Teacher tensions: expectations in a professional development institute

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.

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.

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.

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this phenomenological case study was to study how secondary school science teachers describe their lived experiences of professional development (PD) in Punjab (Pakistan). The study included 15 secondary public school science teachers using purposive sampling from Punjab. Semistructured, in-depth phenomenological interviews were used as the primary source of data. The data were analyzed using 3-stage coding methods and thematic analysis. The results indicate that science teachers are the major stakeholders in their PD and they should be taken on board before designing any PD program for their professional growth. The findings strongly suggest that PD efforts for science teachers in Punjab need to be reformed. The barrier to PD learning in this study existed in different forms and mostly related to institutional and administrative procedures of selecting trainers and teachers, discipline-specific content, participant selection, and access. The study draws the attention of policymakers and PD providers to the fact that science teachers cannot act as expected unless their needs and voices are included in the PD efforts.

IntroductionIn regional Australia and New Zealand, museums and art galleries are increasingly becoming primary sites of cultural engagement. They are one of the key tourist attractions for regional towns and expected to generate much needed tourism revenue. In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were three million visitors to regional galleries and museums (MGNSW 13). However, apart from those (partially) funded by local councils, they are often run on donations, good will, and the enthusiasm of volunteers. Regional museums and galleries provide some paid, and more unpaid, employment for ageing populations. While two-thirds of Australia’s population lives in capital cities, the remainder who live in regional towns are likely to be in the 60+ age cohort because people are choosing to retire away from the bustling, growing cities (ABS). At last count, there were about 3000 museums and galleries in Australia with about 80% of them located in regional areas (Scott). Over the last 40 years, this figure has tripled from the 1000 regional and provincial museums estimated by Peter Piggott in his 1975 report (24). According to a 2014 survey (Shaw and Davidson), New Zealand has about 470 museums and galleries and about 70% are located outside capital cities. The vast majority, 85%, have less than five, full-time paid staff, and more than half of these were run entirely by ageing volunteers. They are entrusted with managing the vast majority of the history and heritage collections of Australia and New Zealand. These ageing volunteers need a diverse range of skills and experience to care for and interpret collections. How do you find the time and budget for professional development for both paid staff and volunteers? Many professional development events are held in capital cities, which are often a significant distance from the regional museum—this adds substantially to the costs of attending and the time commitment required to get there. In addition, it is not uncommon for people working in regional museums to be responsible for everything—from security, collection management, conservation, research, interpretation and public programs to changing the light bulbs. While there are a large number of resources available online, following a manual is often more difficult than learning from other colleagues or learning in a more formal educational or vocational environment where you can receive timely feedback on your work. Further, a foundational level of prior knowledge and experience is often required to follow written instructions. This article will suggest some strategies for low cost professional development and networking. It involves planning, thinking strategically and forming partnerships with others in the region. It is time to harness the power of modern communications technology and use it as a tool for professional development. Some models of professional development in regional areas that have been implemented in the past will also be reviewed. The focus for this article is on training and professional development for workers in regional museums, heritage sites and keeping places. Regional art galleries have not been included because they tend to have separate regional networks and training opportunities. For example, there are professional development opportunities provided through the Art Galleries Association of Australia and their state branches. Regional galleries are also far more likely to have one or more paid staff members (Winkworth, “Fixing the Slums” 2). Regional Museums, Volunteers, and Social CapitalIt is widely accepted that regional museums and galleries enhance social capital and reduce social isolation (Kelly 32; Burton and Griffin 328). However, while working in a regional museum or gallery can help to build friendship networks, it can also be professionally isolating. How do you benchmark what you do against other places if you are two or more hours drive from those places? How do you learn from other colleagues if all your colleagues are also isolated by the ‘tyranny of distance’ and struggling with the same lack of access to training? In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were 8,629 active volunteers working in regional museums and galleries giving almost five million hours, which Museums and Galleries NSW calculated was worth over $150 million per annum in unpaid labour (MGNSW 1). Providing training and professional development to this group is an investment in Australia’s social and cultural capital.Unlike other community-run groups, the museums and heritage places which have emerged in regional Australia and New Zealand are not part of a national or state branch network. Volunteers who work for the Red Cross, Scouts or Landcare benefit from being part of a national organisation which provides funding, support workers, a website, governance structure, marketing, political advocacy and training (Winkworth, “Let a Thousand Flowers” 11). In Australia and New Zealand, this role is undertaken by the Australian Museums and Galleries Association AMaGA (formerly Museums Australia) and Museums Aotearoa respectively. However, both of these groups operate at the macro policy level, for example organising annual conferences, publishing a journal and developing Indigenous policy frameworks, rather than the local, practical level. In 1995, due to their advocacy work, Landcare Australia received $500 million over five years from the federal government to fund 5000 Landcare groups, which are run by 120,000 volunteers (Oppenheimer 177). They argued successfully that the sustainable development of land resources started at the local level. What do we need to do to convince government of the need for sustainable development of our local and regional museum and heritage resources?Training for Volunteers Working in Regional Museums: The Current SituationAnother barrier to training for regional museum workers is the assumption that the 70:20:10 model of professional development should apply. That is, 70% of one’s professional development is done ‘on the job’ by completing tasks and problem-solving; 20% is achieved by learning from mentors, coaches and role models and 10% is learnt from attending conferences and symposia and enrolling in formal courses of study. However, this model pre-supposes that there are people in your workplace whom you can learn from and who can show you how to complete a task, and that you are not destroying or damaging a precious, unique object if you happen to make a mistake.Some museum volunteers come with skills in research, marketing, administration, customer service or photography, but very few come with specific museum skills like writing exhibition text, registering an acquisition or conserving artefacts. These skills need to be taught. As Kylie Winkworth has written, museum management now requires a [...] skills set, which is not so readily found in small communities, and which in many ways is less rewarding for the available volunteers, who may have left school at 15. We do not expect volunteer librarians to catalogue books, which are in any case of low intrinsic value, but we still expect volunteers in their 70s and 80s to catalogue irreplaceable heritage collections and meet ever more onerous museum standards. That so many volunteers manage to do this is extraordinary. (“Let a Thousand Flowers” 13)Workers in regional museums are constantly required to step outside their comfort zones and learn new skills with minimal professional support. While these challenging experiences can be very rewarding, they are also potentially damaging for our irreplaceable material cultural heritage.Training for museum professionals has been on the agenda of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) since 1947 (Boylan 62). However, until 1996, their work focused on recommending curricula for new museum professionals and did not include life-long learning and on-going professional development. ICOM’s International Committee for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP) and the ICOM Executive has responded to this in their new curricula—ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Professional Museum Development, but this does not address the difficulties staff or volunteers working in regional areas face in accessing training.In some parts of Australia, there are regional support and professional development programs in place. For example, in Queensland, there is the Museum Development Officer (MDO) network. However, because of the geographic size of the state and the spread of the museums, these five regionally based staff often have 60-80 museums or keeping places in their region needing support and so their time and expertise is spread very thinly. It is also predominantly a fee-for-service arrangement. That is, the museums have to pay for the MDO to come and deliver training. Usually this is done by the MDO working with a local museum to apply for a Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) grant. In Victoria there is a roving curator program where eligible regional museums can apply to have a professional curator come and work with them for a few days to help the volunteers curate exhibitions. The roving curator can also provide advice on “develop[ing] high quality exhibitions for diverse audiences” via email, telephone and networking events. Tasmania operates a similar scheme but their two roving curators are available for up to 25 days of work each year with eligible museums, provided the local council makes a financial contribution. The New South Wales government supports the museum advisor program through which a museum professional will come to your museum for up to 20 days/year to give advice and hands-on training—provided your local council pays $7000, an amount that is matched by the state government—for this service. In 2010, in response to recommendations in the Dunn Report (2007), the Collections Council of Australia (CCA) established a pilot project with the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in West

