Guidelines for Selecting Professional Development for Early Childhood Teachers

Engaging teachers of young children in effective in-service professional development is a critical component of establishing high quality early childhood education. However, not all professional development offerings are effective in imparting new knowledge, enhancing teacher practice, or improving child outcomes, making it difficult for teachers and directors to select professional development that will benefit their centers. This paper critically reviews the research literature on professional development for early childhood education to identify what features of professional development make a difference for teacher interactions and children’s learning and development. Guidance is provided for selecting professional development opportunities which meet the needs of children and teachers. Recommendations for how to create an ongoing professional development program within an early childhood center by creating a professional learning community are also made. Such an approach supports the center to become a place that values learning and continued education for all professionals

Challenging the orthodoxy: union learning representatives as organic intellectuals

Teacher education and continuing professional development have become a key areas of controversy in England since the period of school sector restructuring following the 1988 Education Reform Act. More recently teacher training and professional development have often been used to promote and reinforce a narrow focus on the government’s ‘standards agenda’. However, the emerging discourse of ‘new professionalism’ has raised the profile of professional development in schools, and together with union learning representatives, there are opportunities to secure real improvements in teachers’ access to continuing professional development. This paper argues however that union learning representatives must go beyond advocating for better access to professional development and should raise more fundamental questions about the nature of professional development and the education system it serves. Drawing on Gramsci’s notion of the ‘organic intellectual’, the paper argues that union learning representatives have a key role as organisers of ideas – creating spaces in which the ideological dominance of current policy orthodoxy might be challenged

Changing Roles and Identities in a Teacher Driven Professional Development Community

In a climate where teachers feel deprofessionalized at the hands of regulations, testing, and politics, it is vital that teachers become empowered both in their own teaching and as agents of change. This physics education research study investigates the Streamline to Mastery professional development program, in which the teachers design professional development opportunities for themselves and for fellow teachers. The research reported here describes the process of teacher professional growth through changes in roles and identities. Videos, emails, and interviews were analyzed to glean insight into practice and participation shifts as these physical science teachers formed a community and engaged in their own classroom research. Implications for the role of PER in teacher professional development and teacher preparation will be discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Physics Education Research Conference 2011 Proceedings, Finalist in the PERC 2011 proceedings paper awar

Development of a cadre of teacher educators: some lessons from Pakistan

This article is based on an educational innovation, the creation of a cadre of teacher educators, in the developing world. Professional Development Teachers were trained in an in-service two-year teacher education programme leading to a Masters of Education Degree. The Professional Development Teachers were expected to play three roles in their home schools upon completion of the Degree Programme: (a) Exemplary Teachers; (b) Teacher Educators; and (c) Change Agents within their home schools to effect improvement

Report on argumentation and teacher education in Europe

This document will ultimately form part of a comprehensive package of materials for teacher education and professional development in argumentation. The initial deliverable from Kaunas University of Technology described the rhetorical basis of argumentation theory for pre‐ and in‐service teachers, whilst this state of the art report sets out the current and rather unsatisfactory status of argumentation in curricula, initial teacher training/education and teacher professional development, across the fifteen S‐TEAM partner countries. We believe that this is a representative sample and that the report can be taken as a reliable snapshot of the situation in Europe generally

Librarians as Teachers: A Qualitative Inquiry into Professional Identity

This study explores the development of ???teacher identity??? among academic librarians through a series of semi-structured interviews. Drawing both on the idea of teacher identity from the literature of teacher education and on existing studies of professional stereotypes and professional identity development among academic librarians, this study explores the degree to which academic librarians think of themselves as teachers, the ways in which teaching has become a feature of their professional identity, and the factors that may influence academic librarians to adopt a ???teacher identity??? as part of their personal understandings of their role on campus.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Students’ views on HE learning environments for professional teacher education

There is a national debate about the connection between the physical environment and learning (McGregor, 2004) and the importance of designing the physical space to enhance the quality of learning (DfES, 2004, 2006, 2007; JISC, 2006; SMG 2006). This 2 year research project considers the views of 174 higher education students, who have undertaken professional initial teacher education programmes, on what makes an effective higher education learning environment for professional development and their evaluation of their current experience. Students views on enhancing the physical learning space for professional teacher education is explore

PAIR Final Comprehensive Report Part 2: Impact of PAIR on Student Academic Performance

This report is the second part of a three-part comprehensive report filed by both Dr. Burnaford and Dr. Scripp, as Co-Principal Investigators of the PAIR project.The first report, written by Dr. Gail Burnaford [2010], focused primarily on three years of collecting evidence of progress meeting PAIR teacher professional development goals, the evolution of teacher professional development outcomes in comparison with control group teachers, and speculation on theg eneral impact of high quality PAIRteacher practices on student learning.The second and third parts of this report, written by Dr. Lawrence Scripp and his research team from the Center for Music-in-Education and CAPE (2011-2012], focus on the impact of PAIR on student learning. This second report (2011) reports primarily on differences among control-treatment statistical comparisons of PAIR student academic test outcomes. The following third report (2012) features an extensive review of qualitative and quantitative aspects all PAIR student arts integration outcome data. In addition, it provides a comprehensive analysis of the possible statistical links between seven teacher professional development factors and four student learning outcomes.In this paper reports on a research project in arts integration education, conducted in the Chicago Public Schools in partnership with Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE), a research-based organization focused on optimizing the impact of artists and arts learning in schools for the benefit of whole-school improvement in arts learning, teacher professional development, and school culture