Teacher Learning

By Melissa Eubank

Teacher Learning

 “If teachers are to prepare for an ever more diverse group of students for more challenging work… they will need substantially more knowledge and radically different skills than most have and most schools of education now develop.”

Teacher Learning

 This chapter…  Considers the kinds of learning opportunities available to teachers.

 Analyzes these opportunities from the perspective of what is known about ways to help people learn.

Teacher Learning

 Relatively new as a research topic, so there is not a lot of data on it.

 Most of the research is in the form of case studies.

 These case studies are based on the assumption that what is known about learning applies to teachers as well as to their students.

Teacher Learning

    Opportunities for Practicing Teachers Quality of Learning Opportunities Action Research Preservice Education

Opportunities for Practicing Teachers

 “Understanding teachers opportunities for learning-including the constraints on teachers’ time- is important for developing a REALISTIC picture of possibilities for lifelong learning.”

Opportunities For Practicing Teachers

     Learn from their own practice.

Learn through interactions with other teachers.

Learn from teacher educators in their schools, in degree programs, and in teacher enhancement projects.

Learn from graduate programs.

Learn from sources outside of the classroom.

Opportunities for Practicing Teachers

 Learn from their own Practice.

 By teaching in their own classrooms…  Teachers gain new knowledge and understanding of their students, schools, curriculum and instructional methods.

 Teachers learn through creating journals, essays, classroom studies and by students asking questions and the teacher answering them.

Opportunities for Practicing Teachers

 Teachers learn through their interactions with other teachers.

  Formal Informal

Opportunities for Practicing Teachers

  Some Administrators are recognizing the expertise in their schools and are encouraging teachers to share it as inservice presenters.  Formal Mentoring is when an experienced teacher takes a new teacher under their wing to provide insight and advise. Examples:   Massachusetts Workshops

Opportunities for Practicing Teachers

 Massachusetts  Massachusetts recognizes the inservice programs as professional learning for these teachers who are sharing their expertise (inservice presenters) and are awarding them with “professional development points” for their time.

Opportunities for Practicing Teachers

 Workshops  Teachers teach outside of their schools at workshops where they share their knowledge with other teachers.

 Examples: (Workshops in instructional methods, materials and content)  Physics Teacher Resource Agent Project of the American Association of Physics Teachers  Woodrow Wilson Fellows

Opportunities for Practicing Teachers

 Informal mentoring occurs through conversations in hallways, teachers’ rooms, and other school settings.

 Teachers also learn through the supervision of their classrooms by for example the principle.

Opportunities for Practicing Teachers

 Teachers learn in graduate programs.

  Some schools require a master’s degree or continuing educations to keep their certification.

Most school districts tie in teachers’ salaries to their level of education. (i.e. Fort Worth)  Usually, but not always, teachers take graduate courses in education rather than their subject area because they are more likely to be taught after school hours or during the summer.

Opportunities for Practicing Teachers

 Teachers learn from sources outside the classroom.

 Roles as parents: Learn about intellectual and moral development.

 Coaching and other youth-related work in their communities: Learn more hand-on forms of instruction.

Opportunities for Practicing Teachers

 If measured in financial terms, overall, there are too few opportunities available to teachers to continue their education.

 There is a minimal public investment in continued teacher education. Most school districts spend 1-3 percent of their budgets on professional development.

 In the corporation world and in schools in other countries this lack of investment in personnel is unheard of.

Quality of Learning Opportunities

     Learner-Centered Environments Knowledge-Centered Environments Assessment-Centered Environments Community-Centered Environments (Chapter 6 – Patty)

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Learner-Centered Environments  Attempt to build on the strengths, interests, and needs of the learners.

 Efforts in teacher learning fall short in this regard.

 Usually the required lectures and workshops to not meet the teachers needs.

 2/3 of U.S. teachers state they have no say in what or how they learn in the professional development opportunities provided by their schools.

