Professional learning orientations: patterns of dissonance and alignment between teachers’ values and practices

Abstract

Through its positive influence on teachers' classroom practices and their students' learning, effective professional learning of teachers is an important condition for school improvement. However, the Teaching and Learning International Survey reports that teachers' professional development in most countries falls short of meeting the needs of teachers. This paper reports analysis of survey data collected for a national study of teachers' professional development in England, although the issues it raises have international relevance. Through factor analysis four underlying dimensions of teachers' learning orientations were identified and used as the basis for developing profiles of teachers' professional learning values and practices through cluster analysis. Based on these profiles, five distinctive groupings of teachers were identified: 'engaged learners', 'moderate learners', 'infrequent learners', individual explorers' and 'solitary classroom learners'. The concept of dissonance between values and practice is a strong theme in the findings and for policy development. The main findings are that only a minority of teachers are 'engaged' learners. There is a prevailing individualist approach to learning among the majority of teachers. And there are important between and within school differences in the mix of teachers' learning orientations. This leads to recommendations for more differentiated forms of support for promoting effective professional learning in schools.

Teachers’ motives for learning in networks: costs, rewards and community interest

“…Active networkers, thus, show an understanding of networks as social structures that enable learning. Existing research also refers to this type of teachers as 'engaged learners' (Pedder and Opfer 2013).…”

“…The limited number of studies that focus on teachers' perceptions of networks make a case for considering both values and teaching practice (e.g. Engvik 2014;Pedder and Opfer 2013). Therefore, the present study aims to contribute to a better understanding of how teachers' perspectives on networks and learning in those networks can be used to understand and interpret teachers' motives for participation or non-participation in those networks.…”

A Framework on Exploring Primary School English Language Teachers’ Perceptions of their Continuing Professional Development in Malaysia

“…Kempton (2013) emphasized that effective CPD is one way to ensure having high quality teachers and it is vital to train the teachers properly. One of the problems lies in CPD experiences which are disconnected from the classroom (Pedder & Opfer, 2013). CPD should be embedded in a full range of professional activities and contexts to be effective, involving teachers learning in collaboration (Bolam et al, 2005).…”

Facilitating social learning in teacher education: a case study

“…To ensure active engagement with group products, the group's agenda should list two items that are grounded on the group's goals: (1) Experiences with group products in classroom practice and (2) Necessary amendments to group products, based on these experiences. These two items facilitate engagement by ensuring integration in day-today activities (Pedder and Opfer 2013). Through creating awareness among students of the importance of social learning for developing competencies, the product-oriented learning approach of students might gradually develop towards a more process-oriented learning approach, which is necessary for long-term learning.…”

“…This dimension encompasses two indicators: (1) 'Integrated or non-integrated activities', representing the extent to which group knowledge and activities are integrated in their practice and (2) 'Temporary or permanent activities', which describes the duration or sustainability of learning activities (Pedder and Opfer 2013).…”