Search results

The Southeast Ohio Teacher Development Collaborative (SEOTDC) represents a regional professional community-of-practice with leadership as a key component of educator and organizational capacity building. This chapter highlights the work of this collaborative partnership among five teacher preparation programs in Appalachian Ohio that responds to regional contexts in planning and delivering professional development. Individuals from representative public and private institutions of higher education, state and local educational agencies, and school districts engage in action planning to improve teacher preparation, professional development, and mentoring processes for educators. This is accomplished through recruitment, retention, identification, support, promotion, encouragement, and involvement in a variety of SEOTDC initiatives. Professional development to build educator capacities is considered in terms of people and their contributions, the synergies that are created during the process of collaboration, and organizational arrangements that are designed to support renewal, reform, and personal and interpersonal development. After setting the context within which SEOTDC operates, the chapter identifies concerns, solutions, and outcomes related to four collaborative initiatives.

The importance of early and developmentally appropriate science education is increasingly recognized. Consequently, creation of common guidelines and standards in early childhood science education has begun (National Research Council (NRC), 2012), and researchers, practitioners, and policy makers have shown great interest in aligning professional development with the new guidelines and standards. There are some important issues that need to be addressed in order to successfully implement guidelines and make progress toward accomplishing standards. Early childhood teachers have expressed a lack of confidence in teaching science and nature (Torquati, Cutler, Gilkerson, & Sarver, in press) and have limited science and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) (Appleton, 2008). These are critical issues because teachers’ subject-matter knowledge is a robust predictor of student learning outcomes (Enfield & Rogers, 2009; Kennedy, 1998; Wilson, Floden, & Ferrini-Mundy, 2002) and is seen as a critical step toward improving K-12 student achievement (National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century (NCMST), 2000; NRC, 2000). We argue that the same is true of preschool teachers.

This chapter discusses: (a) theories and practices in early childhood science education (i.e., preschool through 3rd grade) in relation to teaching for conceptual change, (b) research on methods of professional development in early childhood science education, and (c) innovative approaches to integrating scientific practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas with early childhood professional development.

The system of higher education in the Russian Federation due to the high share of fundamental training is focused on ensuring the foundation of permanent stability of the graduate, while the system of additional professional education is obliged to take into account the current state of the educational services market, which is characterised by globalisation, diversification, digitalisation and international integration. Therefore, the main focus of the modern system of additional professional education of teachers is the creation of favourable organisational, content, procedural and other conditions that contribute to the professional development and creative self-realisation of teachers, taking into account their individual needs and abilities. In this section, based on the analysis of normative documents and innovative experience of professional development and retraining of education specialists, the goals and objectives, structure and content, main development trends and modern training technologies, features of the internal system of quality assessment of additional professional education of teachers in Russia are disclosed.

Global focus on reforming teachers has resulted in the inclusion of multiple survey questions about teachers’ professional learning activities in large-scale international studies. A cross-national analysis of these survey data will likely enhance our understanding and inform the future direction regarding teacher professional development policy and practice. Yet we do not know whether these surveys measure the key features and their contextual factors of teachers’ professional learning activities to allow a systematic cross-national analysis. Based on international and U.S. literature, I develop a conceptual model of teachers’ professional learning activities in global context and analyze relevant survey items used in three major international studies – TIMSS, PIRLS, and TALIS. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of the coverage of these survey items and a direction for improving data collections of teachers’ professional learning activities in large-scale international studies.

A review of publications in teaching and teacher education over 10 years (2000–2010) on teacher professional development is the subject of this chapter. The first part synthesises production referred to learning, facilitation and collaboration, factors influencing professional development, effectiveness of professional development and issues around the themes. The second part selects from the production nine articles for closer examination. The chapter concludes by noting how the production brings out the complexities of teacher professional learning and how research and development have taken cognizance of these factors and provided food for optimism about their effects, although not yet about their sustainability in time.

In this chapter, three educators recount experiences of professional development from different perspectives in order to examine the intersection of teacher knowledge and subject matter in the areas of science and mathematics education. Professional development projects are productive avenues for exploring this phenomenon. We share stories of experience from professional develop projects of teachers who were situated in different places on the professional knowledge landscape: one elementary school teacher, one teacher educator, and one mathematics educator. From these various vantage points, the relationship between mathematics and science content knowledge and teacher knowledge holds different complexities and complications. Issues related to balancing teacher knowledge with content knowledge in professional development emerge. Based on the stories of experience and the analysis of the narratives, deliberation of curriculum is seen to be a valuable concept when engaging in professional development with teachers. Further, Pragmatic Intellectual Space is proposed for productive approaches to professional development.

Against a broader global and regional shift toward “quality education for all,” the chapter explores education policy developments and trends related to teacher education and professional development in Latin America and the Caribbean. We examine how multilateral education policy circulation and regional horizontal cooperation has guided these education policy developments. The chapter is organized into three parts. It first provides a discussion of educational multilateralism and new forms of horizontal cooperation, as it relates to educational development efforts. We argue that these new forms of multilateralism and horizontal cooperation guide the development of policies that seek to enhance both educational equity and quality education, particularly through advancing teacher education and professional development. The second section explores several recent education policy trends that relate to teacher education and professional development in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the challenges that Ministries of Education face when designing and implementing programs of teacher education and professional development. Lastly, the chapter examines the role of regional organizations in promoting new forms of regional horizontal cooperation specific to teacher education and professional development, focusing on the example of Organization of American States’ (OAS) Inter-American Teacher Education Network (ITEN).

A growing number of countries have developed Teacher Professional Standards that describe how effective teaching is conceptualized and demonstrated. This article describes how initial teacher education and continuous professional development (CPD) is organized in Estonia, and what role professional standards have in the Estonian context. We demonstrate how the Estonian decentralized preservice teacher education and CPD system supports high quality and flexible teacher professional development throughout their careers. We will also pinpoint the biggest challenges that are currently experienced in Estonia regarding teacher education and professional development. Drawing on the international experiences, we will also discuss how Teacher Professional Standards could be further developed in Estonia to better serve as a guide for both initial teacher education and continuous professional development.

Much enthusiasm exists for using video in teacher education and professional development. As this volume attests to, video-based resources are being used in a variety of teacher-learning contexts. Many educators are discussing their use of video; however, a problem receiving less attention is what it takes to design usable video-based curriculum for teacher learning. This chapter addresses a specific problem faced in using video as a tool for teacher professional development. The problem that is often overlooked is that video in of itself is not a curriculum. We cannot consider video a curriculum perhaps anymore than we can consider a whiteboard and markers a curriculum. Video is rather a medium which can be developed into a resource and used in specific ways to enhance learning. Video can become a part of a curriculum for learning if it is designed to be used in intentional ways towards intentional learning goals. The question then is – what does it take to actually assemble a usable video-based curriculum for teacher learning? Answering this question demands consideration of what and how teachers are intended to learn with this curriculum, and what opportunities the medium of video affords.

This chapter aims to identify and explore those critical factors in relation to teacher education and development that may hinder or support the wider implementation of policy for inclusive education in practice. The chapter considers key issues related to initial teacher education (ITE) and in-service teacher education and continuing professional development (CPD) that appear to be relevant albeit in differing degrees across most European countries.

The chapter builds on initial work completed in the European Agency project on Teacher Education for Inclusion (TE4I). The project concluded that the role of core values for inclusion (particularly in ITE) can be a critical factor in ensuring more inclusive education systems overall (European Agency, 2011, 2012).

A number of policy questions in relation to preparing teaching staff for inclusive education were highlighted in this work, but two critical issues are the focus here:

• 1. How all relevant policies can support flexible education opportunities in initial and continuing professional development for all teachers.

• 2. How all teachers can be supported to develop the skills to meet the diverse needs of all learners, including a clear understanding of effective learning strategies, such as learning to learn and active learning approaches.

1. How all relevant policies can support flexible education opportunities in initial and continuing professional development for all teachers.

2. How all teachers can be supported to develop the skills to meet the diverse needs of all learners, including a clear understanding of effective learning strategies, such as learning to learn and active learning approaches.