During the past fifteen years there has been increasing interest in the role of reflection in professional development, especially amongst teacher educators. Yet although many preservice programs now place considerable emphasis on encouraging and assisting student teachers to reflect on their practice, reflection remaings a problematic notion. There is little consensus, for example, about what constitutes reflection, how it might be identified, and whether it can be promoted. This thesis reports a longitudinal study conducted over four years which explored the above issues within the context of an early childhood teacher education program, in Sydney (NSW), Australia. The specific purpose of this study was to investigate changes in student teachers' reflection on their professional development and practice during their enrolment in the Guided Practice component of their preservice program. A strength of this study is its focus on reflection as a multidimensional phenomenon involving far more than the processes of analytical thought typically addressed by most previous research in this area. Drawing on an eclectic range of literature, this thesis argues that emotion, imagination, intuition, and contemplation can also play an integral role. As such, it asserts that reflection can be seen, in effect, as a complex and holistic search for meaning. Conceptualising reflection in this holistic manner raises numerous methodological challenges. These challenges and the methodological decisions made in response to them are outlined prior to developing profiles of the participants' reflection. These profiles indicated that there was little consistent change in the reflection of eight of the 18 participants. For four student teachers, on the other hand, there was some change, while for six, there was considerable change. Several factors which appeared instrumental in hindering or promoting these student teachers' reflection are identified. These include commitment (or lack of) to teaching and to reflection; an epistemological perspective of received or constructed knowing; and the extent to which the learning environment was perceived as supportive. The study concludes with a discussion of some of the implications for teacher educators and for those intending to undertake further research into reflection.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-118). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-118). Also available on the Internet.

This study aimed to investigate what constituted the professional practical knowledge of EFL experienced teachers in the Egyptian context and what the sources of their knowledge were. It also aimed to examine the relationship between the teachers’ knowledge and the contextual factors intervening in action. By delineating its focus as such, the study responds to call for reconceptualising the core of the knowledge base of teaching to focus on teaching as a knowledge-based activity and an act of common sense and reasoning, the pedagogy by which teaching is done, and the context in which it is done. The study was carried out using multiple methods for collecting qualitative and quantitative data. This design was chosen to investigate the participants’ views of professional practical knowledge and to construct their different understandings and interpretations which they brought with them. Questionnaires completed by 236 EFL experienced teachers, semi-structured interviews conducted with 14 of them and stimulated recall classroom observation data with three of them were the data collected for the current study. Although it provided a parsimonious view, quantitative questionnaire data made an important contribution to the bricolage of information built up during the study. A more in-depth understanding was gained from qualitative data using responses to the open-ended section of the questionnaire, interviews and classroom observation. Based on quantitative and qualitative data analyses, six core areas of teacher knowledge were constructed from the participants’ responses and accounts. These were: subject matter, pedagogy, students, classroom learning environment, curriculum and self. The findings also revealed a variety of sources which shaped the teachers’ professional practical knowledge including: experience, teacher education, university study in the subject department, student and peer feedback, in-service training, expert advice, student output and postgraduate study. The findings also revealed that the relationship between teacher knowledge and practice was reflected in two ways. The first was that teacher knowledge represented an operative model which underpinned practice. The second was that it informed the classroom decisions. However, not all teacher knowledge found application in practice. A variety of intervening contextual challenges were revealed to deter the actualisation of teacher knowledge in action such as the EFL exam policy, lack of time, support and resources, mismatch between teacher purposes and students’ expectations and needs, and large class size. These findings were discussed in relation to existing research evidence and context. Implications for pre-service and in-service teacher learning were also drawn based on the findings of the study.

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of a staff development program designed through the cascade-training model by the MoNE on primary school English teachers and their actual classroom practices. In line with this, it aimed to establish a connection between aspects of planning, implementation, and evaluation of staff development and their impact on teachers and students. A qualitative case study was employed and data were collected from 10 teachers, eight teacher trainers, and three faculty members through semi-structured interviews. Moreover, 23-hour seminar and 50-hour classroom observations were conducted, and the documents related to the seminar and actual classroom practices of the teachers were analyzed to complement the interview findings. The results indicated that the effective practices (e.g., use of participant-centered approaches, English as the medium of instruction, practical ideas and suggestions and course book based activities) and ineffective practices (e.g., lack of needs assessment, traditional way of session delivery, and lack of follow-up) employed in the planning, implementation and evaluation phases of staff development had an impact on teachers&#039 / (1) pedagogical beliefs, (2) pedagogical content knowledge, (3) actual classroom practices, (4) personal and professional growth, and (5) students. The findings further revealed that these five levels of impact interacted with each other based on the characteristics of the teachers (teaching experience and gender), their motivation, self-concepts, and the teacher education programs they attended.

