Professional development for school teachers a world of change

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE This article was downloaded by: On: 14 September 2010 Access details: Access Details: Free Access Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37- 41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK European Journal of Teacher Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713421837 Professional development for teachers: a world of change Vivienne Collinsona; Ekaterina Kozinab; Yu-Hao Kate Linc; Lorraine Lingd; Ian Mathesone; Liz Newcombef; Irena Zoglag a Michigan State University, Grosse Pointe Park, USA b Trinity College Dublin, Ireland c MingDao University, Taiwan d La Trobe University, Australia e General Teaching Council for Scotland, Scotland f University of Wolverhampton, England g University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia To cite this Article Collinson, Vivienne , Kozina, Ekaterina , Kate Lin, Yu-Hao , Ling, Lorraine , Matheson, Ian , Newcombe, Liz and Zogla, Irena(2009) 'Professional development for teachers: a world of change', European Journal of Teacher Education, 32: 1, 3 — 19 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/02619760802553022 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02619760802553022 Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. 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Professional development for teachers: a world of change Vivienne Collinsona*, Ekaterina Kozinab, Yu-Hao Kate Linc, Lorraine Lingd, Ian Mathesone, Liz Newcombef and Irena Zoglag aMichigan State University, Grosse Pointe Park, USA; bTrinity College Dublin, Ireland; cMingDao University, Taiwan; dLa Trobe University, Australia; eGeneral Teaching Council for Scotland, Scotland; fUniversity of Wolverhampton, England; gUniversity of Latvia, Riga, Latvia As the industrialised world shifted to an interdependent and global society, formal schooling was quickly recognised as a major factor in achieving a knowledge society of lifelong learners capable of transforming and revitalising organisations. Teachers were encouraged to engage in learning together to improve teaching and, by extension, improve learning for the children in their care. This article identifies three emerging trends intended to broaden teachers’ learning and enhance their practices through continuous professional develop- ment: glocalisation, mentoring, and re-thinking teacher evaluation. The body of the article indicates how these three trends are unfolding in Australia, England, Latvia, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Taiwan, and the USA. However, teachers cannot bring about necessary changes without organisa- tional and systemic change; namely, collaboration with governmental agencies and other institutions. The authors suggest that transforming schooling in the twenty-first century depends on education policies being supported by expanded teacher participation in education policy-making, more coherent governmental policies across agencies, and collaborative, differentiated models for career-long continuing professional development. Keywords: professional development; educational policy; educational practices The world witnessed profound changes during the last half of the twentieth century, not the least of which involved a communications revolution and a rethinking of how people learn, how a ‘knowledge society’ needs ‘knowledge workers’ and ‘citizens of the world’ (Drucker 1959, 1993), and why organisations must develop career-long learning for their members. The education profession was not immune to these global shifts in thinking as nations implemented policies to improve learning for teachers and as local school systems began experimenting with new approaches for teacher learning. The article begins with an explanation of why global changes in teachers’ professional development may be occurring. It is followed by a brief description of three emerging trends designed to broaden and enhance teachers’ learning through continuous professional development: glocalisation, mentoring (in the form of induction), and re-thinking teacher evaluation. The body of the article indicates how these three trends are unfolding in Australia, England, Latvia, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Taiwan, and the USA. The trends indicate that professional development, while a critical piece for transforming education in the twenty-first century for teachers and their students, is integrally connected to countries’ broader educational and social policies. The authors suggest that different and differentiated professional development, along *Corresponding author. Email: vrcollinson@yahoo.com European Journal of Teacher Education Vol. 32, No. 1, February 2009, 3–19 ISSN 0261-9768 print/ISSN 1469-5928 online # 2009 Association for Teacher Education in Europe DOI: 10.1080/02619760802553022 http://www.informaworld.com D o w n lo ad ed A t: 2 3: 20 1 4 Se pt em be r 20 10 with a collaborative model for change involving expanded teacher participation in policy-making and more coherent governmental policies across agencies, would contribute to better understandings and improved implementation of educational policies in schools. Why is professional development changing? Academics widely agree that the twentieth century marked a rare conceptual revolution that has affected countries and individuals worldwide by reframing people’s understandings of change. Gone are formerly accepted, modernist concepts such as closed system models, stability and certainty, natural laws and order, and linear thinking. They have been replaced with post-modern concepts such as organic systems, unpredictability, interdependence, and constructed perspectives (e.g., Scott 2003). Dissemination of new concepts has been accelerated by a simultaneous communications revolution and by increased global mobility of people. The birth of the Information Era and the establishment of a knowledge society (Drucker 1994) have transformed the world. Such a society requires people to have ‘a good deal of formal education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytical knowledge…. Above all, they require a habit of continuous learning’ (62). Drucker (1993) outlined a new role for education in a knowledge