In research on teacher professional development and school reform attention for the role of teacher agency has been growing significantly during the last decade. The objective of this study is to create a model with the potential to view professional development and school reform from a teacher agency perspective at multiple levels.The model of teacher agency in professional development and school reform is built on five characteristics; it (1) presents the teacher as an actor, (2) depicts dynamic relationships, (3) treats professional development and school reform as inherently contextualized, including multiple levels, (4) includes the professional development and school reform content as variable and ( 5) considers outcomes as part of a continuing cycle.To illustrate the usefulness of the model as an analytical tool 36 research articles on professional development and school reform were selected. These articles shared a focus on teacher agency. The analysis showed that research on teacher agency varies in how these five characteristics are elaborated. Moreover, the model demonstrated to be a promising tool to research multilevel complexity by integrating theoretical insights in, and empirical research results of school reform and professional development.
Regional sustainability networks in the Netherlands are rooted in regional culture and have an emphasis on social learning and effective collaboration between multiple actors. The national 'Duurzaam Door' (Moving Forward Sustainably) Policy Programme regards these networks as generative governance arrangements where new knowledge, actions and relations can co-evolve together with new insights in governance and learning within sustainability transitions. In order to understand the dynamics of the learning in these networks we have monitored emergent properties of social learning between 2014 and 2016. Our focus is particularly on the interrelated role of trust, commitment, reframing and reflexivity. Our aim is to better understand the role and the dynamics of these emergent properties and to see which actors and roles can foster the effectiveness of social learning in regional transitions towards more sustainable ways of living. We used a retrospective analysis with Reflexive Monitoring in Action (RMA), which we combined with the Most Significant Change approach. We found that reflexivity in particular is a critical property at moments that can make or break the process.
The role of social learning as a governance mechanism in natural resource management has been frequently highlighted, but progress in finding evidence for this role and gaining insight into the conditions that promote it are hampered by the lack of operational definitions of social learning and practical methods to measure it. In this article, we present a simple and flexible method to measure social learning, whether it has occurred and to what extent, among stakeholders in natural resource management. The method yields measurements of social learning that are visual, quantitative and qualitative. First, we elaborate our definition of social learning as a convergence of perspectives and outline how stakeholder perspectives in natural resource management can be described with Cultural Theory. Next, we provide a generic description of the method, followed by two examples illustrating its application to the domains of water and land management. Finally, we discuss relative strengths and weaknesses of the method and how it could be applied to improve our understanding of factors that contribute to social learning.
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