Elementary Teachers' Concept Definition for “Doing Mathematics” When Situatively Engaged in Physical Computing Professional Development Experiences

The knowledge and pedagogies needed for immersion classrooms are unique and complex. Although there is a growing body of research on immersion pedagogy, there is a dearth of research on professional development (PD) experiences that positively impact immersion teacher practices. This chapter focuses on exploring immersion teacher perceptions of PD experiences in the area of language-focused content instruction that have a positive impact on their teaching. The theoretical framework guiding the study is “communities of practice” (CoP) (Wenger, 1998), and survey and focus group data were analyzed in relation to Wenger’s four realms of CoP (community, practice, meaning, and identity). Findings revealed specific features of high impact assignments and PD experiences. The chapter concludes with implications for designing meaningful and effective PD experiences for immersion educators and others who teach in CBI settings.

This qualitative investigation followed a narrative inquiry research approach to determine how 5 teachers, identified as efficacious and committed to life-long learning, perceived the experiences of their professional development. In-depth interviews were conducted to answer two research questions: 1) how do efficacious teachers perceive professional development experiences? 2) which professional development experiences do efficacious teachers consider the most and least important in terms of improving instruction? Data analyses included transcribing, coding, and constructing five narratives. Findings indicated that teachers value professional development experiences that offer relevant knowledge, time for reflective thinking, practical knowledge, and empowerment to make better choices regarding instruction. It was also highlighted that the lack of time, and lack of discussing ideas or problems with colleagues was barriers teachers confronted when applying new learning. On these bases some suggestions were made to be given due consideration.

Social emotional well-being has a direct effect on school performance. Students who engage in prosocial peer interactions and feel a connectedness to school are more likely to experience growth in their social emotional competence and academic performance. Often, students who live in high stress environments come to school with inadequate skills in this area, affecting their ability to self-regulate, attend, and interact with others. However, these skills can be directly taught to students and improved through regular instruction and practice. Mindfulness practices serve as a gateway skill for developing social emotional well-being and are becoming more commonly used in the school setting. Using the perspectives of elementary teachers in Pennsylvania who have attended professional development and thus implemented mindfulness practices into their classrooms, an instrumental case study was conducted. The study explored how teachers describe the effects of mindfulness practices on their students' social emotional well-being, classroom climate, and overall academic performance. Nine elementary teachers in public schools in Pennsylvania participated in the study, which included a semi-structured interview and completion of a participant journal. All teachers had participated in at least eight hours of district-provided professional development series and had implemented mindfulness practices into their classrooms at least three times per week. The interviews were analyzed to gain insight into the participants' perspectives of their professional development, their personal and professional experiences with mindfulness practices, and the perceived effects of mindfulness practices on the students in their classrooms. Four thematic findings emerged: (a) opportunities for professional development, (b) personal mindfulness practices of teachers, (c) social emotional learning and mindfulness practices in the classroom, and (d) the effects of mindfulness practices on students in the classroom setting. From the findings, four results were drawn regarding the implications of implementing mindfulness in school settings. First, teachers expressed the need and desire for ongoing, supported professional development. Secondly, the teacher serves as a model in the classroom, establishing an environment in which desired, prosocial behaviors and social emotional competence are modeled for students. Thirdly, the data analysis showed that the implementation of mindfulness practices can serve as a means to develop social emotional competence in students. Finally, the analysis of participant responses indicated that mindfulness practices had a positive effect on student learning and classroom interactions. The study concluded and recommended implementing mindfulness practices into school settings with potential benefits for administrators and teachers as well as students. This recommendation begins with recognizing the importance of social emotional learning for students and supporting both pre-service and practicing teachers in the development of their own social emotional well-being. Given the impact of social emotional learning on all facets of education, administrators and educational leaders should advocate for support and funding for programs that would support social emotional development in school settings. Recommendations for future research include expanding the study to additional sites or extended years of implementation, an in-depth examination of professional development opportunities and structure, consideration of the educational leader's role in encouraging social emotional learning and self-care for educators, analysis of mindfulness programs implemented with fidelity, and the addition of student and family perceptions of mindfulness practices into the current research base. Keywords: social emotional learning, mindfulness practices, prosocial classroom, emotional intelligence, professional development

An electronic survey was used to conduct a needs and capacity assessment of health education faculty to determine the extent to which advocacy instruction is present in undergraduate and graduate curricula in health education and to identify faculty members' needs and capacity to provide professional preparation and development experiences related to advocacy. An analysis of the results reveals that most undergraduate and graduate health education programs include advocacy instruction. Although faculty believe advocacy and instruction related to advocacy are important, many lack advocacy-related professional preparation and development experiences and do not participate in advocacy-related training initiatives and advocacy activities. There is wide variability in faculty confidence in their competence to provide advocacy instruction. Partnerships among professional organizations, health education practitioners, university faculty, individuals engaged in policy advocacy initiatives, and policy makers are needed to enhance the capacity of university faculty to provide professional preparation and development experiences related to advocacy.

