Understanding teachers’ professional learning goals from their current professional concerns

Abstract

In the day-to-day workplace teachers direct their own learning, but little is known about what drives their decisions about what they would like to learn. These decisions are assumed to be influenced by teachers' current professional concerns. Also, teachers in different professional life phases have different reasons for engaging in professional learning. In this study, we explored the professional concerns underlying teachers' learning goals in order to understand variation in professional learning over a teacher's career. In this qualitative study, we administered a semi-structured interview and a card sorting task to 15 secondary school teachers to elicit teachers' learning goals and current professional concerns. By conceptually combining teachers' learning goals with professional concerns in concern-goal pairs, we sought to understand the different reasons for teachers' learning. These concern-goal pairs were characterized in three different types of reasons: continuous, growth and improvement, and work-management. The results showed that early career teachers have mainly growth and improvement concerns, whereas mid-and late-career teachers have both continuous and growth and improvement concerns. Work-management concerns differ for early-and late-career teachers. Results are further discussed in terms of professional life phase models and teachers' developmental tasks throughout their career.

Readiness and Competence of New Teachers for Career as Professional Teachers in Primary Schools

“…The observation results of the teaching process to new teachers through 17 aspects of teacher performance showed good competence with an average value of 4.24 although basically, teachers, in their first years of teacher's profession, are very easily affected to learning intentionally and responsively in class (Heikonen et al, 2017). In fact, the results of the study conducted by Louws et al (2018) showed that the early career teachers had problems in growing and increasing professionalism. However, the investigated new teachers in this study showed good performance in almost all aspects assessed.…”

Ten simple rules for partnering with K–12 teachers to support broader impact goals

“…Early in the project, the team identified broader impacts goals and objectives (Rule 4). Similarly, ask teachers what they want to gain from this experience and have them set their own goals [23]. Example teacher goals may include learning about emerging scientific discoveries, collaborating and/or networking with peers, acquiring new materials to teach science concepts and practices, or developing their pedagogical practice.…”

A Tailored Food Science Education Program For Primary And Secondary Teachers

“…An average number of answers (8%) were obtained under the statement "realizing successful (inter) school projects" (o). According to Louws, Meirink, van Veen, & van Driel (2018), the teachers' concerns and professional learning goals are not constructed in vacuum but are constructed within a school context.…”