Topic group sessions: Professional development

Session 1: The micro level

Teachers have ideas about what counts as 'good teaching', including ideas about their own role and about the role that students should play. In professional development we want to change the ideas of teachers, and also change their behaviour. There are many different ways to accomplish this. In this session we shall look at some examples and discuss to what extend the different approaches can be generalized.

Issues to discuss:

• Almost always we want to change many aspects in the way teachers teach. A realistic approach, however, would be to focus on certain aspects first. So what aspects should we focus on?
• What are the design principles of professional development? What relation do they have with the design principles of teaching the subject matter? Would a design theory of professional development be feasible?

Session 2: Teachers design their own assessment

This session is combined with TG Assessment

Many teachers complain that during teacher education, the design of tests and problems is hardly addressed at all. One of the reasons may be that test design is easy, as long as only problems at the reproduction level are used for classroom quizzes and tests, as is often the case. Just change the numbers in a problem for similar ones, change oranges for apples and change the names of the people mentioned, that's all. It is harder to design problems at other competency levels than just reproduction.

Issues to discuss:

• Should teachers design their own assessments?
• Can all teachers learn to design good assessment (problems)? How?
• What makes assessment design difficult?
• What should a teacher know and what skills are needed (in other words: what kind of professional development is needed) to design balanced assessment?
• What is a good assessment design?
• What would an ideal test do for someone?
• What are test design characteristics?

Session 3: The macro level

Professional development often takes place as part of a certain program. The scale of the program may be small, but it may also be a nation wide initiative. In this session we shall discuss professional development from a macro level point of view.

Issues to discuss:

• Professional development can take different forms: training courses, sharing experiences, collaborative practices - but also learning communities (for instance web communities), coaching on the job, collaboration between teachers through e.g. team teaching, action research, collaborative research, and combinations of all of these. What designs are effective for different kinds of professional development?
• Which level of detail is desirable in the design of courses for professional development? Should we provide the people who deliver the course with a detailed plan for each meeting, for example?
• Professional development often is a group activity, so what are effective groups? Should, for example, school teams participate, or is a group of teachers from different schools as effective?

Session 4: Role of the teacher in curriculum design

This session is combined with TG curriculum design

Especially in the implementation of innovative curricula and learning arrangements, the role of the teacher is crucial. In these implementation trajectories, solid professional development of the teachers is inevitable.

Another way to help the implementation is letting the teacher play a role as co-designer of the educational materials and processes. This can be done in different ways. Teachers can really be involved in the design process and cooperate with the designers, or the curriculum doesn't impose a fixed program, but enables possibilities to choose. It enables teachers to make their own learning arrangements.

Issues to discuss:

• How are curriculum design and professional development connected?
• How and under which circumstances should teachers be involved in the design of curricula?
• How much freedom should a curriculum offer a teacher to make his own choices?