This paper employs narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) as the methodology to uncover a school principal’s experiences and perceptions related to ELL teacher professional development. It recognizes educators’ personal practical knowledge as the greatest driving force in their professional growth. Through reflecting on her professional development experiences and narrating her personal practical knowledge in action, this study has provided some practical considerations in designing and enacting ELL teacher professional development. More often than not, teacher professional development focuses on the “best practices” and “research-based programs,” but provides little input from the recipients about their experiences and perspectives. This study strives to break this prevalent model of professional development by gearing towards how an educator/administrator perceives the problems in teacher professional development for ELLs and how to best address their problems. It is hopeful that this study will shed important light on how to construct positive professional development that benefits teachers and ELL students both theoretically and practically.

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.

In recent years, professional development has become a topic of an increasing amount of research. However, studies are often general in nature or focused on beginning teachers specifically. Recently, researchers have begun to explore professional development over the course of a teacher’s entire career. The purpose of this study was to investigate the professional development needs of a particular population of experienced teachers: those known as second-stage teachers, commonly defined as teachers who have experience of 4 to 10 years and have passed the “survival years.” Research questions were as follows: (a) How do second-stage music teachers describe their professional development experiences? and (b) How do second-stage music teachers perceive their professional development needs? Findings are organized into the following themes: forms of professional development, professional development needs at different times, obstacles to professional development, and concerns about a lack of 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.

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

As with many districtwide reform efforts, the San Diego reform sought to improve classroom instruction by focusing on building the capacity of teachers. This article examines practices of teacher professional development in the district and their impact on literacy instruction. Through examination of the literature on effective professional development, school staff's conceptions of what makes professional development effective, and detailed data on professional development experiences from 100 elementary teachers, we explore the extent to which characteristics of effective professional learning align with what is actually taking place in schools. We also examine relationships between professional development characteristics and teachers' use of instructional practices that have been shown to predict student growth in reading comprehension. We find that professional development characterized by an emphasis on content and curriculum and that incorporates coaching is related to a higher frequency of this type of instruction.

This article explores two beginning Canadian teachers’ experiences of professional development in literacy education. Differences and parallel tensions between the Canadian teachers’ and my own experiences as a teacher and teacher educator in Pakistan were identified through narrative inquiry. The significance of this article is found in the expression of seven necessary conditions for successful professional development: appreciation and awareness of teachers’ internal quest for learning; teachers’ involvement in their own professional development; promotion of active, critical reflection; sharing multiple perspectives in collective conversation; providing time for internal reflection; a democratic context for professional development; and supporting teachers’ efforts to develop their professional knowledge base.

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.

Women in Anesthesiology Leadership: The Time is Now