 Example:  Ellen and Molly  Minds on Physics  WTEPB

Quality of Learning Opportunities

    Ellen and Molly Ellen: 25-year experienced English teacher with a masters. For her continuing education she wants to have meetings with other faculty to develop curriculum.

Molly: 2 nd year science teacher who is mainly concerned with classroom management and must master that before she can think about developing curriculum.

These two ladies have different needs for becoming better teachers.

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Minds on Physics.

 A professional development project where the 37 teachers there taught at different levels, in different settings and had different undergraduate majors. They also had different amounts of graduate studies and ranged from new teachers to teachers who had taught for 30 years.  The development team and evaluators realized they didn’t have the resources to meet all the needs of the individual teachers.

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Wisconsin Teacher Enhancement Program in Biology (WTEPB).

 Provides professional development opportunities that change as the teachers become more expert in teaching science.

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Knowledge-Centered Environments  Ideally teacher learning would focus on pedagogy with the content of various disciplines, but the opportunities fall short.

  Workshops for teachers often focus on generic pedagogy.

The knowledge taught by teachers to teachers is often not supported by research about learning.

 Helping teachers

rethink their subject matter

as well as teaching strategies is very important for teachers to be able to continue their education but can be very difficult.

 Examples:  Mrs. O    Minds on Physics Professional Development projects, SummerMath Project SEED

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Mrs. O – teaches math  Attended several workshops that introduced her to new teaching techniques and so she made changes in her teaching to fit the new teaching methods.  After attending these workshops she saw her learning as complete and stopped short of rethinking her knowledge of mathematics.  She saw no need for additional education in her subject matter mainly because of the workshops she attended.

 The Workshops provided her only with teaching techniques not with deeper understanding of math.

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Minds on Physics.

 This professional development project provide teachers with new teaching methods which the teachers then implemented into their classrooms.  However, their fundamental beliefs about their students and about the purpose of high school physics did not change.

 They continued to provide students with an overview of physics with the thought that their students would never take another physics class again.

Quality of Learning Opportunities

   However, in several professional development projects for teachers the teachers learn how to teach a subject by focusing on their own experiences as learners.

SummerMath  Teachers solve mathematics problems together or participate in authorizing texts. Also write case studies about their students mathematics learning.

 This allows them to engage in their own subject matter knowledge.

Project SEED  Elementary school teachers were provided opportunities to learn about science content and pedagogy by working with the curriculum kits they would be using in their own classrooms.

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Why is it so difficult for teachers to rethink their subject matter?

 Learning means being vulnerable and taking risks, and this is not how teachers see their role. They worry about admitting that they don’t know or understand fearing how their administrators or how other teachers will react.

 Also teachers know that they can affect students’ learning and are used to being in control. So the thought encouraging students to explore issues in their subject matter and then a student asking a question that the teacher may not know can be very threatening.

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Assessment-Centered Environments   Provide opportunities for learners to test their understanding by trying out things and receiving feedback.

Importance of classroom based feedback…  Teachers find out if ideas work  “Exceptional Kids”  Realizing errors  Report from researchers  Reflect and improve aspects of teaching  Certification Programs-Billie Hicklin

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Finding out if Ideas work… “Exceptional Kids”  A first grade teacher, Mazie Jenkins, was told that first graders could solve addition and subtraction word problems without being taught the procedures. When she saw proof in a video she exclaimed that the 5-year olds were exceptional, but when she tried out a word problem on her kids with no instruction on how to solve it they could solve it on their own too. She learned that while she would have taught the word problem as a standard subtraction problem and there being no other way of solving it, most of her students spontaneously generated the problem as an addition problem.

Quality of Learning Opportunities

  Realizing errors… Researcher came up with some ideas and theories for teaching and while they were familiar with the material they found it difficult to implement the ideas into local classrooms. They needed to get feedback from teachers on their ideas in order to correct their errors. The researchers realized they had not been clear about the procedures on how to implement the new idea for teaching in to the classroom. Without feedback they could have never fixed this problem and wouldn’t know what was wrong.

