Factors affecting teachers' participation in professional learning activities

TLDR: In this paper, the authors describe two studies into teacher workplace learning, one aimed at developing a definition of teacher learning at the workplace and the other aimed at exploring factors that may affect teacher learning in the workplace.

About: This article is published in Teaching and Teacher Education.The article was published on 2003-02-01 and is currently open access. It has received 732 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Professional learning community & Experiential learning.

Figures

Table 1 Professional learning activities categorized

Fig. 1. Research model of professional learning activity.

Table 3 Factor loadings of items representing professional learning activities

Table 6 Correlation between independent variables and three types of professional learning activity

Table 7 Significant standardized beta weights and explained variances of simultaneous regression analysis for variables predicting three types of professional learning activities (po0.05).

Table 4 Descriptive statistics of factors

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in "Factors affecting teachers’ participation in professional learning activities" ?

This paper describes two studies into teacher workplace learning. The first study aimed at developing a definition of teacher learning at the workplace and at exploring factors that may affect teacher learning at the workplace. Based on a conceptualization of teacher workplace learning as participation in professional learning activities, the second study addressed two research questions to be answered by means of a survey: 

Q2. What are the future works in "Factors affecting teachers’ participation in professional learning activities" ?

This result also has consequences for further research into professional learning activities as it clearly shows that from the perspective of teachers, learning may best be examined in connection to teachers ’ concrete tasks and daily activities. Nevertheless, the authors would like to stress that theorising about the domain of teacher learning would benefit greatly from further research in which participation in professional learning activities is related to learning outcomes and processes. Secondly, the study results suggest that the frequencies of participation in various professional learning activities differ to a large extent. Besides, although the factors in the model jointly account for a significant amount of variance in all three types, it may be concluded that the research model provides the best explanation for Collaborative Activities and least for Instructional Activities. 

Q3. How many activities were used to measure participation in professional learning?

To measure participation in professional learning activity the range of 32 activities derived from the qualitative study was used. 

Q4. What is the definition of learning at the workplace?

learning at the workplace is conceptualized as participation in professional learning activities, which can be divided into individual activities addressing the categories of reading, experimenting, and reflecting and into collaborative activities taking place within the school. 

Q5. What are the two perspectives that help to understand different approaches to teacher learning?

In the literature two different theoretical perspectives are prevalent that help to understand different approaches to teacher learning: the cognitive psychological perspective and the professional development perspective. 

Q6. What are the four types of collegiality that Little distinguishes from the others?

Little distinguishes four types of collegiality that vary in this respect and that refer to collaboration of teachers within their own schools: story-telling, help, sharing, and joint work.