attention to these strategies is necessary in order to better understand how to support teacher learning in the context of new digital technologies.

Educative Curriculum Materials: Uptake, Impact, and Implications for Research and Design

The authors synthesize the findings of a research project to extend what is known about educative curriculum materials, or curriculum materials designed with the intent of supporting teacher learning as well as student learning. Drawing on a three-year program of research, including several close observational case studies and a large-scale quasi-experiment, the authors demonstrate how teachers use curriculum materials, what evidence there is of teachers’ uptake of ideas in educative curriculum materials, and what evidence there is of impact on teacher and/or student knowledge. These findings are situated in the literature, and the authors discuss how, taken together, the findings suggest design principles for educative curriculum materials. The authors close with implications for research.

Measuring the impact of professional development for student-centred pedagogies: a mixed-methods study

Shifts towards student-centred pedagogies require high-quality professional development to support teacher learning. Although many characteristics of effective professional development have been identified, such programmes still struggle to demonstrate successful results. This mixed-methods study investigated the development of student-centred practices in middle-school teachers in the USA in response to a programme of professional development. Participants engaged in individualized programmes of professional development built around personal action research projects. Quantitative results showed a significant decline in student-centred practices, and explanatory qualitative data indicated differences in the perception of the focus of the professional development and engagement with dissemination. Mixed analyses indicated previously unobserved similarities across participants, highlighting the difficulty of measuring the impact of professional development using only quantitative or qualitative approaches. The impact of this professional development and implications for the study of similar programmes are discussed.

Focusing on Teacher Learning Opportunities to Identify Potentially Productive Coaching Activities

Instructional improvement initiatives in many districts include instructional coaching as a primary form of job-embedded support for teachers. However, the coaching literature provides little guidance about what activities coaches should engage in with teachers to improve instruction. When researchers do propose activities, they rarely justify why those activities might support teacher learning. Drawing on the preservice and inservice teacher education literatures, we present a conceptual analysis of learning activities that have the potential to support mathematics and science teachers to improve practice. We argue that our analysis can inform research on mathematics and science coaching, coaching policies, and the design of professional learning for coaches.