Bibliography
Borko, Hilda (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: mapping the terrain. Educational Researcher, 33 (8), 3-15
Summary: Borko opens the article with the claim “ the professional development currently available to teachers is woefully inadequate.” All agree that high quality professional development is important, however “high quality’ still remains to be defined. She researches what is known about the relationship of professional development and the impact it has on teacher learning. She also explores ways in which we can extend our knowledge.
The key elements that form any professional development system are the professional development program, the teachers, the facilitators and the context in which the professional development occurs. With these elements in mind, Borko suggest three phases that describe the research activities that can help the progression of professional development. In Phase 1, the research activities study the relationship between two of the elements; the professional development program and the teachers as learners. The purpose of this phase is to provide evidence that professional development can create a deeper knowledge in teachers and facilitate a change in their instructional practices. In Phase 2, the focus is on one single professional development program at various sites and with many facilitators. This is to allow exploration of the relationships among the program, teachers and the facilitators and to determine if a professional development program can maintain its integrity when it is taught at many sites by many facilitators. Phase 3 is a more extensive focus as it studies the relationship among all four key elements. The purpose of this phase is to gather and analyze data from many programs, delivered by multiple facilitators at multiple sites.
Assess: The goal of this article is to describe ways in which we can research each of the four different elements of professional development to determine if each element is a hindrance or a help to effective professional development.
Reflect: This source is helpful because it makes me think about how professional development is implemented. Is time spent researching its effectiveness? Or, do we recognize a deficit and quickly try to implement professional development? Professional development should be proactive, not reactive.
Guskey, T. R. (2002). Professional development and teacher change. Teachers and Teacher: Theory and Practice, 8(3/4), 381-391.
Summary: Professional development programs typically are aligned with a model that states 1) teacher receives professional development 2) teacher changes practices 3) change in student learning 4) change in teacher beliefs and attitudes. A pre-requisite to a teachers change in attitude and beliefs about an instructional strategy is positive student learning outcomes. According to the article, teachers will very rarely commit to a new practice within the classroom unless marked improvement in student performance is evident.
Guskey considers three principles that are necessary in the professional development programs. These principles are important in aiding the implementation of new practices.
“Recognize change is a gradual and difficult process for teachers.”
Teachers are reluctant to change the practices in their classroom in fear of failure. If a teacher is uncertain a procedure or practice will work, they are less likely to attempt to implement in fear that students might learn less.
“Ensure that teachers receive regular feedback on student learning progress”
If change is going continue to happen it is essential that teachers receive the feedback or data needed to prove student growth during the change. This can include student assessments but also may include student participation and student feelings. Without the “proof” that students are benefiting from the change, implementation of the new practice will cease.
“Provide continued follow-up, support and pressure”
Since teachers’ beliefs and attitudes primarily change after student outcomes are noticed, then it is imperative to provide support for those moments when failure may occur. Lack of support might mean that a teacher abandons a new practice without giving it ample time to fully implement. Pressure nudges teachers to be persistent through the change.
Assess: The goal of this article is to explain a model for teacher change and how this model can positively affect the creation of professional development programs so that change in the classroom can occur.
Reflect: It is hard to believe fully in a new practice just by hearing about it during professional development. Often professional development opportunities do not provide the coaching or support needed to properly and fully implement the new practice. As a result, teachers do not see the results needed to continue the implementation.
Darling-Hammond, L. Wei, R.C., Andree, A., Richardson, N., & Orphanos, S. (2009). Professional learning in the learning profession: A status report on
teacher development in the United States and abroad. National Staff Development Council and School Redesign Network: Stanford University
Summary
Authors of this article recognize the current implementation of professional development needs improvement and development and delivery. They recognize in order for educators to stay in the profession longer, support their instructional needs, and ultimately improve student achievement all stakeholders involved in professional development need to reconsider their approach to professional development. For example, a portion of this report reveals that the majority of professional development available to educators today is targeted to academic content knowledge, and mentoring support to usually new teachers. However, what is not seen is job embedded collaborative learning that is high-quality.
Some key findings to improve professional development: develop to relate to student achievement gains, collaborative approaches that promote school change beyond the individual classrooms, ongoing and connected to practice in order to build academic content and cohesiveness among teachers, and support for new teachers. Some key findings within the current state of professional development: primarily short-term conferences or workshops, the amount supports an opportunity within schools and states differ, professional collaboration in developing curriculum and sharing practices, it's not useful in relation to their classrooms, need more content, classroom management, technology, and working with students with special needs, some have to pay for their own professional development, spend more time teaching and less time collaborating, and not involved in school decision-making.
Depending on the policymakers and stakeholders, they agree or disagree that the current conditions of professional development throughout the nation are inconsistent, lack rigor and collaboration, and do not support teacher and student needs.
Assess: I think it's interesting that across the nation views of professional development seem to be consistent. However, educators are still grappling with how to systematically design and deliver high-quality professional development. This article is helpful in that in the findings it provided some ways to improve professional development.
Reflect: Many questions come to mind after reading this article. What is high quality professional development? What components must be present in collaborative learning environments for them to be effective? This also makes me wonder how we can situate teachers’ professional development so that teachers implement the new learning in the classroom.
Johnson, C., & Fargo, J. (2010). Urban school reform enabled by transformative professional development: Impact on teacher change and student learning of
science. Urban Education, 45(1), 4-29.