Professional development is an important tool for supporting early childhood teachers in implementing developmentally appropriate practices and child-guided instruction in the classroom. This phenomenological study explored five U.S. novice early childhood education teachers’ experiences with professional development. Specifically, we explored how these teachers’ perceptions of their professional development experiences were interwoven with individual-level characteristics and organizational-level features. Findings suggest that participating teachers’ self-efficacy and perceptions of school climate strongly influenced their perceptions of professional development. Participants described valuing hands-on learning opportunities and social support. All reported feeling unprepared for certain aspects of their role as an early educator; however, participants responded to these feelings differently. Findings have implications for improving induction and professional development for novice early childhood educators.

Richardson and Placier (2001) describe the substantial literature base on teacher change as both “vast and scattered” (p. 906). Cuban (1993) argues that this body of knowledge more accurately describes teachers’ resistance to change, particularly in the areas of classroom management and teaching/learning processes and interactions. Whether the focus of inquiry is on change or constancy (Cuban) in the classroom, there are a number of lenses from which to examine both sides of this phenomenon, and a larger number of factors that are thought to influence change, or constancy, in teaching. The lenses can include perspectives based on such things as (a) career developmental stages, (b) personal biography, (c) teaching warrant, (d) teacher preparation programming, and (e) professional experience (Richardson & Placier). As the metaphor suggests, these and other lenses provide ways to examine why and how teachers select change or constancy in their daily practices. Change influences are those more or less specific factors that lead teachers to change, or to remain constant in their classroom practices: (a) classroom context, (b) school context, (c) administrative support, (d) professional development experiences, and (e) advanced preparation. Richardson and Placier (2001) divide those factors into two main groupings: organizational influences, and individual and small group influences. The former group can be categorized as external-locus factors, whereas the latter group is a combination of a person’s internal-locus factors and those coming from his or her immediate social interactions, perhaps with others in a teacher education program cohort, or those who teach the same subject in the same school (i.e., for in-service teachers). Inquiries into teacher change/constancy must carefully consider both a lens and a set of potentially influencing factors. The selection of the lens can inform researchers about how, when, and where to examine change; choices about whether to study organizational or individual/small group factors (or both) will determine what factors get the most scrutiny.

In the last twenty years in US science education, professional development has emphasized the need to change science instruction from a direct instruction model to a more participatory and constructivist learning model. The result of these reform efforts has seen an increase in science education professional development that is focused on providing teaching strategies that promote inquiry learning to learn science content. Given these reform efforts and teacher responses to professional development, research seems to indicate that whether teachers actually change their practice may depend on the teachers' basic epistemological beliefs about the nature of science. The person who builds the bridge between teacher beliefs and teacher practice is the designer and facilitator of science teacher professional development. Even though these designers and facilitators of professional development are critical to science teacher change, few have studied how these professionals approach their work and what influence their beliefs have on their professional development activities. Eight developers and designers of science education professional development participated in this study through interviews and the completion of an online questionnaire. To examine the relationship between professional development providers' science beliefs and their design, development, and implementation of professional development experiences for science teachers, this study used the Views on Science Education Questionnaire (VOSE), and interview transcripts as well as analysis of the documents from teacher professional development experiences. Through a basic interpretive qualitative analysis, the predominant themes that emerged from this study suggest that the nature of science is often equated with the practice of science, personal beliefs about the nature of science have a minimal impact on the design of professional development experiences, current reform efforts in science education have a strong influence on the design of professional development, and those providing science education professional development have diverse views about epistemology and the nature of science. The results and conclusions from this study lead to a discussion of implications and recommendations for the planning and design of professional development for science teachers, including the need to making equity and social justice issues an integral part of inquiry and scientific practice.

The purpose of this study was to better understand teacher tensions in professional development. The population under study was practicing mathematics teachers engaged in a week-long professional development institute. Data sources included observations, interviews, and teacher products (such as registration forms, surveys, journals, and notebooks). The data were analyzed to determine what tensions were evident in the institute and how those tensions arose. In this paper, we examine participants’ tensions in a professional development situation when their expectations did not match reality. We have done so by presenting a theoretical model of professional development based on an instructional rhombus that illuminates the actual and applicatory aspects of teachers’ professional development experiences. The main tensions expressed by the teachers were related to the content and pedagogy of the institute. This study points toward the importance of teachers’ expectations in professional development.

Narrating professional development trajectories in the context of the Statecraft X game-based learning curriculum

Inservice science teachers' views of a professional development workshop and their learning of force and motion concepts

We examine the role of organizational supports and barriers in shaping teachers’ professional development experiences across 46 education systems. We uncover overwhelmingly consistent and compelling results that providing organizational support and eliminating organizational barriers is associated with positive professional development outcomes. These supports are not just financial incentives or opportunities for career progression, but also arrangements that honor teachers’ time, their lives outside work, and their resource investments. These include release and readjustment in teaching time, study leave, reimbursement for costs incurred, and access to necessary materials. Similarly, eliminating organizational barriers to ensure programs align with teachers’ existing qualifications and needs and are attentive to teachers’ lives and obligations beyond school hours is also important. The consistency of these findings across diverse education systems offers insights for designing impactful and scalable PD experiences.

