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The purpose of this paper is to report on a study that investigates the relationship between organisational factors, Teachers' Professional Development (TPD) and occupational expertise.

A survey was administered among 152 Dutch teachers in secondary education.

Analysis of the data revealed that of the organisational factors, in particular, the availability of organisational facilities contributes positively to the amount of TPD (that is, in training programmes, and social networks). Furthermore, participation in social networks appeared to have a positive influence on the development of occupational expertise.

The study is cross‐sectional (all data have been collected at one point in time), and data have been gathered in one country, i.e. The Netherlands. It would be interesting to examine the proposed model in a longitudinal study, in order to address issues of causality. More research is also needed to explore the extent to which the findings would generalise to other occupational settings and/or to other countries. Owing to the relatively small sample size, a mediation model was not empirically tested. Future research using larger sample sizes is needed in order to test whether participation in learning activities (partially) mediates the relationship between organisational factors and occupational expertise.

It is important that HRM departments and HRD managers in schools offer organisational facilities for teachers. These facilities should focus not only on the traditional formal training activities, but also on creating opportunities for participation in social networks. This study indicates that, particularly, participation in intra‐ and extra‐organisational social networks enhances occupational expertise. Managers can stimulate participation in these social networks by providing enough social support.

Although teachers' professional development is increasingly perceived as being important in school settings, until now little empirical research has been available that investigates the relationship between organisational factors, TPD, and occupational expertise.

The urgency of improving the schools call for a distributed instructional leadership model where teachers are not just recipients of professional development, but also active leaders who are coaches and mentors for their peers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the teacher leadership development system in Shanghai, and identify pathways to constructing actionable models that develop and maximize instructional expertise.

This is a qualitative study. Purposive sampling was conducted to select four teaching-study groups from a frame that included all certified “expert teachers” from a large Shanghai district with about 9,000 teachers. Grounded theory approaches were used to understand “what actually happens in the teachers’ world.” Participative observations (of lesson delivering and collaborative decoding), semi-structured interviews, teachers’ reflective journal entries, and video recording of group work and lessons were the main measures of data collection.

Three key features of expertise infusion were identified: recognizing, differentiating, and labeling teacher expertise at multiple mastery levels; providing expert teachers with support and leadership responsibilities to lead practice-embedded and cross-school peer learning; and creating a roadmap for teachers to chart continuous learning pathways individually and build an enhanced content pedagogical knowledgebase collectively.

Results from this study provide the impetus for further exploration in how Shanghai continuously share and improve good teaching systemically, which could be informative to US schools and districts in their effort of redesigning professional development that maximizes available expertise among teachers and stimulates teacher-led action research for student learning.

This paper aims to investigate how school-based mentors and preservice teachers (PTs) perceive mentoring conversations when applying a set of newly developed digital tools accompanied by discursive tools in mentoring in practicum.

This study performed a thematic analysis of 12 interviews (5 with mentors and 7 with PTs) to explore how the participants perceived mentoring conversations when applying a combination of digital and discursive tools in school-based mentoring conversations. This study uses a model of adaptive expertise to discuss the findings.

This analysis revealed that the tools could alter the typical order of mentoring conversations. Mentors reported a change in their mentoring routines in which mentees took a more active role in conversations. The use of tools also allowed for richer conversations. From the perspective of PTs, the tools provided a structure for mentoring sessions, provided an alternative opening for mentoring conversations and enhanced their awareness of certain aspects of their own teaching.

This study's results suggest that the application of tools in mentoring enhances mentoring by facilitating reflection among PTs and mentors and fostering the development of adaptive expertise.

This paper examines the impact of communication technology and human-related factors on teacher, student and course performance, in particular on teacher's clarity, perceived value of the course and student learning.

Communication technology factors are analyzed in terms of social media use, while human-related factors are considered through teacher expertise and communication skills, more specifically non-verbal communication (NVC). The research model is tested on a sample of 303 students from two European universities, one in Southwestern and another in Southeastern Europe.

Findings reveal dominance of human factors over technology ones. Culture moderates some of the relationships examined.

Notwithstanding the relatively limited sample of students according to their national culture, this work offers valuable insights into the impact of technology use in classroom and teacher communication skills.

Teacher NVC and expertise override their use of technology-mediated communication in classroom. Findings have raised important questions whether social media applications should actually have place in nowadays education systems. What seems clear from this research is that technology advancements cannot replace teachers, although further research is necessary to re-examine their impact on different student outcomes and in different cultural contexts.

The originality of this paper lies in comparing the impact of technology vs human-related factors on classroom performance. An additional contribution is provided by considering the moderating role of national culture within the proposed research model.

It's a secret hidden in plain sight, we teach who we are. Palmer (2017)

In an effort to reinvigorate the art of teaching, educational theorists have called for teachers to learn how to teach with their “whole self” – to be with and teach their students from a position of mindful awareness, authenticity, truthfulness, compassion, and courage (Palmer, 2017; Ramsey & Fitzgibbons, 2005). The skills that support one in mindfully knowing oneself well and being able to creatively and consciously bring aspects of one's knowledge expertise and identity into acts of teaching and learning in the classroom in an authentic way has been labeled the “unnamed domain” in teacher knowledge (e.g., Taylor, 2016). In this chapter, we extend work on a conceptual, evidence-based framework for this unnamed domain. We propose that the formation of teachers who are calm in body in challenging situations, clear in mind when making decisions in complex classroom environments, and kind in approach to interactions with others is one way of describing development in this domain of teacher identity/expertise. Furthermore, we posit that mindfulness, compassion, and other contemplative practices can be useful for developing expertise in it. We present conceptual and empirical findings from a series of studies we have done on the antecedents and consequences of teachers' calmness, clarity, and kindness in the classroom and discuss directions for future research.