Summary: This was a 2- year longitudinal study that examined student achievement and teacher change in science. The study was done across four urban schools and used qualitative and quantitative data. Using the Transformative Professional Development (TPD) Model the authors addressed two research questions.
1) “Does instructional practice improve for teachers who are participating in the Transformative Professional Development program?”
2) “Does student science achievement on pre- or postscience assessments improve for teachers who are participating in the Transformative Professional Development program? “
The TPD Model has three components;
1) Whole-school professional development that is intensive and focused on the development of student conceptual understanding.
2) Building relationships among teachers, teachers and students, and teachers and university faculty to create teacher leadership.
3) Creating positive school and classroom climate and high expectations.
This study consisted of a comparison of teacher change in effectiveness. From the four schools that participated, two were randomly selected as the control schools and the other two were the treatment schools- using the TPD Model. Through the use of pre test and classroom observations data was collected to determine if there was a change in instructional practices. The authors used the LSC Classroom Observation Protocol, which examined the design of the lessons, implementation of the lesson, classroom culture and science content.
The results of this study showed that the school-wide teacher change in practice showed little change. According to the baseline data the treatment schools started out slightly lower than the control schools and at the end of the study, data showed that the treatment schools were still slightly below the control schools. When examining individual teacher data and teacher change in practice, all the teachers at the treatment schools improved except for two teachers. However, in the control schools, the teachers experienced decline across the entire 2- year study. Finally, when considering student achievement, student achievement was significantly greater in the first year for the control group over the treatment group. In year 2, it was noted that a significant interaction between Time and Group was observed. The treatment schools experienced greater growth in scores, in fact, they doubled the growth that the control schools experienced.
Assess: This source is helpful if considering using the TDP model, however, there were many variables in this study that affected the results. One school found out that the district was closing down the school, which affected teacher attitudes. Previous studies that I have read suggest that teacher attitude is very important to student achievement so I wonder how the differences in student achievement might have been affected if teachers were not worried about the school closing or job security.
Reflect: Since this study was situated in urban schools, I was able to learn about the previous research done about the difficulties facing urban settings. It may help me consider some components of professional development that need to be present in order to support the teachers in this context.
Guskey, T. (2003). Analyzing lists of the characteristics of effective professional development to promote visionary leadership. NASSP Bulletin, 87(637), 4-20.
Summary: In this comparable study, Guskey examined 13 lists of the characteristics of effective professional development to determine if the there were similarities among all of them. It was his hope that he would find similar characteristics throughout the lists so we can start answering the question, what makes an effective professional development? Using standard content analysis procedures, each list was read and grouped by the noted characteristics and principles.
It was noted that there was not relationship between a characteristic and time, meaning that a characteristic did not become popular over time, or lose popularity over time. None of the characteristics appeared on every list. However, one characteristic was frequently mentioned appearing on 11 of the 13 lists- “enhancement of teachers’ content and pedagogic knowledge.” Most of the lists noted the following characteristics:
· Collaborative- teachers can share strategies, reflect on practice and exchange ideas.
· Should include evaluation procedures
· PD activities should be aligned with reform initiatives and based on teacher needs
· Emphasis on teacher leadership
One surprising finding was that less than half of the characteristic lists state that using the analyses of student learning data to guide professional development. In such a data driven environment, I expected that it would have appeared on more lists.
It seems that there is little agreement among researchers as to what the criteria should be for professional development. It was suggested that the professional development might be different depending on the audience and therefore would make it difficult to
Assess: This source is helpful in providing various characteristics of effective professional development. Although there were not any characteristics that were evident in all 13 lists, it did provide information about the characteristics that reappear in numerous lists.
Reflect: This article is helpful in determining some of the characteristics of effective professional development. This made me wonder if the focus should be specifically on a type of teacher, (new, veteran, struggling, etc.) in order to create characteristics of each professional development that would produce highly effective teaching.
Connelly, F. Michael & Clandinin, D. Jean & He, Ming Fang (1997). Teacher’s personal practical knowledge on the professional knowledge landscape. Teaching
and Teacher Education 13(7), 665-674
Summary:
The authors of this article are focused on teacher knowledge and the approach taken to study it. Using a narrative process that was constructed from interviews and conversations between a teacher and the authors of this article, we learn about the influences that teacher knowledge has on student learning. Field texts serve as the empirical data for this research. This would include: field notes, research interviews, conversations, journals, autobiographical writing, teacher stories, family stories, personal artifacts, oral history, annals and chronicles, and letters.
This empirical evidence, as well as the teacher participant, is what allow for accuracy and validity. Furthermore, the author states that the narrative is based on a composite biography- “it is constructed and made up from bits and pieces of the lives of multiple participants. “It starts with empirical data, the data is interpreted and created into a story that can be used for research purposes. One of the first tasks in this research is to ask what we know about the teacher through the field texts? A second task is to look for a metaphorical frame that can lead to “hidden intellectual avenues”. Thirdly, we need to view the teachers’ knowledge through life cycles and rhythms. Finally, narrative unity refers to “the threads in people’s lives that help construct the stories that they live both in their personal lives and in their teaching.”
Assess: The goal of this article is to describe how a teacher’s professional knowledge is a result of the different components that make-up that teacher- such as parenthood, teaching, personal education, social and cultural.
Reflect: This article is a great framework for further research on how teacher’s professional knowledge guides their professional development needs. As I consider professional development and high quality teaching, it is important to keep in mind that one size doesn’t fit all. Each teacher is unique in the experiences they have had in life. So many things outside the classroom can affect how a teacher operates in the classroom.