T.C.M. Bergen

Professional orientations of secondary school teachers towards their work

Against a background of current reforms which involve a diversity of strong expectations with regard to how teachers should work, this study explores how teachers themselves view their professionality. Four hundred and fifty two secondary school teachers were asked about their professional orientations. Teachers were found to differ in their orientations and in the combinations of their orientations towards instruction, educational goals, and their role in the school organization. These findings are relevant to consider in the light of successful reform of schools and education. The article ends with a reflection on those combinations of orientations, and suggestions for future research into professional orientations are made.

Teacher reflection: the development of a typology

In this article, a contribution is made to the discussion of reflection on the part of teachers. The discussion to date has shown that reflection must be broad and deep. However, just what constitutes broad and deep reflection and the relations between the two remain unclear. After consideration of the characteristics of broad and deep reflection, three domains of broad reflection are distinguished (i.e. the pragmatic, ethical and moral domains). Closed versus open approaches to deep reflection are also then distinguished which produces a typology of six reflection possibilities. Empirical support for this typology was gathered via interviews with 11 experienced secondary school teachers. The content of the interviews addressed actual difficult decision situations which the teachers had experienced, and application of the constant comparative method showed the teachers to indeed use the six reflection possibilities when they reflected upon the difficult decision situations. A clear preference for closed types of pragmatic and ethical reflection over open or moral reflection was shown. The conclusion is that the proposed typology can be used to map teacher reflection. The results further suggest that the breadth and depth of teacher reflection are in need of development and that the relations between teacher reflection and their professional behaviour should be examined in greater detail.

The Policy-Making Capacity of Schools--Results of a Dutch Study.

Sleegers, Bergen and Giesbers all work at the Department of Education of the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. In this paper they consider two key questions. Firstly, is it possible to distinguish types of schools on the basis of their policy-making capacity. Secondly, do schools currently differ in their use of the scope for policy-making as a result of such differences in capacity. Their answers to both questions are in the affirmative.

More than a master: developing, sharing, and using knowledge in school–university research networks

Postgraduate master’s programs for in-service teachers may be a promising new avenue in developing research partnership networks that link schools and university and enable collaborative development, sharing and use of knowledge of teacher research. This study explores the way these knowledge processes originating from master’s students’ research occurs in the school–university network of a master’s program embedded in the K–12 school environment of a Central Management Organization in the US. Questionnaires, interviews, and logs were used to collect quantitative and qualitative data at four time-points over a 10-month period. Data were analyzed at three network levels: school, dyad, and individual. Findings indicate that the school network context provided both master’s students and research advisors with a supportive context for collaboratively engaging in knowledge processes during research as well as after they graduated. However, the network context was not enough to build sustainable and productive relationships in the partnership network.

Leveraging the relationship: knowledge processes in school–university research networks of master’s programmes

This study investigated the way developing, sharing and using of research-based knowledge occurred in the school–university research network of a master’s programme for in-service teachers in the Netherlands. Over a 10-month period, a combination of quantitative and qualitative network data was collected. Data were analysed at three network levels: school, pairs of master’s students and research supervisors, and individuals. Overall, results indicate that building knowledge productive relationships in a master’s programme is a complex endeavour. Although individual master’s students and research supervisors aimed for continuing knowledge processes in school and university after student’s graduation, few actually did. The school context and the strategies of research supervisors provided students with too little support for sustaining the knowledge processes. This study shows from a network perspective the complexities, challenges and potential of developing partnership relationships in a master’s programme between schools and universities as well as between master’s students and research supervisors.

Pragmatic, ethical and moral: towards a refinement of the discourse approach

In this article we will address the issue of obtaining insight into the way in which teachers deal with the normative side of their profession. We outline the problem that forms the context of our question (the difference in the meaning of good teaching in the process–product model and in ethical models) and we discuss Osers discourse approach as a solution for that problem. His discourse approach appears to be a step forward, but at the same time leaves questions unanswered. As a contribution we introduce the concepts of pragmatic, ethical and moral. We show in what sense this conceptual framework provides a refinement of the discourse approach.

Teacher Perceptions of Bologna Reforms in Armenian Higher Education

The perceptions of the implementation of the Bologna reforms in Armenian higher education were examined in a questionnaire study with 279 university teachers, revealing how eight leading higher education institutions have adapted to the political directive to create alignment with the Bologna principles. The literature on educational change is used to evaluate the diffusion of Western European policies in addition to the perceptions of those university teachers who have actually implemented the reforms. The findings highlight the peculiarities of reform implementation in a post-Soviet country and the urgency of revising the approaches to reform implementation to achieve success.

What Do Leaders Think? Reflections on the Implementation of Higher Education Reforms in Armenia

Leader perceptions of higher education reforms in Armenia are examined in order to gain an insight into how they view the reforms, their role in the reforms and the roles of others. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six Armenian higher education leaders and analysed in terms of the following five aspects relevant to leadership: policy transfer and diffusion; change knowledge; emotional intelligence; leadership approach; and causal attribution. The leaders spoke positively about the reform efforts but blamed teachers, government, students and society for the failure of the reform efforts in Armenia. The conclusion is that, irrelevant of whether the change is top-down or bottom-up, it is destined to fail if the change knowledge of the actual implementers is not taken into consideration, an active dialogue does not occur with the actual implementers of the changes and the implements of change are thus not involved in the reform process.

Teacher Education’s Challenge of Changing Research Relationships With Schools

Globally, teacher education (TE) is challenged to change relationships with schools and teachers and become more collaborative in teaching and research. This study examined the way knowledge is developed, shared, and used when school and institution of higher education (IHE) partners create research networks in the context of master’s programs for in-service teachers. These knowledge processes were studied from a social network perspective and compared in two different TE contexts. During 10 months, this mixed method study obtained two school networks and 36 personal networks and 124 critical incidents from 36 individual logs and interviews. Cross-case analyses provide insight in the social network structures, interpersonal relationships, and knowledge processes among IHE’s and school’s partners as well as the challenges in developing closer research relationships in a TE context.

Teachers' perceptions of the school as a learning environment for practice-based research.

Learning environments research has a long tradition in investigating perceptions of students and teachers of all kinds of in-school and out-of-school learning environments (Fraser, 1998, 2002, 2007). Interestingly, the vast majority of these studies has investigated student perceptions of teacher behavior or the learning environment, and related such perceptions to student outcomes, either via traditional analyses of variance, multilevel analyses, and, in exceptional cases, structural models.