Teacher learning and professional development for teachers are the key concepts for this study.
As a result, I attempt to untangle the meaning of teacher professional development, a concept which is often substituted by teacher learning and even teacher knowledge in some cases.
However, as indicated by L. Evans (2002), there is a lack of clarity in this area of study because of the range of meanings assigned to the terms by different scholars. This phenomenon draws attention to the need to distinguish the concept teacher learning from teacher professional development.
Although there is abundant literature on professional development and teacher learning, these terms are often used interchangeably by different scholars (L. Evans, 2002), thus suggesting a divergent field (Fraser, Kennedy, Reid, & Mckinney, 2007). As a result, most of the conceptual and empirical works in the field of professional development and teacher learning are viewed by several scholars as confusing or meaning different things (Bertram, 2011). The term professional development is often linked to a particular initiative or activity that reinforces the idea that teacher professional learning occurs only as a result of attending specific events such
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as workshops or programmes (Opfer & Pedder, 2011) during a given study period (Huberman, 1995). But research has shown that formal professional development activities may not necessarily lead to teacher learning or to changes in teaching practices (Bertram, 2011; Brodie et al., 2002; Wood & Bennett, 2000).
The main purpose of professional development, according to Little (1987), is to develop the profession of a teacher for his or her present and future school roles. This is echoed by other education researchers from developed countries who assert that increasing the learning opportunities for teachers enhances their classroom enactments and subsequently improves learners’ performance (Borko, 2004), especially formal programmes which focus on the implementation of research based practices (Guskey & Yoon, 2009). Similarly, Meyer and Abel (2015) evaluation study of one teachers’ course in the Western Cape Institute, South Africa, denotes that the main goal of teacher professional development is to improve teachers’
competencies to enable them to enact better practices. However, the extent to which teachers’
learning opportunities facilitate effective changes in their classroom practice remains unclear (Parise & Spillane, 2010). There is a limited empirical relationship between teachers’ learning opportunities and changes in their teaching, especially in EFAL at FP, in the South African context.
I believe such brief engagement with the two concepts throws the reader into more confusion about the definitions of professional development and teacher learning. To some authors, professional development or teacher learning is sometimes used to describe an activity (like a programme) or a product and sometimes a process. It is therefore important to provide debates from different researchers so as to illuminate the conceptual understanding of professional development and teacher learning, as used in this dissertation.
Teacher learning or professional development of teachers should be recognised as a highly complex process that depends on a collection of factors such as teachers’ biographies, social histories, working contexts, peer groups, identities, broader political culture and teaching preferences, as well as the quality of the professional development programme (Fraser et al., 2007). According to C Day (2004), these factors are essential for the establishment of effective professional development activities, which would subsequently yield effective outcomes. Thus, narrowing professional development activities into quick fix solutions such as a refresher
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course over a week or a single event with assumptions of teachers’ knowledge deficiencies is unrealistic. According to research, such models do not address the contextual challenges or complexities of teacher learning (Bantwini, 2009). The concept of professional development and teacher learning must encompass opportunities for teachers to develop more effective teaching skills and strategies for the purpose of improving the standards of the schools, as well as the teaching profession (Taylor et al., 2013).
In an attempt to map the terrain of teacher learning in the last few decades, Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) propose three main domains of teacher learning, namely: knowledge-for-practice, knowledge-in-practice and knowledge-of-practice. This conceptual understanding is similar to (Kelly, 2006) classification of the domains of teacher knowledge: personal (beliefs and values of a teacher), propositional (conceptual and theoretical knowledge) and practical (knowing how), respectively (see details in section 2.34). I agree with Bertram and Christiansen (2012) who feel these categories by Cochran-Smith and Lytle tend to bring in more confusion on teacher learning and the domains of teacher knowledge. This conceptualisation generated an additional question for this study: what constitutes teacher learning, professional development and teacher knowledge? Reading several works in this field, I realised that scholars continue to disagree on a common definition, nor have a clear understanding of these three concepts (Borko, 2004; Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002; Cochran-Smith, 2005; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Desimone, 2009; Evans 2002; Fraser et al., 2007).
