Graduate feedback on a teacher education program and school district support: An argument for a continuum of professional learning

Finding Room for Indigenous Women in Educational Leadership: Why Structured Mentorship and Training Are Needed

“…MacMath et al (2021) call for a nation-wide mentorship model for teachers already in service, as part of their professional development, which other researchers have illustrated as well. In a case study, French and Lozano (2020) argued for mentorship as a vital component in human resource development, stating that this collaborative tool helps learners before they join the workforce.…”

“…Recent research on professional development programs embedded within teacher training in higher education reveals that student teachers are better able to develop leadership identities when they are given opportunities and support for practicing these identities (Buss, 2022). Furthermore, MacMath et al (2021) show that mentorship for educational leaders work best when it is targeted towards particular individuals or communities; thus, programs aiming to develop indigenous women as educational leaders must focus on what specific types of education, training, support, and opportunities women from indigenous communities might need. Once new teachers enter the workforce, they “may need more assistance than their veteran colleagues and administrators are able to provide” because of industry-wide lack of mentorship for new teachers (MacMath et al, 2021, p. 30).…”

“…There is a particular need to understand the lack of representation of indigenous women in educational leadership because of how necessary indigenous viewpoints are to current educational systems; indigenous school leadership “offers rich ways of leading well-suited to our current challenges” and may be the way forward in educational leadership (Netolicky, 2022, p. 211). If we add to this the dwindling numbers of teachers and educational leaders who stay in their positions and the ever-decreasing populations of new teachers in teacher education programs (MacMath et al, 2021), then colleges and universities must recognize these trends and address current gaps in teacher training, especially for indigenous women aiming for leadership roles in school systems.…”

Teachers’ Professional Learning in the Context of Implementing Project Based Learning in a Secondary School

“…In an effort to rebrand the school, the school administration secured government funding to implement Project Based Learning (PBL) as a school-wide innovation beginning with grade 9 students, with the intention to continue implementing PBL in subsequent years. While the innovation itself was interesting and became the focus of other studies (MacMath, Britton, & Sivia, 2017;Sivia, Novakowski, MacMath, & Britton, 2018), our intention in this study was to understand how teachers perceived their learning as they developed their practices over the course of implementing the PBL innovation.…”

“…While these aspects contribute to a more comprehensive definition of TPL, they lack specific mention of how teachers themselves perceive and describe their learning as professionals, instead emphasizing researchers' conceptions. While research exists on teachers' understanding and use of PBL (e.g., Hovey & Ferguson, 2014), these (and related) studies focus on teachers' practices, curricular designs, and perceptions of student learning, viz., post-secondary applications of PBL and student learning (Dahlgren, Castensson, & Dahlgren, 1998;Li & Du, 2015), design principles of PBL (Bo & Li, 2015), and student engagement and teacher perceptions of PBL (MacMath, Britton, & Sivia, 2017;Sivia, Novakowski, Theoretical Framework This study is inspired by Cochran-Smith and Lytle's (2009) seminal research into teacher learning and draws on the principles of their theory of inquiryas-stance 3 , which "is neither a top-down nor a bottom-up theory of action, but an organic and democratic one that positions practitioners' knowledge, practitioners, and their interactions with students and other stakeholders at the center of educational transformation" (pp. 123-124).…”