ABSTRACT AN ASSESSMENT OF THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT NEEDS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE INSTRUCTORS WORKING AT A STATE UNIVERSITY Eksi, G&uuml / l M.S., Department of Educational Sciences Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Yesim &Ccedil / apa Aydin December 2010, 88 pages The main purpose of this study was to assess the professional development needs of the English language instructors working at a state university in Istanbul. Ninety-two instructors teaching preparatory classes constituted the population of the study. Within that needs assessment, the instructors&rsquo / perceptions of professional development, the most common professional development activities instructors practice, factors that hindered instructors from attending professional development activities, the most difficult skill to teach and assess, the areas of teaching English where instructors needed a professional development program, and the instructors&rsquo / preferences for delivery methods and formats of the professional development programs were identified. This study also examined the role of year of teaching experience, workload of the instructors, department the instructors graduated, and instructors&rsquo / perceptions of professional development programs in predicting the professional development needs of the instructors. Findings indicated that participants had positive perceptions of professional development. The most common professional development activity type was found to be &ldquo / Sharing experiences with colleagues.&rdquo / The most important factor which hindered participants from attending professional development was determined as &ldquo / inconvenient date/time.&rdquo / The most difficult skill to teach and to assess was reported as &ldquo / Writing.&rdquo / It was found out that the area where the degree of need was the highest was &ldquo / New theories and practices of English language teaching.&rdquo / Most of the participants reported that they preferred professional development activities to be optional workshops at their own institutions. A trainer or an expert from an outside institution was the most preferred speaker type. Findings also showed that instructors preferred sessions which took up to 60 minutes, held on weekday mornings once a month. The result of the regression analyses indicated that only year of teaching experience was significant in predicting professional development needs of the instructors. Year of teaching experience was negatively correlated with the needs indicating that as the teachers got more experience, their degree of professional development needs decreased.

No description available.

Na atualidade, diversos estudos consideram a carreira docente um processo complexo que necessita de permanente formação. Nesse sentido, os Mestrados Profissionais em Ensino de Ciências (MP-EC) têm representado um dos movimentos formativos mais abrangentes e desafiadores dos últimos anos. Por se constituir em um espaço que busca oferecer ao professor em exercício diversas problematizações sobre a docência, torna-se fundamental compreender as particularidades desse contexto para então indicar subsídios para a proposição de ações no âmbito da formação de professores. Assim, o presente estudo buscou investigar as possibilidades de desenvolvimento profissional de professores que cursaram um programa dessa natureza, como se apresentam os MPs-EC, mediante um instrumento de análise elaborado para tal propósito. Para a elaboração do instrumento levamos em consideração tanto os aspectos do campo cognitivo em termos de saberes, conhecimentos e competências que caracterizam o ofício do magistério, tão recorrente na literatura especializada, quanto os aspectos subjetivos, que pouco têm sido explorado nas pesquisas, e que, no nosso estudo, nos auxiliaram a indicar o compromisso do professor com sua própria formação. Assim, nosso instrumento de análise contou com dois eixos: um contendo oito dimensões dos saberes, que apontam a amplitude ou abrangência do desenvolvimento profissional, e outro, denominado autoria docente, composto por três indicadores que se caracterizam em função da intensidade com que cada dimensão é alcançada pelo professor. Valemo-nos de entrevista semiestruturada como forma de coleta de dados. Entrevistamos dez professores-egressos de quatro MPs-EC e por meio de uma análise narrativa, procedimento de análise de dados adotado na pesquisa, reconstruímos as relações estabelecidas entre os egressos e as tarefas do curso, mostrando o desenvolvimento profissional que os professores alcançaram. Nossa investigação apontou para a complexidade desse processo, sobretudo a importância dos cuidados a se tomar no desenho de contextos que tem tal finalidade. Essas informações são fundamentais para orientação de políticas de formação continuada. / At present, several studies consider a teaching career a complex process that requires permanent formation. In this sense, Professional Masters in Science Teaching (MP-EC) have represented one of the most comprehensive and challenging training movements of recent years. Because it is a space that seeks to offer to the teacher several problematizations about teaching, it is fundamental to understand the particularities of this context and indicate subsidies to propose actions in the teacher training scope. Thus, aimed investigate the possibilities of professional development of teachers who attended a program of this nature, like the MPs-EC. To elaborate an instrument we took into consideration both the cognitive field aspects in terms of knowledge, and competences that characterize the teaching profession, recurrent in the specialized literature, and the subjective aspects, which have not been explored in the researches, and that in our study, helped us to indicate the teacher\'s commitment to his / her own training. The instrument of analysis had two axes: one having eight dimensions of knowledge, indicating the professional development amplitude or scope and another, called teacher authoring, composed by three indicators that are characterized by the intensity with which each dimension is achieved by the teacher. we used a semi-structured interview as a form of data collection. We interviewed ten undergraduate teachers from four MPs-EC and through a narrative analysis, procedure of data analysis adopted in the research, we reconstructed the relationships established among the graduates and as tasks of the course, showing the professional development that the teachers reached. Our investigation pointed to the complexity of this process, especially the importance of the care to be taken in the design of contexts that have such a purpose. These informations are essentials for the orientation of continuing education policies.

