This thesis documents my exploration of professional development of four experienced English language teachers of diverse background taking the MA TESOL programme at the University of Manchester. Having considered professional development to be about change construed broadly to professional identity and teacher beliefs, I explored it through a series of individual in-depth interviews held throughout the programme. The majority of the interviews focused on the teachers' ongoing life and development and allowed the teachers space to make meaning of what they were going through and how they were developing as they engaged in the programme. On the basis of the interviews, stories about the teachers and their year were constructed. Within the stories, I synthesized what I had learned about the teachers' experience and highlighted the changes that I could see had happened to their professional identity and teacher beliefs. The stories provide a vivid example of professional development of experienced English language teachers through a master's degree. They also bring to the fore the significance of future-directed thoughts for how teachers develop professionally, which is rarely acknowledged in the existing literature. I further use the stories as a ground to conceptualize professional development of the four teachers to account for the important role their thoughts about the future played in it. Using the concepts of imagined identity and antenarrative, which I borrow from the literature, I describe it as an iterative pursuit of an ever-evolving imagined identity, or identities, and antenarrative, or antenarratives. Finally, I examine the cases using the conceptualization as a lens and offer some further insights about professional development in TESOL.

The Group Mentoring Programme which is the subject of this evaluative research was developed and implemented under the auspices of the Australian Library and Information Association by the author and a colleague. The main aim of the Programme was to facilitate the transition of new graduates in librarianship into the profession. The objectives of the research were: (1) to conduct an impact evaluation of the Programme; (2) to explore and develop the conceptual and theoretical bases of mentoring; and (3) to identify sources of stress anticipated and experienced by new graduates in their transition into the profession. This evaluative research represents the first report in the research literature to date in which a group mentoring programme of this kind has been evaluated using a quasi-experimental research design. The population comprised all graduates in librarianship from the two Western Australian universities offering these courses in 1996. Subjects in the experimental group were self-selected, and the remainder of the population made up the comparison group. (This was divided into two groups - those who did not have a current mentor, and those who had a current mentor.) Data were collected by means of pre- and post-test questionnaires, and analysed by multiple regression analysis. The main outcome variable was measured by Hall's Professionalism Scale, a validated measuring instrument. Results indicated that the Group Mentoring Programme was effective in only one of the five domains of professionalism as measured by this scale (that is, in having a sense of 'calling' to the field). This suggested that a group mentoring programme, by itself, is not a sufficient strategy for new graduates to attain a professional identity. A four-stage model of mentoring as continuing professional development is suggested as a strategy for teaching professionalism in a more formal, ++ / structured way. Results also showed that career-development outcomes were significantly higher in the Group Mentoring participants than in the two comparison groups, indicating that group mentoring is an effective career development strategy in the first year of such a programme. The concept of mentoring is extended to include group mentoring, which incorporates the essential characteristics of mentoring; it is also suggested that group mentoring includes the potential for practising three forms of mentoring relationships: individual, peer and co-mentoring. Two broad areas for future research are suggested: longitudinal studies examining the outcomes of group mentoring, and studies extending the theoretical and conceptual bases of group mentoring.

The purpose of this study was to investigate perceptions of self-initiated professional development of English language teachers at English Language School of BaSkent University. Within this framework, teachers&amp / #8217 / attitudes towards their professional development, their perceptions of major professional development activities, and the factors that hinder change and growth in teachers were investigated. The data collection instrument used was a questionnaire administered to 110 English language teachers at BaSkent University. The questionnaire consisted of both open-ended and close-ended items and the data collected were analyzed descriptively to understand the general trends and differences among teachers. The data analysis revealed that the teachers agreed with most of the concepts that reflect the importance of professional development. In addition, they were aware of the importance of major professional development activities for their growth. However, peer observation and action research, which are developmental activities, were not favoured as much as the other activities. In addition, it was found that the teachers did not make use of the activities as much as they gave importance to. Furthermore, teachers showed significant differences in importance given to and making use of the activities by the background variables. Female teachers, young teachers and the teachers who do not have much experience seemed to give more importance to and actualize some of the professional development activities more than the other teachers. Meanwhile, it was also noted that the listed factors that hinder growth were all found important by the teachers. The most important impediments to growth were indicated as excessive workload, lack of self-motivation and lack of institutional support for professional development.

This dissertation presents an intervention-based study that aimed to enable teachers to improve teaching and learning in one school in Ramallah, Palestine. The non-positional approach to teacher leadership was adopted as a means to mobilise all teachers in the drive towards bottom-up, participatory school change processes that increase teacher self-efficacy and collaboration, build professional capacity and social capital, and promote sustainability. The Teachers Leading the Way programme provided a contextually tailored strategy, and set of instruments and tools that through reflective exercises and dialogic activities aimed to support teachers to innovate practice, and impact organisational structures and professional culture. This is significant in the Palestine setting for facilitating the building of locally based and sourced knowledge to inform an authentic Palestinian vision and agenda for policy-making and education reconstruction, with implications for countries of the Middle East and North Africa region. In the process, a grassroots change movement is intended to shift historical and continued reliance on foreign intervention and international assistance, and lay the foundation for democratisation and social transformation. The intervention was investigated using a critical action-based, participatory methodology that emphasised context and researcher reflexivity in one school and amongst a cohort of 12 participants. Data were collected using a range of research-designed and programme-based methods and instruments, analysed deductively and inductively, and narrated critically to maintain coherence, and convey experiential and temporal dimensions. The study outcomes indicate that teachers in Palestine are capable of leading school improvement, and impacting school structures and professional culture for system-wide change, when the proper support is provided. Non-positional teacher leadership is the vehicle and can be developed through Teachers Leading the Way. At the individual level, this is enabled through a transformation in teachers’ perspective towards a self-empowered, agential mindset that leads to action on ways to improve practice. The transition process underscores the role of effective facilitation as an enabling condition for developing non-positional teacher leadership in Palestine and similar settings.

