Facilitating Teacher Learning When Using Different Representations of Practice

Abstract

Providing opportunities for learning through professional development requires the examination of facilitation of sessions with teachers. This study investigates facilitation of professional development to promote teacher learning when using animations and videos in a study group with five teachers. We ask: What practices (and moves within those practices) do the facilitators enact during high-quality conversations and specific to the professional development activities? We found that moves for sustaining an inquiry stance were more frequently performed than other moves, suggesting that the facilitator’s practices increase teachers’ learning opportunities when studying representations of teaching. In addition, the study suggests that there are no significant differences when facilitating discussions of animations and videos. The teacher learning goals seem to be more important than the type of representations of teaching used for the enactment of facilitation moves. Our findings are relevant for designing and implementing professional development that supports teacher learning through inquiry and collaboration.

Trust in qualitative data repositories

“…Researchers engaged in data reuse or secondary use of research data often have different goals than those of the original data producer (Corti, 2000;Karasti & Baker, 2008;Yoon, 2016;Zimmerman, 2008). In the field of education, data reusers have three main goals for their reuse: research, teaching and professional development (e.g., Derry et al, 2010;Gaudin & Chaliès, 2015;Gonzalez, Deal & Skultety, 2016). Therefore, data originally created for research can be used not only to answer different research questions, but also for the entirely different end goal of professional education.…”

Compiling video cases to support PD facilitators in noticing productive teacher learning

“…Another line of research is concerned with elaborating how knowing becomes acting and what moves characterize effective facilitation. González et al (2016) defined facilitation as the “performance of specific moves according to the core activities in the professional development” (p. 448). Different frameworks have emerged that describe such facilitation moves.…”

“…The framework was especially constructed to capture the facilitation of video-based discussion. González et al (2016) extended this framework to be applicable to PD that not only includes videos but also animations. As a result, these authors partly modified the initial framework (see Table 2).…”

“…On the teacher PD level, many studies have highlighted the positive effect of using video cases to enhance teachers’ noticing of essential aspects of practice (e.g., Beisiegel et al 2018). Facilitators who obtained the possibility to discuss their role in video clubs could also improve their noticing and were found to be more supportive as teacher PD leaders (e.g., González et al 2016). Nevertheless, using video cases to prepare facilitators for their crucial role involves careful and advanced designing of such learning opportunities (Lesseig et al 2016).…”

Which research can support PD facilitators? Strategies for content-related PD research in the Three-Tetrahedron Model

“…Some pioneering research studies have focused on facilitators' professional knowledge (Jaworski and Huang 2014;Even 2005;Borko et al 2008) and practices (Borko et al 2014;Lesseig et al 2017;Jacobs et al 2017). In addition, some research programs have aimed at identifying and investigating facilitation moves and have contributed descriptions of rather generic (i.e., less topic-specific) practices in facilitating PD (González et al 2016). A few other research contributions have favored a more content-specific approach by implementing, for instance, the problem-solving cycle model into leadership preparation (Borko et al 2014).…”