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Teachers and trainers are dual-professionals – they are required to have up-to-date industry skills and also skills in teaching and learning. The issue of professional identity, and the promotion of maintaining and building pedagogic expertise in relation to their vocational work, is therefore an extremely important one. This book argues that quality teaching and learning is very much dependent upon teachers and trainers undergoing continuing professional development (CPD), engaging actively in professional learning activities, generating professional learning communities and building their level of professionalism to meet increasing teaching standards. Unfortunately, CPD is battling a context of intensification of work, pressure of time and economic restrictions. The completion of CPD under such conditions can often become tokenistic and hitherto there has been very little research or evidence base for determining what approaches to CPD are most effective and efficient. Challenging Professional Learning draws on a wealth of recent research and evidence on what ingredients are necessary for effective and efficient (crucial at a time of such fiscal constraints) professional learning. It also explores the wider implications of these findings and the concept of learning as a collective activity. It argues that real professionalism cannot be achieved in isolation but instead takes place in a context that has political, social and cultural influences. The book brings together research from the Institute for Learning and practice around professional learning to link both individual and collective professional learning to organisational learning, leadership and the management of change whilst offering practical suggestions for improving these practices. It will be of great interest to teacher educators and their students at undergraduate and post-graduate levels, as well as anyone who works in higher education and with professional development.
This research-based sequel to Leading Professional Learning Communities focuses on the practical process of implementing, improving, and sustaining PLCs. Appropriate for groups at all stages of PLC development, this field book helps educators improve PLC operations by facilitating individual and group development and growth. The authors provide learning opportunities that generate conversations about adult learning and contribute to supportive conditions that strengthen teacher quality and raise student outcomes.
This volume provides informed arguments, theory and practical examples based on research about what it looks like when educators, policy makers, and even students, try to rethink and change their practices by engaging in evidence-based conversations to challenge and inform their work. It allows the reader to experience these conversations. Each story reveals the depth of thinking that change requires, showing that change requires new learning and new learning is hard.
Emerging from an education world that sees professional learning as a tool to positively shape teaching practice in order to improve student learning, Transformational Professional Learning elucidates professional learning that is transformational for teachers, school leaders, and schools. Written from the unique ‘pracademic’ perspective of an author who is herself a practising teacher, school leader, and researcher, this book articulates the why and the what of professional learning. It acts as a bridge between research and practice by weaving scholarly literature together with the lived experience of the author and with the voices of those working in schools. It covers topics from conferences, coaching, and collaboration, to teacher standards and leadership of professional learning. This book questions the ways in which professional learning is often wielded in educational settings and shows where teachers, school leaders, system leaders, and researchers can best invest their time and resources in order to support and develop the individuals, teams, and cultures in schools. It will be of great interest to teachers, leaders within schools, staff responsible for professional learning in school contexts, professional learning consultants, professional learning providers, and education researchers.
For sustained success, educators must commit to their own lifelong improvement. A clear correlation exists between level of focus on teacher professional development (PD) and student success. In this book, John Murray identifies the characteristics of effective professional learning, detailing eight strategies for planning, and executing, and evaluating PD programs. Content includes: The proven “backward” approach to articulating the goals of your PD program Descriptions of innovative and effective designs for professional learning such as Lesson Study and Instructional Rounds Powerful approaches to designing and implementing online PD
This book is founded on the idea that ‘becoming’ is the most useful defining concept for a new ‘professional’ class whose members understand that development in their working lives is an open-ended, lifelong process of refinement and learning. In a world where being a ‘professional’ is an increasingly indistinct notion and where better education and technology are challenging ‘professional’ norms, it is imperative that we no longer think in terms of an exclusive, ‘Anglo-American’, knowledge-rich class of workers. Exploring the implications of this insight for professions including nursing, teaching, social work, engineering and the clergy, this volume aims to encourage informed debate on what it means to be a ‘professional’ in this globalised 21st century. The book argues that ‘becoming’ a professional is a lifelong process in which individual professional identities are constructed through formal education, workplace interactions and popular culture. The book advocates the ‘ongoingness’ of developing a professional self throughout one’s professional life. What emerges is a concept of becoming a professional different from the isolated, rugged, individualistic approach to traditional professional practice as represented in popular culture. It is a book for the reflective professional.