School-based professional learning communities (PLCs) have become an important means of “building capacity” among teachers in a wide variety of areas, including those with a subject focus. Very often, these PLCs are mandated by administration, and operate under an established structure. This paper describes an attempt by a mathematics coordinator and school level “lead’ teachers to establish relatively informal PLCs in mathematics in an effort to improve mathematics teaching, and thus student learning, in an environment that focused very much on literacy. The four PLCs created are discussed, as are the opportunities and the challenges that go with the relative freedom offered to the teachers. Sustainability is a central challenge to these groups.

The field of professional learning in education has been studied and added to extensively in the last few decades. Because the importance of learning in authentic contexts through professional dialogue has become so important, high quality, school-based professional learning is vital to building capacity at the school level. Unfortunately, the literature on professional development (PD) does not provide much guidance on how to bridge theory and practice at the school level, creating a gap. With the goal of PD ultimately being to improve teacher performance and student learning, the problem with this gap is that school-level professional development is arbitrarily planned, resulting in variable outcomes. I propose the reason for this is schools lack a comprehensive framework or tool that guides the design of a quality professional learning plan. This problem was identified in Orange County Public School and this dissertation in practice aims at developing a solution that accounts for the district*s specific contextual needs. My proposed solution is the design of an integrative tool that school leaders can use to guide them through the professional development planning process. The School-based Professional Learning Design Tool incorporates the professional development standards in planning, learning, implementing, and evaluating outlined in the Florida Professional Development System Evaluation Protocol. It also guides leaders in taking an inventory of the culture and context of their school in order to plan PD that will be viable given those considerations. The components of the Tool guide teams through assessing school teacher performance and student achievement data to help identify focus groups; determining gaps in learning through root cause analysis; creating goals aligned to gaps in performance; and selecting strategies for professional learning, follow-up support, and evaluation. The development of the Tool was informed by the extant literature on professional development, organizational theory, state and national standards for professional development, and principles of design. The Tool is to be completed in four phases. Phases one and two, the focus of this paper, include the literature review, organizational assessment, design specifications, and the first iteration of the Tool. In the next phases, the goals are to solicit feedback from an expert panel review, create a complete version of the Tool, and pilot it in elementary schools. Although the development of the Tool through its final phases will refine it considerably, there are limitations that will transcend all iterations. While the Tool incorporates best practices in professional development, the lack of empirical evidence on the effectiveness of specific PD elements in the literature renders this Tool only a best guess in helping schools plan effective professional development. Another limitation is that the Tool is not prescriptive and cannot use school data to make decisions for what strategies to implement. Taking these limitations into consideration, the use of this Tool can significantly impact the quality and effectiveness of professional development in schools.

The aim of this thesis is to acquaint readers with the functional ways of the development of reading literacy of pupils in primary school, and to find out how and with what results these way can be aquired from the position of primary school teacher and pupils. The theoretical part is focused on reading literacy, its components, the stages and the factors that influce its development. It defines concepts of reading, reading comprehension, and related reading skills and strategies. It deals with the development of reading literacy at school. It describes pupils of the primary school and key competences of the primary school teacher. The thesis also describes which components of reading literacy can be developed among pupils and what the appropriate projects in the Czech Republic are. The final chapter focuses on the methods that support the development of reading literacy among pupils, especially the RWCT (Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking) program and their inclusion during lessons. The aim of the practical part of this thesis is to find out the answer to these research questions: How to effectively develop reading literacy of pupils at primary school? How and with what results can the teacher of primary school acquire functional ways of the development of reading literacy? The practical...

Il progetto di ricerca muove dall’interesse per l’emergere di nuove epistemologie della formazione professionale che riconoscono la pratica condivisa come contesto epistemologico di produzione e sviluppo di competenze. Recenti ricerche collegano le possibilità di crescita professionale del singolo allo sviluppo complessivo delle organizzazioni, interpretate come sistemi di comunità che apprendono. Il tema di fondo su cui si confronta la ricerca attiene alla trasformazione delle conoscenze dell’insegnante, all’interno dei vincoli e delle possibilità connesse all’attuale fase di transizione, in favore dell’apprendimento organizzativo. Più in dettaglio, la ricerca indaga il ruolo che assumono le conoscenze tacite nella trasformazione di conoscenza dal livello individuale a quello collettivo. / The research project originates from the interest in emerging new epistemologies of professional formation which identify shared practice as the epistemological context of competence creation and development. Recent research relates the opportunities of individual professional growth to the overall development of the organizations, considered as learning community systems. Given the limits and possibilities connected to the present moment of transition, the main point the research deals with is the transformation of the teacher's knowledge in favour of organizational learning. To be more precise, the research investigates the role of tacit knowledge in the transformation of knowledge from individual to collective level.