Professional development

About: Professional development is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 81108 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1316681 citations.

Does Professional Development Change Teaching Practice? Results from a Three-Year Study.

Abstract: DOCUMENT RESUME

Can professional development make the vision of the standards a reality? The impact of the national science foundation's local systemic change through teacher enhancement initiative

Abstract: Professional development is seen as one of the major levers for aligning science instruction in the USA with the vision put forth by national standards documents. Although there is a growing consensus regarding what constitutes effective professional development, there is little empirical evidence to support this consensus. This study examines the impact of professional development that is content-based, situated in classroom practice, and sustained over time on teacher attitudes, perceptions of preparedness, and classroom practices. It utilizes longitudinal data from the National Science Foundation's Local Systemic Change through Teacher Enhancement Initiative (LSC), collected from 42 projects over a span of 7 years. The professional development model used in the LSCs differed from previous initiatives in that it targeted all teachers in a jurisdiction and emphasized preparing teachers to implement project-designated instructional materials. Analyses of the data provide evidence that this model for professional development has an impact on teachers and their classroom practices. In addition, the analyses found that teachers' perception of principal support for Standards-based science instruction is an important predictor of these outcomes. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 375–395, 2007

A Study of Whole Classroom Mathematical Discourse and Teacher Change

Abstract: This article presents a comparison of the first 2 years of an experienced middle school mathematics teacher's efforts to change her classroom practice as a result of an intervening professional development program The teacher's intention was for her teaching to better reflect her vision of reform-based mathematics instruction We compared events from the 1st and 2nd year's whole class discussions within a multilevel framework that considered the flow of information and the nature of peer- and teacher-directed scaffolding Discourse analyses of classroom videos served both as an analytic tool for our study of whole classroom interactions, as well as a resource for promoting discussion and reflection during professional development meetings The results show that there was little change in the teacher's specific goals and beliefs in light of a self-evaluation of her Year 1 practices, but substantial changes in how she set out to enact those goals In Year 2, the teacher maintained a central, social scaffol

Teaching critical reflection

Abstract: Despite long-standing commitment to the notion of critical reflection across the healthcare professions it is unusual for critical theory and practice to be taught as explicit subjects in healthcare higher education. There is evidence to show that reflective techniques such as critical portfolios and reflective diaries can help students to consolidate and assess their learning of a discipline and its practices. Yet, there are also known drawbacks of critical reflection, including over self-critical inspection and the infinite regress of reflection on action. This paper offers a theoretically informed model of critical reflection which encompasses different purposes (thinking, learning and assessment of self and social systems), together with different forms of reflection (personal, interpersonal, contextual and critical). Explicitly teaching critical reflection is a logical step towards students being able to recognise and negotiate complex ethical and professional issues. However, teaching critical refle...