Consequently, there are strong views in favour of a more fundamental need, and also for moral purposes, to distinguish between professional development and teacher learning (Clarke &
Hollingsworth, 2002; C Day, 1999, 2004; Fraser et al., 2007). According to these scholars, professional development should offer teachers the opportunities to attain practical, emotional, social and intellectual engagement essential to accomplish sustainable professional change (C Day, 2004). Teacher professional development, according to C Day (1999, p. 4), entails:
All natural learning experiences and those conscious and planned activities which are intended to be of direct and indirect benefit to the individual, group or school and contribute through these, to the quality of education in the classroom. It is the process by which, along with others, teachers review and extend their commitment as change agents to the moral purposes of teaching and by which they acquire and develop critically the knowledge, skills, and emotional intelligence essential to good professional thinking, planning and practice with children, young people and colleagues through each phase of their teaching lives.
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This comprehensive description provided by Day includes important features of effective professional growth of the teachers involved in the process, as well as individual teacher progression. If it is inferred to be important for the FP teachers in the South African context, the relevance of this definition can be positioned as requirements of effective PD according to the following features:
The professional development activity must create a collaborative learning environment. The focus of the professional activity must be relevant to the roles and needs of the FP teachers.
The activities of the professional development must have a positive impact on the classroom and encourage reflection that would eventually transform the FP teachers and their peers, as well as their practices.
The participants must gain the necessary cognitive, social, moral and emotional skills from the professional development activity to enable them to work efficiently with learners, fellow teachers and other members of the school (Carlisle, Cortina, & Katz, 2011; Rutgers, 2012).
Other studies have broadened the views on the concept of professional development to fit the various conceptual frameworks of teacher learning. According to situated and social frameworks, teacher learning is understood as an interactive social process (Borko, 2004) and a teachers’ communal learning (Wenger, 1998), while the cognitive frameworks conceptualise teacher learning as a formal process led by an expert (Fraser et al., 2007; Guskey & Yoon, 2009). Generally, the social and cognitive frameworks bring in the idea of formal and informal learning, where the teachers act as powerful agents in their own growth and change. For instance, Borko (2004) incorporates the idea of community learning, but emphasises more the contextual experiences which are also relevant to this study:
For teachers, learning occurs in many different aspects of practice, including their classrooms, their schools, communities and professional development courses or workshops. It can occur in brief hallway conversations with a colleague or after school when counselling a troubled child. To understand teacher learning, we must study it within these multiple contexts, taking into account the individual teacher-learner and the social system in which they participate (2004, p. 4).
This is similar to Desimone’s (2009) account of professional development:
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Teachers experience a vast range of activities and interactions that may increase their knowledge, skills and improve their teaching practices, as well as contribute to their personal, social and emotional growth as professional teachers. Such experiences can range from formal, structured topical seminars [in service courses] to everyday ‘hallway’ discussion with other teachers about instruction techniques embedded in teachers’ everyday work lives (2009, p. 182).
With such arguments, it is deceptively easy for one to ascribe a simple definition to professional development and teacher learning, while the two concepts seem to focus primarily on the same component - the process, but with different brands. My understanding is that ‘professional development’ is a process of learning mostly from a formal activity or programme, whereas
‘teacher learning’ seem to encompass a range of teachers’ experiences, both formal and informal. Elsewhere, Clarke and Hollingsworth (2002, p. 967) elaborate on a model of teacher professional ‘growth’ that closely connects the two concepts. In other words, it is not easy to draw a distinctive line between these concepts, as a result, professional development and teacher learning remain a contested field that requires clarity in educational research.
So, for the purpose of discussions and arguments in this study, ‘teacher learning’ will refer to the processes, whether planned or unplanned, individual or social, that result in specific changes in the professional knowledge, skills, attitudes, beliefs or actions of teachers. This supports the broad view of ‘professional development’ as teachers’ lifelong experiences, the essence of which is to gradually lead to changes in their classroom practices and profession in a qualitative manner (Fraser et al., 2007, pp. 156-157).
To sum up, ‘teacher learning’ in this study is a process, while ‘professional development activity’ is any formal activity (such as a professional development programme) that a teacher engages in for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge base and skills for teaching. In this study, these concepts are used to focus specifically on what three FP teachers learnt about teaching EFAL from the ACT programme at UKZN, during the 2014 -2015 academic year.
The next two sections elaborate on the various conceptual frameworks of teacher learning, teacher change and teacher knowledge, so as to fully understand their implications for the professional development activities.
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