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.

Na atualidade, diversos estudos consideram a carreira docente um processo complexo que necessita de permanente formação. Nesse sentido, os Mestrados Profissionais em Ensino de Ciências (MP-EC) têm representado um dos movimentos formativos mais abrangentes e desafiadores dos últimos anos. Por se constituir em um espaço que busca oferecer ao professor em exercício diversas problematizações sobre a docência, torna-se fundamental compreender as particularidades desse contexto para então indicar subsídios para a proposição de ações no âmbito da formação de professores. Assim, o presente estudo buscou investigar as possibilidades de desenvolvimento profissional de professores que cursaram um programa dessa natureza, como se apresentam os MPs-EC, mediante um instrumento de análise elaborado para tal propósito. Para a elaboração do instrumento levamos em consideração tanto os aspectos do campo cognitivo em termos de saberes, conhecimentos e competências que caracterizam o ofício do magistério, tão recorrente na literatura especializada, quanto os aspectos subjetivos, que pouco têm sido explorado nas pesquisas, e que, no nosso estudo, nos auxiliaram a indicar o compromisso do professor com sua própria formação. Assim, nosso instrumento de análise contou com dois eixos: um contendo oito dimensões dos saberes, que apontam a amplitude ou abrangência do desenvolvimento profissional, e outro, denominado autoria docente, composto por três indicadores que se caracterizam em função da intensidade com que cada dimensão é alcançada pelo professor. Valemo-nos de entrevista semiestruturada como forma de coleta de dados. Entrevistamos dez professores-egressos de quatro MPs-EC e por meio de uma análise narrativa, procedimento de análise de dados adotado na pesquisa, reconstruímos as relações estabelecidas entre os egressos e as tarefas do curso, mostrando o desenvolvimento profissional que os professores alcançaram. Nossa investigação apontou para a complexidade desse processo, sobretudo a importância dos cuidados a se tomar no desenho de contextos que tem tal finalidade. Essas informações são fundamentais para orientação de políticas de formação continuada. / At present, several studies consider a teaching career a complex process that requires permanent formation. In this sense, Professional Masters in Science Teaching (MP-EC) have represented one of the most comprehensive and challenging training movements of recent years. Because it is a space that seeks to offer to the teacher several problematizations about teaching, it is fundamental to understand the particularities of this context and indicate subsidies to propose actions in the teacher training scope. Thus, aimed investigate the possibilities of professional development of teachers who attended a program of this nature, like the MPs-EC. To elaborate an instrument we took into consideration both the cognitive field aspects in terms of knowledge, and competences that characterize the teaching profession, recurrent in the specialized literature, and the subjective aspects, which have not been explored in the researches, and that in our study, helped us to indicate the teacher\'s commitment to his / her own training. The instrument of analysis had two axes: one having eight dimensions of knowledge, indicating the professional development amplitude or scope and another, called teacher authoring, composed by three indicators that are characterized by the intensity with which each dimension is achieved by the teacher. we used a semi-structured interview as a form of data collection. We interviewed ten undergraduate teachers from four MPs-EC and through a narrative analysis, procedure of data analysis adopted in the research, we reconstructed the relationships established among the graduates and as tasks of the course, showing the professional development that the teachers reached. Our investigation pointed to the complexity of this process, especially the importance of the care to be taken in the design of contexts that have such a purpose. These informations are essentials for the orientation of continuing education policies.