Education Commons^™

Structure Speaks: User-Centered Design And Professional Development, Nikki Holland, Christian Z. Goering

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This reflective essay situates a yearlong professional development endeavor led by a site of the National Writing Project within the language of technical communication. Developing rural writing teachers through four distinct design features—needs assessment, frequent contact, website redesign, collaborative planning through Google Docs—this work sought to put participants and providers on equal levels, sharing control of programming when possible. Professional development providers and teacher educators ultimately must model practices they desire to impacting students in the classroom.

African American Doctoral Scholars’ And Fellows’ Professional Development Mentoring Experiences Toward Higher Education Professorship, Crystal J. Bryant, Adriel A. Hilton, Patricia A. Green-Powell

Journal of Research Initiatives

This research examined the professional development mentoring experiences of African American doctoral recipients who participated in the Southern Regional Educational Board (SREB) Doctoral Scholars Program or the McKnight Doctoral Fellows (MDF) Program, and are currently employed as faculty at an American college or university. The purpose of this research was to identify the types of professional development mentoring opportunities that assisted SREB and MDF program graduates in their transition into the professoriate, and to determine if race or gender of the faculty mentor played a significant role in their preparedness for the teaching, research, and service tasks required of faculty. …

The Impact Of Professional Development And Indigenous Education Officers On Australian Teachers’ Indigenous Teaching And Learning, Rhonda G. Craven, Alexander S. Yeung, Feifei Han

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

The study investigated the impact of professional development (PD) in Indigenous teaching on teachers’ psychological and behavioural aspects, and Indigenous students’ learning engagement. Adopting a multiple-indicator-multiple-indicator-cause model, frequency of PD was found to have positive paths to teachers’ self-concept in Indigenous teaching and all the teaching strategies, but had a non-significant path to students’ learning, suggesting the more frequently teachers are involved in PD in Indigenous teaching, the higher self-concept they had in teaching Indigenous children and the more frequently they adopted Indigenous teaching strategies. The availability of Aboriginal Education Officers (AEOs), however, had a significant and negative path on …

Expanding Pedagogical Horizons: A Case Study Of Teacher Professional Development, Peter Burridge, Cathryn Carpenter

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

Development of pedagogies within schools that inform adolescent learning has been an ongoing struggle within education systems. A novel approach to this issue was taken by the Non Government Organisation (NGO) 'Evolve’ based in Victoria, Australia, who worked in partnership with disadvantaged secondary schools to develop a multi-faceted curriculum. This curriculum incorporated traditional outdoor learning approaches of residential experiences and expeditionary journeys, alongside school based inquiry projects.

Data collected over three years found that the different educational settings of the program exposed teachers to a range of teaching practices. This exposure combined with the collaborative development of curriculum with Evolve …

Full Steam Ahead – A Collaborative Colloquium, Hilary Dito

The STEAM Journal

On February 2, 2012, Contra Costa County Office of Education organized its 2^nd Annual STEAM Colloquium: Full STEAM Ahead. This forum brought together over 150 educators, business leaders and community members to discuss and share best practices in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) education

Professional Development In Cte Data Driven Methods: Development Of A Research-Based Intervention, John Foster, Carol L. Hodes, Patricia Kelley, Sandra Pritz

Online Journal for Workforce Education and Development

An initial survey conducted by the authors in 2009 determined the amount and type of preparation career technical educators (CTE) had regarding the use of assessment data for program and instructional improvement; this survey was the basis for development of an intervention for teachers on interpretation of assessment data for improvement of classroom instruction. The intervention, titled Career and Technical Educators Using a Data Driven Improvement Model or CTEDDI, was developed and successfully piloted in five states during spring semester 2010; the results of the pilot study have been used to revise the materials and process to produce a professional …

Innovating Professional Development Standards: A Shift To Utilize Communities Of Practice, Teresa Foulger

Essays in Education

This paper is a report on the findings of an action research study that explored a non-traditional professional development process involving five elementary teachers and a professional developer working as a collaborative community. The interactions within the group focused on the creation and teaching of a three week thematic unit across grade levels and classrooms. Although technology integration was the proposed new learning, instructional strategies and innovative ways to collaborate were also explored. Qualitative data analysis indicated that when professional developers pay close attention to the social nuances and emotional needs of participants, communities of teachers coming together for a …

“Been There---Ah, Haven’T Tried It That Way”: A Professional Effort To Differentiate Instruction, Donna M. Sobel

Essays in Education

It goes without saying that the most critical component of preparing educators lies in their ability to competently teach. Differentiation provides a framework to develop classrooms where realities of genuine student variance can be addressed with curricular realities. The author describes a professional development project that differentiated a series of teacher workshops that were designed to increase teachers’ perceived competency to differentiate instruction. The purpose here is to describe a collaboratively created and implemented professional development program designed to train staff in ways to differentiate instruction for all learners. Sample training activities, along with perceptions from participants and suggestions for …