Professional development facilitators: reflecting on our practice

Lange, Troels; Meaney, Tamsin

doi:10.1080/19415257.2013.796292

Cited by 16 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Facilitation knowledge and skills are the 'second order' (Murray & Male, 2005) strategies used to organise the learning of a group of teachers. These encapsulate the ways in which professional development is different from teaching, including the ability to shift between multiple roles (Lange & Meaney, 2013), to model practice explicitly (Borko, et al, 2014), support teacher reflection (Solomon & Tresman, 1999), elicit prior experience from the teachers (Ince, 2016), and, as identified by one of the co-trainers in this study, to extend differing levels of freedom to teachers compared to students in the classroom.…”

Section: Facilitation Knowledge and Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By facilitators, we mean those practitioners who plan and deliver professional development programmes for teachers, whether they combine this role with teaching or teacher education, or operate exclusively as facilitators. In particular, only a few studies have paid attention to the learning and development needed for facilitators to carry out the role (examples include Krell & Dana, 2012, O'Dwyer & Atlı, 2015, Margolis & Doring, 2013, Elliott, 2005, Lange & Meaney, 2013, Linder, et al, 2015, Stein, et al, 1999 and even fewer have considered suitable models to support these (Perry & Boylan, 2017). In particular, there is a lack of research on professional development facilitation in low and middle income countries; it might be expected that this gap in knowledge contributes to the challenges described above.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Building capacity for professional development: the development of teachers as facilitators in Ghana

Perry

Bevins

2018

Professional Development in Education

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In low and middle income countries, cascade models of teacher professional development are often used as routes to educational reform. In these models, external agents deliver professional development which is then disseminated by in-country facilitators. However, little is known about how to support facilitators of professional development, particularly in low and middle income countries. In this study, we report on a model of capacity building for professional development in Ghana. In the context of a large-scale programme of science teacher professional development, a group of Ghanaian teachers gradually assumed responsibility for professional development facilitation, working alongside experienced facilitators from the UK. Using interviews focussed on a storyline technique, we explore the experiences of the Ghanaian teachers as they reflected on their roles. We found the teachers' epistemological beliefs about teaching were coherent with those of the programme and suggest that this may be an important factor in the success of cascade models of professional development. The teachers gained self-confidence and improved their knowledge and skills of teaching and of professional development facilitation. We propose that this is useful learning for all facilitators and that the model described here is one which is potentially useful for capacity building in other contexts.

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Section: Facilitation Knowledge and Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building capacity for professional development: the development of teachers as facilitators in Ghana

Perry

Bevins

2018

Professional Development in Education

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“…The students' poor academic results in national tests meant that the school received funding for teachers to attend PD. However, within a context of ongoing political discussion about what to do with schools that failed to show improvements, a nonnegotiable result of the professional development was that national test results had to improve (see Lange & Meaney, 2013). The school funded the teachers' release time to participate in the professional development project that we offered.…”

Section: The Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As PD facilitators researching our own practices (Lange & Meaney, 2013), it was important to understand the messiness of the relationship between professional development and teacher change. Although this relationship has been characterised in a range of different ways, evidence for a link to student outcomes remains unclear ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Teacher Narratives about Supporting Children to Read and Write in Mathematics: The Case of Kay

Lange

Meaney

2017

EURASIA J MATH SCI T

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The impact on one teacher of a short professional development project run in a school in a low socio-economic area in a small city in rural Australia is investigated in this case study. The project aimed to support teachers to improve students' writing in mathematics. The teacher's reflections about her work with a small group of Year 3-4-5 students are discussed in relationship to what supported or hindered her to change her practices. Over the two months of the project, the teacher supported the children to comprehend and produce their own word problems. However, the process of deciding how to change what she did to meet the needs of the students was messy because different combinations of factors affected her willingness to try alternative practices. Her narratives, from watching the videos on her lessons and in joint meetings with the other teachers and researchers, indicated that reflecting on what she was doing contributed to her taking more risks in her teaching. This resulted in the students having more opportunities to use their mathematical literacy skills to comprehend and respond to word problems.Keywords: professional development, students' language, mathematics word problems, low socio-economic area, teacher reflection PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND INCREASING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENTThe scaling up of professional development (PD) is often based on models which expect teacher learning, acquired during the PD, to increase student achievement in a linear fashion (see for example, Carpenter et al., 2004;Higgins & Bonne, 2011). However, as Joubert, Back, De Geest, Hirst, andSutherland (2010) indicate, the process of teacher learning is messy, due to a combination of factors, that involve interactions between the teacher, the students and the context, including the mathematics being learnt. Generally models of PD do not consider how contextual features affect teacher learning. In this paper, we use a case study to describe how one teacher, Kay, viewed a PD project and its impact on improving students'

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“…In this study, we focus on practitioners of the latter, that is, those who design and facilitate teacher professional development activities. Although a number of recent studies recognise that teacher leadership often involves facilitation of professional development (Fleet et al 2015, Margolis 2012, Margolis & Deuel 2009, Fairman & Mackenzie 2014, there is limited research into the practice of professional development facilitators and therefore little knowledge of how to support them to learn, carry out and improve their roles (van Driel et al 2012, Lange & Meaney 2013, O'Dwyer & Atlı 2015.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing the developers: supporting and researching the learning of professional development facilitators

Perry

Boylan

2017

Professional Development in Education

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Research on teacher professional development is extensive but there are fewer studies about the practitioners who facilitate professional development. Here we report on a pilot programme for professional development facilitators rooted in a cycle of action research.Informed by a categorisation of professional knowledge and skills of facilitators, in the 'developing the developers' programme, professional development facilitators enquired collaboratively into their practice using video observation and peer review and engaged with theories of professional learning. The impact of the programme was evaluated using a framework based on Clarke and Hollingsworth's (2002) interconnected model of teacher professional growth. The programme was effective in allowing participants to gain insights into their practice to develop it further and to identify participants' learning needs. The latter related to improving facilitation skills and knowledge and improving knowledge about professional development. The interconnected model was found to be applicable to professional development facilitators with some adaptations. Its use enabled understanding of the impacts of the programme and the learning processes involved. Although limited in scale, our study offers a model for professional development that is potentially useful in other contexts. Further, the theoretical frameworks developed may support the design and evaluation of similar programmes.

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Professional development facilitators: reflecting on our practice

Cited by 16 publications

References 15 publications

Building capacity for professional development: the development of teachers as facilitators in Ghana

Building capacity for professional development: the development of teachers as facilitators in Ghana

Teacher Narratives about Supporting Children to Read and Write in Mathematics: The Case of Kay

Developing the developers: supporting and researching the learning of professional development facilitators

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