Today's school leaders are faced with the increasingly daunting task of leading their schools to improve, to innovate and to become ever more responsive to change. There are many resources to help schools to engage with improvement frameworks, but few that directly address the complexity of the challenges that inevitably arise along the way. Based on extensive research in the field, including the outcomes of a five-year project on school improvement and professional learning in Australia and New Zealand, Leading Professional Learning: Practical strategies for impact in schools identifies the challenges that school leaders face when leading professional learning and development in their schools as part of an improvement agenda. Renowned professional development expert, Helen Timperley, has collaborated with a team of prominent authors, including Fiona Ell, Deidre Le Fevre and Kaye Twyford, to uncover the reasons underpinning these challenges and to provide practical strategies on how to address them. Case studies, excerpts from real teachers' experiences and step-by-step examples of useful strategies, including the spiral of inquiry, give school leaders the tools they need to tackle complex challenges in teaching, learning, curriculum delivery and pedagogical practice in both primary and secondary settings. Leading Professional Learning: Practical strategies for impact in schools is a hands-on resource for school leaders to identify specific professional learning and development issues that accompany the learning and change process and to overcome them in their schools.
This is a book by educators, for educators. It grapples with the complexities, the humanity and the possibilities in education. In a climate of competing accountabilities and measurement mechanisms; corporate solutions to education ‘problems’; and narratives of ‘failing’ schools, ‘underperforming’ teachers and ‘disengaged’ students; this book asks ‘What matters?’ or ‘What should matter?’ in education. Based in the unique Australian context, this book situates Australian education policy, research and practice within the international education narrative. It argues that professionals within schools should be supported, empowered and welcomed into policy discourse, not dictated to by top-down bureaucracy. It advocates for a flipping, flattening and democratising of the education system, in Australia and around the world. Flip the System Australia: What matters in education brings together the voices of teachers, school leaders and scholars in order to offer diverse perspectives, important challenges and hopeful alternatives to the current education system.
Professional learning initiatives in schools come and go, and the constant cycling through programs can resemble fad diets--hype and hope followed by crash and burnout. In this timely book, professional learning providers Kasia M. Derbiszewska and T. Nicole Tucker-Smith share concrete strategies that will help you design professional development sessions that are compelling, convincing, and sustainable using the framework of Universal Design for Learning. Learn to recognize and reduce common barriers to effective PD. In each chapter, the authors clearly address the Purpose, Preparation, Implementation, and Benefits to Learning for each aspect of professional learning, as well as UDL Tidbits that help ensure the health and longevity of the initiative. If you are ready to take the leap toward creating healthy and sustainable professional learning, jump into the chapter that is most relevant to your needs. Get ready to consider the whole adult learner and apply practical strategies for cultivating and maintaining healthy, vibrant professional development that has a track record of success.
Effective facilitation is complex What is central to leading powerful and effective facilitation in professional learning? You. Gone are the one-size-fits-all answers—instead, you’ll draw from your own knowledge and expertise to lead your PLC in actively solving complex problems that are unique to your context. For professional learning to have an improvement impact for both teachers and students, it needs to be more than a single event. Truly successful professional learning is sustained, collaborative, evidence-informed, and student-focused—generating multifaceted solutions to real-life, real-time issues rather than focusing on one piece of the practice puzzle at a time. This book, based on the results of a five-year research study, provides: • An innovative approach to the design and delivery of professional learning grounded in principles of adaptive expertise • Easy-to-use one-page summaries of "Deliberate Acts of Facilitation" • Guidance that’s fully congruent with Learning Forward Standards for Professional Learning The current educational landscape demands a new kind of leadership. This book gives you the tools you need to apply the principles of adaptive expertise to your leadership and facilitation—enabling you to draw on your own deep knowledge to address the complex challenges you and your teachers face every day.