Teacher Professional Development

1
Teacher Professional Development

• Dr. Sylvia TANG Yee Fan
• Dr. Jocelyn CHOI Pik Lin
• 11 September 2003
• Presentation at the Sri Lanka
• School Principals Training Programme

2
The teaching force in Hong Kong Teaching as a
mass rather than an elite profession
No. of teachers in government, aided and private
schools in HK (2002-03) Provisional figures

(Source Education Manpower Bureau)
3
The teaching force in Hong Kong Changes in the
past ten years
(Source Education Manpower Bureau)
4
Is it necessary to have an all graduate, all
trained teaching profession?
5
Teacher professional development The Triple I
Model
Induction of Beginning Teachers
Initial Teacher Education
In-service Continuing Professional Development of
Teachers
6
Teacher professional development Award-bearing
Programmes Initial Teacher Education

• Full-time pre-service / initial training
• Concurrent mode Certificate in Education
  (sub-degree) Bachelor of Education BEd(P)
  BEd(S) BEd(L)
• Consecutive mode Postgraduate Diploma in
  Education PGDE(P) PGDE(S)
• Sandwich mode BA(ELT) BSc(MAIE)

• Part-time initial training
• Sub-degree level degree level upgrading courses
  PGDE

7
Teacher professional development Induction
An intense and formative time in learning to
teach, influencing not only whether people remain
in teaching but what kind of teacher they
become. Becoming a teacher involves forming a
professional identity and constructing a
professional practice. Both aspects of learning
to teach must unfold in ways that strengthen the
beginning teachers capacity for further growth.
Feiman-Nemser, S. (2001). From preparation to
practice Designing a continuum to strengthen and
sustain teaching. Teachers College Record,
103(6), 1013-1055.
Future development in HK Internship mentoring
8
Teacher professional development
Personal-professional development
Attempts at teacher development and educational
change will meet with little success unless they
engage with the purposes of the teacher, unless
they acknowledge the person that the teacher is
and unless they adjust to the slow pace of human
growth that takes place in the individual and
collective lives of teachers.
Hargreaves, A. (1992). Cultures of teaching A
focus for change. In A. Hargreaves M. G. Fullan
(Eds.), Understanding teacher development (pp.
216-240). Cassell Teachers College Press.
9
Teacher professional development Mentoring
continuing professional development

• Changing ways of conceptualizing mentoring
• A beginning teacher learns from the master
  teacher
• A beginning teacher is socialized into teaching
  with the support of a mentor (a more experienced
  teacher)
• A beginning teacher learns to teach with the
  support of a mentor (a more experienced teacher)
• Teachers learn from each other to improve
  teaching and learning.

10
Teacher professional development Mentoring
continuing professional development
Mentoring in this sense becomes not just a way of
supporting individual teachers but also a device
to help build strong professional cultures of
teaching in our schools, dedicated to improving
teaching, learning, and caring Mentoring must be
explicitly connected to other reform components
in transforming the teaching profession.
Hargreaves, A., Fullan, M. (2000). Mentoring in
the new millennium. Theory into Practice, 39(1),
49-56.
11
Teacher professional development The
professional learning community
Significant educational change consists of
changes in beliefs, teaching style, and
materials, which can come about only through a
process of personal development in a social
context.
Fullan, M. (2001). The new meaning of educational
change. New York London Teachers College
Press.
12
Teacher professional development The
professional learning community

• Secondary school
• A vision-directed evolving school model
• Teacher professional development is value-driven
  and data-driven.
• Teacher collaboration in curriculum development

13
Generic Teacher Competencies Framework for
Professional Development
INTERNSHIP
Threshold
Competent
Accomplished
Domains of teachers work
Consultation will start very soon!
14
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING CAPACITY
Normative structures / standards
Pre-service education
Professional community
Professional learning infrastructure
professional recognition system
School / system capacity
Teacher capacity
Opportunity to learn
Student learning
Professional capacity
Induction
Leadership
Performance assessment system
Career structure
Professional development
Adapted from Ingvarson, L. (2002). Building a
learning profession (Commissioned research series
paper no. 1) Australian College of Educators.
15
Darling-Hammonds view Teaching standards are
not a magic bullet. By themselves, they cannot
solve the problems of dysfunctional school
organizations, outmoded curricula, inequitable
allocation of resources, or lack of social
supports for children and youth. Standards, like
all reforms, hold their own dangers. Standard
setting in all professions must be vigilant
against the possibilities that practice could
become constrained by the codification of
knowledge that does not significantly acknowledge
legitimate diversity of approaches or advances in
the field that access to practice could become
overly restricted on grounds not directly related
to competence or that adequate learning
opportunities for candidates to meet standards
may not emerge on an equitable basis. (p.
39) Darling-Hammond, L. (1999). Reshaping
teaching policy, preparation and practice
Influences on the National Board for teaching
professional standards. Washington D.C. AACTE
Publications.
16
Teacher Professional Development at School
Level
17
Years of teaching
Themes / Phases
Serenity/Rela tional distance
Conservation
Disengagement serene/bitter
31-40
Source Successive themes of the teacher career
cycle (Huberman, M.1989)
18

• Teachers Career Cycle
• and Teacher Development
• Where are your teaching staff in terms of their
  career cycle?
• What characteristics do they display with
  reference to their career stages?
• How do these characteristics contribute to the
  professional learning culture of your school?

19

• Understanding the impact of wider and
• school contexts on teacher development
• What is the effect of educational reform on
  teachers job satisfaction?
• To what extent is the teachers work intensified
  in your school? How does teachers professional
  lives affect their personal lives and vise versa?
  

20

• Principal leadership
• Six core areas of leadership (EMB, HK, 2002)
• Strategic direction policy environment
• Learning, teaching and curriculum
• Teacher professional growth development
• Staff resources management
• Quality assurance accountability
• External communication connection to the
  outside world

21

• Principal leadership in teacher professional
  development
• Are the teachers in your school actively involved
  in continuous professional development? What are
  the indicators?
• How can you facilitate teachers professional
  development in a way that can both contribute to
  school improvement and teachers job
  satisfaction? List the necessary conditions.

22
A principals reflection Where am I now? Where do
I want to go? Do I really want to go there?
Why? What is out there? How can I head for where
I want to go? How can my colleagues be convinced
that is a worthwhile place for all of us to go?
How can I facilitate my colleagues to acquire
the necessary new knowledge and skills to have a
successful go?
23
Teachers' organizational commitment was affected
by the principal's leadership behavior, and this
relationship could be moderated by variables like
the characteristics of teachers, teacher training
and nature of the teaching tasks. Yuen, P. Y.,
Cheng, Y. C. (1991). A contingency study of the
relationship between principal's leadership
behavior and teachers' organizational commitment.
Educational Research Journal, 6, 53-62.
24

• Facilitating conditions for professional
  development in school
• Principal Leadership as shown in
• job assignments
• instructions for duties
• opportunities for participating in professional
  decision-making
• criteria to assess teacher performance
• resolving interest conflicts among staff
• school response to educational reform (Choi,
  2003)

25
'more' can be achieved with 'less' (UNESCO,
199848) UNESCO(1998) World education report
1998 Teachers and teaching in a changing
world
26

• Group project
• Develop a teacher development professional year
  plan for your own school.
•    Rationale behind the teacher development
  professional year plan and how it fits into the
  school development plan
•     The work plan
•    Anticipated difficulties and possible ways to
  cope with them
•     Ways of evaluating the teacher development
  plan