society: learning and schools would not simply exist for children, but would extend through adults’ lives, permeate society, and include knowledge creation and problem solving. Learning, Drucker predicted, would be based on performance and results rather than on rules and regulations. The new thinking envisions ‘systems [that] are self-regulating and capable of transformation in an environment of turbulence, dissipation, and even chaos….The teacher’s role [is] no longer viewed as causal, but as transformative….And learning [is] an adventure in meaning making’ (Soltis 1993, x, xi). That means that individual adult members (e.g., teachers, principals, support staff) and groups within the organisation (e.g., a school, a department) require advanced continuous learning as well as opportunities to engage in dialogue and inquiry to create new knowledge. They need opportunities to work collaboratively, disseminate their learning, and contribute to their own, their colleagues’, and the organisation’s continuous improvement (Collinson and Cook 2007). Recruiting and retaining fresh streams of talented members, for example through mentoring, plays a major role in strengthening the vitality of the organisation. Fresh talent and diversity of members potentially contribute multiple ideas and perspectives as well as encourage the questioning of norms that is the starting point for error correction and innovation (Gardner 1963; Argyris and Scho¨n 1978). Organisations have to innovate in order to respond to and survive rapid and unpredictable changes in their environments (Preskill and Torres 1999; Kikoski and Kikoski 2004). However, self-renewal can no longer rely on single-loop learning; namely, tinkering around the edges by changing members’ behaviours (practices) but not their thinking. Rather, individuals in organisations have to aim for double-loop learning; that is, changes in thinking (beliefs and norms) as well as behaviours (Argyris and Scho¨n 1978, 1996). Society has already made an intellectual and conceptual shift, as have numerous businesses and industries (e.g., Dixon 1999; Schwandt and Marquardt 2000). 4 V. Collinson et al. D o w n lo ad ed A t: 2 3: 20 1 4 Se pt em be r 20 10 Education is slowly absorbing the new shift in thinking and is beginning to implement changes that encourage teachers and principals to engage in learning together for the purpose of improving teaching and, by extension, learning for the children in their care. But changes as profound and rapid as today’s changes generally involve risk and, sometimes, fear. The risk for members of the education profession is particularly strong because compulsory public education and continuing professional development for adults have a relatively short history that, for the most part, is thoroughly imbued with modernist concepts and language. Also risky is the thought that pioneering practices are premised on new concepts and therefore grounded mostly on faith that they should work (Doll 1993). Such is the nature of innovation. Emerging trends in professional development This article focuses on three educational trends – glocalisation, mentoring, and re- thinking teacher evaluation – that appear to have emerged in response to recent global understandings of lifelong learning and innovation, organisational revitalisa- tion via the development and retention of members, and continuous improvement and transformation from within. Following is a brief explanation of these trends. Glocalisation Members of the teaching profession are, by now, very familiar with the word ‘globalisation,’ a convergence of increasing mobility, trade, and communication with profound effects for almost every country. In fact, since ancient times, trade routes helped spread religions, cuisines, ideas, and innovations across land and sea. Today’s globalisation is merely happening faster and creating greater interdependence among peoples and nations. Sometimes, products, processes, or practices move from the local to a global market with little change. Recently, for instance, international fashion designers incorporated into their collections Burmese fabrics that use local lotus plants and local weaving patterns. In education, teachers anywhere may be using the lesson study process from Japan or the reading recovery programme from New Zealand. By contrast, theories and concepts that move from the global arena to a local arena rarely stay exactly the same. For example, democratic governance looks different in France than in the USA. To capture the phenomenon, Robertson (1995) coined the term ‘glocalisation’. Drawing on a Japanese word and concept, glocalisation originally referred to products with global reach or application being altered to reflect local tastes or interests. Today, glocalisation might be described as a blending of global and local, or an adaptation of the global with a distinct local twist that represents a transformation (e.g., incorporating local values, norms, culture, materials). There are parallel, irreversible and mutually interdependent processes by which globalisation-deepens-localisation-deepens-globalisation and so on….Neither the global nor the local exists without the other. The global-local develops in a symbiotic, unstable and irreversible set of relationships, in which each gets transformed through billions of worldwide iterations evolving over time. (Urry 2003, 84) The phenomenon is somewhat captured in the vernacular phrase, ‘Think globally, act locally’. For example, in the 1970s, an international hotel chain known for its European Journal of Teacher Education 5 D o w n lo ad ed A t: 2 3: 20 1 4 Se pt em be r 20 10 five-star high-rise hotels built a hotel complex in Bali that used local materials and kept building heights below the height of the rainforest while maintaining its standards of quality and service. In education, most curricula are a blend in that they share universal concepts, but teachers and books likely emphasise local values, culture, examples, and problems. Mentoring The concept of mentoring also has ancient roots, referring to Homer’s legendary figure, Odysseus, who left his son and household under the care and tutelage of Mentor. Over time, mentors have come to mean experienced, trusted advisors or counselors, and mentoring can take many forms. In