Balancing fidelity with agency: understanding the professional development of highly accomplished teachers

Rethinking the Factor of Duration for Professional Development: A Workshop-Seminar-Demonstration Class Model for Science Teachers

“…For example, teacher agency may be an important factor leading to different implementation effects of the same PD (Boylan et al, 2018). Highly accomplished teachers have been found to make links to earlier experiences and ideas and show much more flexibility and adaptability than novice teachers (Carpendale et al, 2021). In the design of this study, to ensure the diversity of participants distributed across schools in the city and consider the initiative of teachers, their teaching experience was not considered in the sample selection.…”

“…This model has been widely accepted, and adopted in science education (Yang et al, 2020). However, many researchers acknowledge that the PD process is more complex and iterative than a simple chain of activities (Carpendale et al, 2021;Desimone, 2009;McChesney & Aldridge, 2019). Clarke and Hollingsworth's (2002) interconnected model involves the external domain, personal domain, domain of practice, and domain of consequence to avoid linear chains.…”

“…McChesney and Aldridge (2019) proposed a new conceptual model which involving five stages: intended PD, received PD, accepted PD, applied PD, and student impact, and various barriers influenced whether teachers participating in PD were able to progress to each successive stage. Researchers argue that different models are appropriate for different purposes contexts (Boylan et al, 2018;Carpendale et al, 2021). Moreover, implementation fidelity is also considered critical to modern PD evaluation (Hill & Erickson, 2019).…”

“…Hill and Erickson (2019) believe that the estimates of implementation fidelity also can help explain null results, and divide these results into structural fidelity, process fidelity and dosage fidelity. Carpendale et al (2021) mentioned that researchers should pay attention to how highly accomplished teachers respond to PD situations and balance fidelity with expectations of teacher agency. In addition, professional identity, students' homework, the role of principals and school leaders, curriculum materials, and teacher reflection are also considered by some researchers to be factors that affect the implementation of PD (Desimone, 2009;Keisler, 2017).…”

Facilitators of Success for Teacher Professional Development in Literacy Teaching Using a Micro-Credential Model of Delivery

“…Contextual fit is also important, with teachers more likely to 'accept' and implement PLD when they can see the 'fit' for their student, school and wider cultural context [46]. Furthermore, individual teacher factors such as dedication to their profession [50], teacher agency [46] and how accomplished the teacher is [51] play a pivotal role in shaping the benefits derived from PLD. It may be that some of the sample of teachers who completed the micro-credential described in this study were impacted by these and other factors, thus explaining the, at times, contradictory data taken from the qualitative comments.…”