Formative assessment is an essential component of classroom work and can raise student achievement.

"Kappan Classic": Inside the Black Box--Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment.

I began this review with three objectives: (a) to determine whether recent learning-to-teach studies form a coherent body of literature, (b) to use any common themes that emerged from these studies to construct a model of professional growth for novice and beginning teachers, and (c) to draw inferences from the model concerning the nature of preservice teacher education programs likely to promote growth by capitalizing on naturally occurring processes and stages. I review 40 learning-to-teach studies published or presented between 1987 and 1991: 27 deal with preservice teachers, 13 with first-year or beginning teachers. All were naturalistic and qualitative in methodology. Studies within each of those divisions are clustered and summarized according to major themes that emerged from findings. The model I ultimately infer from the 40 studies confirms, explicates, and integrates Fuller’s (Fuller & Bown, 1975) developmental model of teacher concerns and Berliner’s (1988) model of teacher development based on...

Professional Growth Among Preservice and Beginning Teachers

The implications of research on teacher belief for the nature of teaching and teacher education are discussed. In addition, ignored or minimally addressed issues that could provide avenues for future research are raised. Teacher belief is defined broadly as tacit, often unconsciously held assumptions about students, classrooms, and the academic material to be taught. After summarizing the heterogeneous research on teacher belief, I point out that we lack direct evidence concerning the processes that effect change in teacher belief. However, we can assume that they are similar to those needed to effect conceptual change in other kinds of personal belief. This leads to a discussion of research on conceptual change and its relevance to teacher education. I next suggest that the need for an elaborate personal belief system among teachers arises out of the many uncertainties endemic to classroom teaching: In a landscape without bearings, teachers create and internalize their own maps. The need for a personal b...

Implication of Research on Teacher Belief

After virtue, a study in moral theory

Although teachers today recognize the importance of integrating technology into their curricula, efforts are often limited by both external (first-order) and internal (second-order) barriers. Traditionally, technology training, for both preservice and inservice teachers, has focused on helping teachers overcome first-order barriers (e.g., acquiring technical skills needed to operate a computer). More recently, training programs have incorporated pedagogical models of technology use as one means of addressing second-order barriers. However, little discussion has occurred that clarifies the relationship between these different types of barriers or that delineates effective strategies for addressing different barriers. If pre- and inservice teachers are to become effective users of technology, they will need practical strategies for dealing with the different types of barriers they will face. In this paper, I discuss the relationship between first- and second-order barriers and then describe specific strategies for circumventing, overcoming, and eliminating the changing barriers teachers face as they work to achieve technology integration.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/30221096.pdf

Addressing First- and Second-Order Barriers to Change: Strategies for Technology Integration

Innovative doctrines create dilemmas for teachers. These dilemmas arise because, when teachers decide to adopt new practices, they face new uncertainties about their role in the classroom, the effectiveness of their methods and the purposes of their instruction. The way teachers used the materials of a particular innovation, the Schools Council Integrated Science Project, is described and explained in terms of teacher control over the uncertainties of classroom life. The Project proposals, initially seen by teachers as increasing the diffuseness of their work, were modified by them so that it was clearer to them what was to be accomplished and how it was to be done. At the same time, a functional alignment of goals, techniques and social relationships was maintained through teacher influence in the classroom. The translation of the materials into more specific terms meant that important elements of the “doctrine” of the Project were either ignored or redefined in more traditional terms. Such redefinition of innovation in specific terms raises questions about the effectiveness, as instruments of change, of centralized curriculum projects remote from the practical problems of schools. Implications for curriculum policy and research into the dilemmas teachers face in teaching are discussed.

Teacher influence in the classroom: A context for understanding curriculum translation

(1994). Putting the computer in its place: a study of teaching with technology. Journal of Curriculum Studies: Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 121-141.

Putting the computer in its place: a study of teaching with technology

† This is a revised version of a paper given at a Conference on ‘ Images of the Teacher and Issues in Curriculum Change ‘, held at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario in April 1979.

Teacher Constructs and Curriculum Change

Le danger de l'usage intensif et mal prepare de l'Apprentissage Assiste par Ordinateur pour l'equilibre de la classe, pour sa conduite. Selon l'auteur, les enseignants insuffisamment formes et trop enthousiastes, risquent de voir la relation pedagogique avec leurs eleves transformee a leur depend. Les situations d'apprentissage sont, elles aussi, nouvelles et difficiles a gerer.

OP-ED Trojan horse or teacher's pet? computers and the culture of the school

L'article traite du role de l'enseignant dans le processus de changement systemique intervenant dans le domaine de l'education. L'auteur insiste sur l'importance de la prise en compte de la connaissance de l'enseignant, de ses competences et de son point de vue interne de praticien, dans la formation des reformes qui affectent son quotidien et l'exercice de sa profession. La collaboration entre chercheurs et enseignants est ici questionnee.

John Olson

Papers

Teacher influence in the classroom: A context for understanding curriculum translation

Putting the computer in its place: a study of teaching with technology

Teacher Constructs and Curriculum Change

OP-ED Trojan horse or teacher's pet? computers and the culture of the school

Systemic change/teacher tradition: Legends of reform continue