The Professional Development of Teachers in Australia

Information and Communications Technologies and Teacher Education in Australia

“…Courses have been conducted over an extended period of time, provided various forms of support (school visits, on-line networking) and included school-based tasks (teaching projects, action research) which linked 'theory' and 'practice'. These are features of professional development programmes more likely to result in changes in teachers' practice in classrooms (Ling & Mackenzie, 2001). However, in the absence of any published evaluations of classroom practices, the impact of ICT professional development programmes of this kind cannot be determined.…”

“…Many universities and state ICT professional associations offer professional development modules that can be taken as stand-alone programmes or, if an assessment requirement is completed, used as credit towards a university award (graduate certificate) course (Ling & Mackenzie, 2001;Taylor & Clemans, 2000). An interesting example of the ways in which professional development frameworks developed by a state education department and university award courses can be used to provide professional development activities for teachers is the case study from Tasmania, described later in this article.…”

A Grounded Theory of Professional Learning in an Authentic Online Professional Development Program

“…The importance of such tasks in professional development has been known for a long time: Ling and MacKenzie (2001) found that successful professional development is a long-term process that offers opportunities for practical implementation. The same has later been confirmed in other studies (Lawless & Pellegrino, 2007;Garcia & Roblin, 2008).…”

“…5) Collaborative construction of knowledge is a key characteristic of authentic learning and a widely stated success factor of professional development. Collegial sharing (Ling & MacKenzie, 2001), interdisciplinary teamwork (Garcia & Roblin, 2008), as well as interaction and collaboration between participants (Liu, 2012) have all been recognized as key ingredients in effective professional development. 6) Reflection in authentic learning can be promoted by requiring participants to make decisions regarding completing tasks, by presenting materials in a non-linear fashion that allows free navigation and acting upon reflection, and by offering opportunities to compare one's thoughts to the ideas of other learners, experts, and mentors.…”

The Journey to Becoming Teaching Professionals in Rural South Africa and Zimbabwe.

“…Elsewhere literature shows government financed school initiated professional development programmes targeting particular policies (Ono & Ferreira, 2010). Other alternative trajectories have adopted teacher professional development through meetings, workshops, conferences and seminars organised by school subject departments and, school-to-school subject clusters and associations (Chikoko, 2006;Ling & Mackenzie, 2001). Regardless of purpose, particularly in developing countries, teacher professional development has mainly been through government ministries focusing on improving technical aspects of policy initiatives (Komba & Nkumbi, 2008) while subject clusters and associations mainly focus on curriculum and assessment issues (Little, 2000).…”