ABSTRACT

Although teachers’ learning has been increasingly recognised as nonlinear and contextually responsive, few studies have extended these understandings to the design and evaluation of professional development. In this case study, we examine nonlinear and contextual manifestations of high school science teachers’ professional learning from a complex systems perspective. At a summer institute, we surveyed 22 teachers over eight days using a modified form of the Pedagogical Discontentment scale, and modelled the valence and salience of beliefs about learning, teaching goals, instructional self-efficacy, and intentions for practice using multidimensional scaling analysis. The analysis revealed cohort-level fluctuations in the psychological salience and relative overlap and separation among constructs that mirrored the particular daily foci of the institute. We consider theoretical and practical implications of adopting a complex systems approach to the design and evaluation of teacher professional development.

摘要

尽管教师的学习已被越来越多地认为是非线性的并且是上下文相关的，但很少有研究将这些理解扩展到专业发展的设计和评估中。在本案例研究中，我们从复杂的系统角度研究了高中理科教师专业学习的非线性和情境表现。在一个夏季学院中，我们使用改良后的教学不满量表在八天内对22名教师进行了调查，并使用多维标度分析对关于学习，教学目标，教学自我效能感和练习意图的信念的效价和显着性进行了建模。该分析揭示了队列中各个群体在心理显着性方面的波动以及结构之间相对重叠和分离的情况，这些变化反映了该研究所的日常重点。我们考虑采用复杂的系统方法来设计和评估教师专业发展的理论和实践意义。