Henk Sligte

Affordances of teacher professional learning in secondary schools

ABSTRACT It is commonly understood that teachers in secondary school should develop throughout their career in order to stay as an essential factor in student learning. Schools can offer opportunities to link teachers’ professional learning to their school practice with a positive impact on teachers’ motivation to learn and the effectiveness of their learning. In this field study, teachers, school leaders, policy-makers, educational consultants and educational scholars were asked for their perceptions of conditions for teacher learning in school and of interventions in school to enhance teacher professional learning. These conditions and interventions were understood as affordances in schools that enable and support teacher professional learning. The main affordance in school these stakeholders mentioned was an open, but critical way in which teachers share their practices, collaborate and reflect upon their teaching practice. Collaborative practices seem to stimulate many interventions of teacher professional learning in school. Two implications of this finding are discussed. First, we suggest that the maximum teaching time should be reduced, team teaching should be more implemented or classes should be scheduled in such a way that teachers can meet. Second, distributed leadership approaches match with our findings about the role of school leaders in teacher professional learning.

Characterizing cross-professional collaboration in research and development projects in secondary education

Abstract Collaboration between practitioners and researchers can increasingly be observed in research and development (R&D) projects in secondary schools. This article presents an analysis of cross-professional collaboration between teachers, school leaders and educational researchers and/or advisers as part of R&D projects in terms of three dimensions: reasons for collaboration, the division of roles and tasks, and the communication structure. Data were collected in interviews with participants from 12 Dutch projects, from documents and from meetings with participants. The results show that the parties involved can have the same reasons for cross-professional collaboration but that the external educational experts may also have additional objectives. Roles and tasks were divided in different ways, depending on who directs and guides the research and development, and whether teachers were involved as teacher researchers in the project. The communication structure appeared to be linked to the division of roles and tasks, but also to the number of participants in the project. The three dimensions proved to be valuable viewpoints to study cross-professional collaboration in R&D projects in Dutch secondary education. Furthermore, we distinguished four types of cross-professional collaboration in R&D projects. These types differ in the extent to which the school or the external party direct and guide the project: (a) School-directed collaboration; (b) School- and researcher-directed collaboration; (c) School- and adviser-directed collaboration; (d) Researcher-directed collaboration. Our findings can support participants to consciously choose a particular type of cross-professional collaboration that fits their purposes and specific situation.

Information Technology for Basic Education of Adults — An Information Project for a Teaching Staff: Action Support Systems Group

ABSTRACT In this paper a strategy and a procedure to inform teachers in Adult Basic Education on information technology are reported. The main result of this project is the idea that a valuable next step is to develop a support system for lesson planning, however in a ‘multilevel’ adaptive design strategy.