education, mentoring sometimes serves as a sort of shorthand for induction programmes, most of which involve significant mentoring. In business and industry, informal mentoring has occurred for a long time. Informal mentoring has also occurred in public schools for many decades as experienced teachers voluntarily took novice teachers under their wing. In business and industry, formal mentoring has generally taken the form of apprenticeships. For instance, white-collar professions such as politicians, doctors, and lawyers have embedded formal mentoring for novices in the roles of pages, interns, or law clerks. More recently, the education community has embraced formal mentoring as a necessary extension of learning about the highly complex role of teachers and as a way to build habits of learning. Where organisations or countries have institutionalised mentoring for teachers, the practice of pairing mentor and novice teachers generally involves a one- to two-year induction programme. Induction programmes are designed to help increase competence and confidence of novice teachers and to serve as a link between teacher preparation programmes and continuous professional development, creating a seamless three-part sequence of career-long learning.1 Re-thinking teacher evaluation Teacher evaluation may be called a variety of terms: annual performance review, appraisal, assessment, inspection, or supervision. It became a fixture in twentieth century schools, especially after the role of head teacher-as-teaching-colleague became a non-teaching role of full-time manager or administrator/principal/director. Patterned after industry, school administrators supervised subordinates (teachers) who had clear-cut roles and responsibilities within a hierarchical bureaucracy. The predominant model, called the clinical supervision model, generally involves brief classroom observation(s) by the administrator followed by a written report or checklist and perhaps some conferencing. But because teachers much prefer to learn with and get ideas or advice from teachers (Wasley 1991; Rait 1995), the traditional top-down model of teacher evaluation came to be known as ‘a dog and pony show’ and, rather than being perceived as constructive learning, was viewed as ‘obtaining someone’s subjective judgment of how good a teacher is, a judgment based on the assumption that the judge knows what good teaching is and can recognize it when he sees it’ (Stronge and Ostrander 1997, 131). Some teachers received remedial assistance, few incompetent teachers achieved competency, and few teachers were dismissed for instructional incompetence (Tucker and Kindred 1997), leaving teachers – and the public – to wonder if the traditional behaviourist model was 6 V. Collinson et al. D o w n lo ad ed A t: 2 3: 20 1 4 Se pt em be r 20 10 adequate for a post-modern world in which teachers’ roles and responsibilities, as well as the professional culture, had already changed. Also by the end of the twentieth century, the accountability purpose of summative evaluation seemed at odds with the formative purpose of teacher development and instructional improvement: the former is episodic whereas the latter is continuous; ‘one operates as a deficit model, the other as a growth model; one acts as a stick, the other as a carrot; one represents teacher passivity, the other, active teacher involvement; one is externally motivated, the other, internally motivated’ (Collinson 2001, 151). By the end of the twentieth century, academia belatedly perceived ‘a need to change the traditional evaluative process that treat[ed] teachers as supervised workers rather than collegial professionals’ (Kumrow and Dahlen 2002, 238). Practitioners were already exploring emerging alternatives like peer coaching, self- evaluation, client surveys, teacher portfolios, action research, and study groups (Glickman 1992; Stronge 1997). This shift ‘embraces professional development and better reflects the complexity of teaching’ (Kumrow and Dahlen 2002, 238). Additional suggestions for reforms include strategies such as ‘union participation, altering the adversarial tone of evaluations, furthering collaboration and teamwork, principal evaluation, and joint principal and teacher analysis of student learning’ (Conley and Glasman 2008). How is professional development changing in the twenty-first century? In theoretical and conceptual visions of professional development during the last several decades, the emphasis has shifted from teaching (as a set of skills or competences) to teacher learning (e.g., Sparks 2002; Stoll, Earl and Fink 2003). Nations typically try to institutionalise new ways of thinking and educational innovations by means of policies. Policy implementation, however, is generally left to practitioners although they may have had little or no communication with policy- makers. Thus, even if policies represent desirable change, significant difficulties and unintended consequences may surface during implementation in schools. For instance, top-down policies may fail because practitioners are not given the reasoning behind new policies or linkages to existing practices. Sometimes, an educational policy is created in isolation from other supportive social agencies, or it may be inconsistent with existing financial or social policies. Sometimes, short-term political thinking weakens long-term social goals or aspirations. Sometimes, existing structures and norms in schools are inadequate to support innovative thinking and policies. In the practical world of schools, the following examples illustrate that this shift is neither simple nor easy, but pioneering attempts in various countries around the globe provide insights into how new thinking and global change have prompted innovations in education. Global ideas, local action Taiwan is an example of an Asian country incorporating global thinking and practices. For instance, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education overhauled its national curriculum in 2004 with a view to encouraging a lifelong learning society and cultivating its citizens’ knowledge, capabilities, and creativity. Examples of Taiwan’s new core learning competences for students likely sound familiar to teachers on European Journal of Teacher Education 7 D o w n lo ad ed A t: 2 3: