Borko, H. (2004) Professional Development and Teacher Learning: Mapping the Terrain
Educational Researcher, Vol. 33, No. 8, pp. 3–15
This article discusses:
1. What do we know about professional development programs and their impact on teacher learning?
2. What are important directions and strategies for extending our knowledge?
Context:
1. Changes in classroom practices demanded by
the reform visions ultimately rely on teachers.
2. Changes of this magnitude will require a
great deal of learning on the part of teachers and will be difficult
to make without support and guidance.
3. Teacher professional development is essential to efforts to improve our schools.
Problem:
1. Professional development
currently available to teachers is woefully inadequate for the most part
2. Each year, schools, districts, and the federal government spend
millions, if not billions, of dollars on in-service seminars and
other forms of professional development that are fragmented, intellectually
superficial, and do not take into account what we
know about how teachers learn
3. Sykes (1996) characterized the inadequacy of
conventional professional development as "the most serious unsolved
problem for policy and practice in American education
today" (p. 465).
4. The premise of this article is that it is a “serious
unsolved problem” for educational research as well.
5. We are only beginning to learn, however,
about exactly what and how teachers learn from professional development,
or about the impact of teacher change on student
outcomes
A Situative Perspective on Teacher Learning and Professional Development
+ Borko uses a situative perspective to interpret existing research on teacher learning and identify issues for future investigation
+ Situative theorists conceptualize
learning as changes in participation in socially organized
activities, and individuals’ use of knowledge as an aspect of their
participation in social practices (e.g., Greeno, 2003; Lave &
Wenger, 1991).
+ Several scholars have argued that learning has
both individual and sociocultural features, and have characterized
the learning process as one of enculturation and construction
(e.g., Cobb, 1994; Driver et al., 1994).
+ From a situative perspective, teacher learning “is usefully understood
as a process of increasing participation in the practice
of teaching, and through this participation, a process of becoming
knowledgeable in and about teaching” (Adler, 2000, p. 37).
+ To understand teacher learning,
we must study it within these multiple contexts, taking into
account both the individual teacher-learners and the social systems
in which they are participants.
Key elements that make up any professional development system
• The professional development program;
• The teachers, who are the learners in the system;
• The facilitator, who guides teachers as they construct new knowledge and practices; and
• The context in which the professional development occurs.
Type of Research on PD
Phase 1 research activities focus on an individual professional
development program at a single site. Researchers typically study
the professional development program, teachers as learners, and
the relationships between these two elements of the system. The
facilitator and context remain unstudied.
In Phase 2, researchers
study a single professional development program enacted by more
than one facilitator at more than one site, exploring the relationships
among facilitators, the professional development program,
and teachers as learners.
Phase 1 research provides evidence that high-quality professional
development programs can help teachers deepen their
knowledge and transform their teaching.
Three characteristics commonly studied are:
+ subject matter knowledge for teaching
+ understanding of student thinking
+ instructional practices
To foster students’ conceptual understanding, teachers must
have rich and flexible knowledge of the subjects they teach.
To guide student thinking, teachers must also understand
how children’s ideas about a subject develop, and the connections
between their ideas and important ideas in the discipline
(Schifter & Fosnot, 1993).
A key reason for deepening teachers’ knowledge of subject
matter and student thinking is to improve classroom teaching.
Research using the individual teacher as the unit of analysis
also indicates that meaningful learning is a slow and uncertain
process for teachers, just as it is for students.
For example, it appears to be easier for teachers to incorporate
strategies for eliciting students’ thinking into their teaching
than to use what they hear from students to make instructional decisions
(Franke et al., 2001; Franke & Kazemi, 2001).
Examples:
- Community of Teacher Learners - English and history teachers
- QUASAR (Quantitative Understanding: Amplifying Student Achievement and Reasoning) - math
Grossman and colleagues’
(2001) insights about teacher community suggest a conceptual
explanation for these findings. They argued that we cannot expect
teachers to create a community of learners among students
if they do not have a parallel community to nourish their own
growth. The logic of this claim makes sense, but as a research
community we have yet to build an empirical base to support the
claim or to shed light on the mechanisms by which this relationship
works. [POSSIBLE RESEARCH TOPIC]
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE
A central tenet of situative perspectives is that the contexts and
activities in which people learn become a fundamental part of
what they learn (Greeno, Collins, & Resnick, 1996). This tenet
suggests that teachers’ own classrooms are powerful contexts for
their learning (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Putnam & Borko, 2000).
A number of
programs have successfully used artifacts such as instructional
plans and assignments, videotapes of lessons, and samples of student
work to bring teachers’ classrooms into the professional development
setting. Such records of practice enable teachers to
examine one another’s instructional strategies and student learning,
and to discuss ideas for improvement (Ball & Cohen, 1999;
Little, Gearhart, Curry, & Kafka, 2003).
It is difficult enough to create a professional development curriculum
for one’s own use. As LeFevre warns, “It is challenging
by another magnitude to design a curriculum for use by others”
(p. 252).
Next Steps for Professional Development
Design and Research
Researchers might investigate
whether professional development programs with demonstrated
effectiveness for elementary mathematics teachers can be adapted
to different subject areas and grade levels.
Phase 2 studies must
investigate the balances and tradeoffs between fidelity and adaptation,
and consider which elements of a program must be preserved
to ensure the integrity of its underlying goals and principles.