This article describes a construct validation study of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards’ system of advanced certification. The evidence analyzed in the study included teachers’ instructional objectives and lesson plans for a given instructional unit, data collected during visits to all 65 teachers’ classrooms, and transcripts of scripted interviews of the teachers and their students. Two validity questions were examined in this comparative study: (a) To what extent is the National Board's vision of accomplished practice, as laid down in its Standards documents and as instantiated in its assessments, consonant with the characteristics of teaching expertise that have emerged from the research and scholarly literature?, and (b) Can National Board Certified teachers (NBCTs) and their noncertified counterparts (non-NBCTs) be distinguished on the basis of the quality of work produced by their students? In every comparison between NBCTs and non-NBCTs on the dimensions of teaching excellence, NBCTs obtained higher mean scores. In 11 of the 13 comparisons, the differences were highly statistically significant.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the nature and factors that influence student evaluation of the teaching performance of university teachers by integrating two areas of research: services marketing and higher education.

A set of hypotheses were developed taking into consideration customer (student), employee (teacher) and service (course) characteristics. They were then tested using data from 952 courses for a three‐year period and employing different multivariate techniques.

Students basically evaluate the expertise, attitude and behavior of teachers. The results also indicate that this evaluation is a complex phenomenon that depends on factors related to teacher, student and course profiles.

Given the nature of the data used here, future studies should extend the scope of research to other institutions, examine quality from an objective standpoint and include teachers’ perceptions and the outcomes of their research activity.

Based on the results of this paper, the authors recommend the following: to permit teachers to teach the same courses repeatedly, allowing them to consolidate their practice; to provide training in teaching techniques and ethics; to pay particular attention to those students who move to another degree program; and to maintain an appropriate class size.

This study integrates two areas of research and proposes a wide range of service quality determinants in the context of higher education, including several factors that had not been previously considered.

Este trabajo identifica la naturaleza y los factores que influyen en las valoraciones que realizan los alumnos sobre el desempeño docente del profesorado universitario, integrando para ello dos áreas de investigación: marketing de servicios y educación superior.

Se desarrolla un conjunto de hipótesis considerando las características del cliente (alumno), el empleado (profesor) y el servicio (curso). Se contrastan con los datos de 952 cursos durante un período de tres años utilizando distintas técnicas multivariantes.

Los alumnos evalúan principalmente la pericia así como la actitud y comportamiento del profesorado. Los resultados también indican que esta evaluación es un fenómeno complejo que depende de factores relacionados con el perfil del profesor, del alumno y del curso.

de la investigación/ImplicacionesConsiderando la naturaleza de los datos utilizados, futuras investigaciones deberían ampliar el ámbito de estudio a otras instituciones, analizar la calidad objetiva e incorporar las percepciones del profesor y los resultados de su actividad investigadora.

Se recomienda facilitar la consolidación del profesor en sus cursos; proporcionar capacitación en técnicas didácticas y ética; prestar especial atención a los alumnos que realizan cambios de carrera; y mantener un tamaño adecuado de los grupos.

Este estudio integra dos áreas de investigación y propone un amplio rango de factores determinantes de la calidad en la actividad docente del profesorado universitario, incluyendo algunos que hasta el momento no habían sido contemplados.

The paper provides analysis of the use of instructional coaching (IC) as a prevalent trend supporting new teachers in the English system and aims to inform ongoing policy development and implementation. The qualitative study examines mentors' conceptualisations and enactment of the role of instructional coach and the readiness of mentors to assume mentors' key stakeholder roles in the professional education of early career teachers (ECTs).

Semi-structured interviews with 37 mentors explored mentors' understandings and experiences of becoming instructional coaches as part of a pilot support initiative to support ECTs in England. Two rounds of interviews were conducted to generate data related to the first six months of mentoring on the programmes. Thematic analysis identified seven semantic themes which describe manifest content found within the data and identify mentors' perceptions of their role and practice as instructional coaches. Three latent themes were developed from mentors' accounts which indicate challenges in becoming an instructional coach in this context.

Concern to apply IC “correctly” according to the programme models was a strong feature amongst both novice and experienced mentors. A key finding is the lack of explicit knowledge of professional learning pedagogies amongst mentors and insecure understanding of how new teachers learn. Assuming the role of instructional coach presented both benefits of having a “model” to follow and disadvantages in fostering limited and over-prescribed concepts and practices related to the learning of new teachers.

The study investigated mentors during the first six months of a pilot programme and the paper reports on analysis of one type of data. The research results may lack generalisability, and a longitudinal study is necessary to further explore the validity of the findings.

Sustained, high-quality professional learning for mentors is crucial to mentors' role as instructional coaches to enable mentors to develop deep, critical understanding of how IC might support new teachers and how to exercise professional judgement in working with “models”. Judicious use of time and resource is needed to enable mentors to fulfil the potential of national mentoring programmes.

The study is timely in its examination of mentors that assume the role of instructional coach as one response to national policy development that makes support for ECTs mandatory. Such strategies have wide international relevance where the retention of new teachers is a policy priority.

The construct of enabling school structure is empirically analyzed in this qualitative study of high schools. First, the theoretical underpinning of enabling school structure is developed. Then, six high schools, which were determined to have enabling structures in a large quantitative study of Ohio schools, were analyzed in depth using semi‐structured interviewing techniques. The inquiry fleshes out the specifics of the performance of principals and teachers in such organizations and describes the dynamics of enabling school structures in terms of their formalization, centralization, and functioning. Finally, the research demonstrates a natural and symbiotic relation between quantitative and qualitative approaches to the study of schools.