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Certification programs are being developed to help teachers reflect on and improve their practice. Teachers preparing for certification ask peers to provide feedback on their teaching. This helps them to focus on aspects of their teaching that they might not have noticed.  Billie Hicklin  Seventh Grade teacher in NC who participated in the National Board certification process.

 Found that the structured reflection that was required made her make significant changes in her teaching.

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Community-Centered Environments  Involve norms that encourage collaboration and learning.

 An approach that involves peers working and learning together and teachers’ participation in educational research and practice.

 Frederickson and White “video clubs”  Annenberg Critical Friends Project  Some communities are supported by school districts.

 Teachers and collaborative discussions give way to reflection of student understanding.  Holt High School

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Frederickson and White “video clubs”.

 Teachers share tapes of lessons they have taught and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of what they see.

 Allows them to see the successes and failures with pedagogy and curriculum develpoment.

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 Annenberg Critical Friends Project  Led by a teacher and/or coach who is trained in process skills and diverse ways of looking at student work.

 Involve issues such as…  “What is good work?”   “How do we know?” “How do we develop shared standard for good work?”

Quality of Learning Opportunities

 At Holt High school everyday these two algebra teachers got together to discuss and agree on what to and how to teach their students next. They were trying to create new functions-based approaches to teaching algebra. Discussing this caused them to reflect on student understanding and reflection on the texts of specific algebra problems.

 Also this allows for students in different classrooms to get the same level of education in algebra.

Action Research

     Represents another approach to enhancing teacher learning by proposing ideas to a community of learners. Active engagement in research on teaching and learning.

Action research is another approach to professional development in which teachers typically spend 1 or more years working on classroom-based research projects.

Contributes to sustained teacher learning and becomes a way for teachers to teach other teachers.

Examples:  PTARG   Expertise level Unfortunates

Action Research

 PTARG- Physics Teacher Action Research Group  Practice a form of action research called enhanced normal practice.

 In regular group meetings the teachers discuss their students’ work.  Between meetings they try out the teaching and curricular ideas form the group and then give feedback the a the next meeting.

 This gave way to a better teaching and deeper understanding of their subject area.

Action Research

 Action research can be work around the level of expertise of the teachers needs.  Actions research is set in a social situation so the teachers’ beliefs about learning, their students, and their conceptions of themselves as learners are examined, challenged and supported.

 This promotes the growth and development of learning communities.

Action Research

  Unfortunately….

The use of action research for continued teacher learning is prevented by the lack of time and lack of paid time.

 Some teachers don’t have time to participate in action research and they don’t have the funds. Most school districts don’t have the funds to for their teachers either.

Preservice Education

  Programs that prepare new teachers.

“The United States will need to hire 2 million teachers over the next decade to meet the demands of rapidly rising enrollments, growing retirements, and attrition that can reach 30% for beginning teachers in their initial years…All will need to be prepared to teach an increasingly diverse group of learners to ever higher standards of academic achievement.”

Preservice Education

    Differences in Programs.

Similarities in Programs.

Four philosophical traditions of practice.

Problems with teacher education programs.

Preservice Education

  Differences Teacher education programs…  Can be an Undergraduate major or a program that is in addition to an academic major.

 Have different expectations as far as the time length spent to complete the program.

 4 years of undergraduate study  5 years or master degree program  Teacher preparation can be college based or primarily located in the field.  Can be primarily academic programs or have the main purpose of certification.

Preservice Education

  Similarities Most all teacher education programs…  Have some subject-matter preparation.

 Usually liberal arts or general education for prospective elementary teachers  Are subject matter concentration for prospective secondary teachers  Have a series of foundational courses such as:  Philosophy, sociology, history, and psychology of education.

   Have one or more developmental, learning and cognitive psychology courses. Have “how to” courses.

Have a sequence of field experiences.

Preservice Education

 Four philosophical traditions of practice:  “An academic tradition that emphasizes teachers’ knowledge of subject matter and their ability to transform that subject matter to promote student understanding;    A social efficiency tradition that emphasizes teachers’ abilities to apply thoughtfully a “knowledge base” about teaching that has been generated through research on teaching; A developmentalist tradition that stresses teachers’ abilities to base their instruction on their direct knowledge of their students-their mental readiness for particular activities; and A social reconstructionist tradition that emphasizes teachers’ abilities to analyze social contexts in terms of their contribution to greater equality, justice and elevation of the human condition in schooling and society.”

Preservice Education

 Problems with teacher education programs.

 Disjointed   Political factors having strong effects.

National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future examples.

 Effects of Problems   Challenge of Transfer “Sink or Swim”

Preservice Education

 Teacher education programs are disjointed.

 The collection of courses, field experiences, and student teaching are often taught by people who have little or no ongoing communication with each other.

Preservice Education

   Political factors have strong effects on teacher education programs which has a negative effect.

Schools, colleges, accreditation boards, and state and federal dept. of education have regulations that interfere with the programs which causes them to be less innovative. The majority of teachers are educated at state schools, where their budgets are controlled by the state legislators and governors. They also teach in public schools that are affected by local politics through school boards.

Preservice Education

 The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future identified several problems with current preservice teacher prep programs:  Inadequate time   Fragmentation Uninspired teaching methods  Superficial curriculum

Preservice Education

  Inadequate time.

Four year undergraduate degrees make it difficult for…  Elementary teachers to learn subject matter.

 Secondary teachers to learn about the nature of learners and learning.

Preservice Education

  Fragmentation The traditional program arrangement (core courses, developmental psychology courses, methods courses, and field experience) offers disconnected courses that prospective teachers (novices) are expected to pull together into some meaningful whole.

Preservice education

  Uninspired teaching methods.

Although teachers are supposed to excite students about learning, teacher prep methods courses are often lecture style courses. So, prospective teachers who do not have hands on experiences with learning are expected to provide these kinds of experiences for students.

Preservice Education

  Superficial Curriculum The need to fulfill certification requirements and degree requirements leads to programs that provide little depth on subject matter or in educational studies, such as research on teaching and learning. Not enough subject matter courses are included in teachers’ preparation.

Preservice Education

 Effects of Problems.

 Impede lifelong learning.

 The message is sent to prospective teachers that research in education on learning or teaching is not related to schooling, so they don’t learn from the research done on learning.

 The importance of viewing themselves as subject matter experts is not emphasized, which leads to teachers not being encouraged to seek beyond their current knowledge and understanding of their subject matter.

 Can be seen in the complaints that preservice education program students have about the foundations courses.

 They say that they are too theoretical and have no bearing on what real teachers would do in real situations with real students.

 Also that methods courses are time consuming with no intellectual substance.

Preservice Education

   Teachers have problems transferring (chapter 3 – Michelle) what they have learned.

Teachers have problems with transitioning form a world dominated by college courses with some supervised teaching experiences to a world where they are the teachers. (Expert learner to novice teacher – chapter 2).

They need help in using the knowledge they have, and they need feedback and reflection on their teaching.

Preservice Education

 “Sink or Swim”  New teachers are often given the most challenging assignments:    More students with special educational needs.

Greatest number of class preparations.

Many extracurricular activities  They are usually asked to take on these responsibilities with little or no support from administrators or “senior” teachers.

 This leads to an extremely high turnover of new teachers, esp. in the first 3 years of teaching.

In Conclusion…

 Successful learning for teachers requires continued coordinated efforts that range from preservice education to early teaching to opportunities of lifelong professional development. Creating these opportunities, based on the knowledge of learning and teaching obtained from research, is a major challenge but not impossible.