Incorporating computational thinking (CT) ideas into core subjects, such as mathematics and science, is one way of bringing early computer science (CS) education into elementary school. Minimal research has explored how teachers can translate their knowledge of CT into practice to create opportunities for their students to engage in CT during their math and science lessons. Such information can support the creation of quality professional development experiences for teachers. We analyzed how eight elementary teachers created opportunities for their students to engage in four CT practices (abstraction, decomposition, debugging, and patterns) during unplugged mathematics and science activities. We identified three strategies used by these teachers to create CT opportunities for their students: framing, prompting, and inviting reflection. Further, we grouped teachers into four profiles of implementation according to how they used these three strategies. We call the four profiles (1) presenting CT as general problem-solving strategies, (2) using CT to structure lessons, (3) highlighting CT through prompting, and (4) using CT to guide teacher planning. We discuss the implications of these results for professional development and student experiences.

Purpose While it is particularly important that professional programs help teachers become members of a community of practice, especially in crisis situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a lack of research about strategies to effectively encourage the development of a community of practice and to support teachers’ transformation of their way of teaching. Thus, this paper aims to report on lessons learned from a blended professional development (PD) program for elementary and middle school teachers in Japan focused on computer programming education. In particular, the authors explored how application of the creative learning principles in the blended teacher PD may have helped to nurture a community of practice among teachers in Japan, and how the creative learning principles may be a valuable framework for designing online or blended teacher PD to support teachers’ transition into emergency remote education. Design/methodology/approach This paper reports on the lessons learned from two iterations of blended teacher PD situated within a larger design-based research project on applying creative learning pedagogy in teacher PD. Creative learning is a learning approach focused on engagement in personally meaningful projects by tinkering with materials and learning from peers. A total of 26 teachers and coaches participated, all of whom work in elementary or middle schools across Nagano prefecture in Japan. Participant experiences were evaluated based on a pre-survey and a post-survey conducted before and after the in-person kick-off camp; observation notes taken; a final report submitted by each teacher; a debrief meeting at the end of the program; and semi-structured interviews with three selected participants after the program concluded. For this paper, the authors focus on two participants who fully and actively engaged in the program, and they introduce their stories to highlight the outcomes from the PD. Findings The results highlight how a blended PD designed to support creative learning of teachers provided teachers with opportunities to gain help from other teachers and cultivate their expertise. The results also illustrated that how a community of practice emerged from the PD program, providing teachers with moral support when they tried new lesson designs. This paper offers several recommendations for designing professional learning experiences for instructional designers and professional developers that incorporate remote learning technologies. Originality/value While an increased number of studies have shown the values of online and blended communities of practice for teacher PD, there are still limited insights on different strategies to support teachers in transforming their teaching practices. They generally do not provide teachers with opportunities to continue learning with and from one another beyond the program itself. This study examined the teachers’ experiences in a unique PD that implemented a creative learning approach into a blended learning environment for teachers.

Nowadays there is a worldwide interest in introducing notions of programming in basic schooling. In line with this, different training programs have been proposed to allow the appropriation of these novel contents. This paper presents a proposal for interdisciplinary training in computer programming for primary school teachers, carried out in Argentina. Taking a socio-technical approach and from a sociocultural perspective of learning, a workshop about programming of technology for social inclusion (TIS) was designed using the Scratch tool. The preliminary results of this exploratory study allow us to identify different phases in the TIS construction process, where participants designed and programmed group productions, starting from problematic situations. In this way, teacher development proposal involved notions of programming, but also generated interdisciplinary pedagogical tools that can act as triggers for multiple activities within the classroom.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the professional experiences of agricultural education teacher candidates during their internship, their sense of teacher self-efficacy, and their perceptions of their preparation. The population included the entire cohort (n=24) of teacher candidates during the 2007 fall quarter at The Ohio State University. Teacher self-efficacy was measured using the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001). Candidates reported high levels of teacher self-efficacy at the end of the experience. The candidates’ perception of their level of preparation was similar to their sense of teacher self-efficacy. The largest discrepancy score was for the student engagement domain. Professional development experiences categorized as vicarious experiences revealed the strongest overall relationship with teacher self-efficacy. The experience of observing a first-year agriculture teacher had the strongest positive relationship with overall teacher selfefficacy. This variable explained 11 percent of the variance in overall teacher self- efficacy, and 14 percent of the variance in the instructional strategies domain. Verbal feedback that candidates received from their cooperating teacher was positively related to teacher self-efficacy. The number of courses teacher candidates taught was negatively related to their sense of efficacy in the classroom management domain.