Due to fast and unpredictable developments, professional education is challenged with being responsive, which demands a rethinking of conventional curriculum development approaches. Yet, literature on curriculum development falls short in terms of recognising how to react rapidly and adequately to these new developments. This study focuses on curriculum development initiatives at the school level in a Dutch university of applied sciences. Open interviews were held with 29 curriculum developers to explore how they define and give substance to developing curricula for new, changing or unpredictable professions. These 29 participants were involved in seven curriculum development trajectories. Four themes were detected: (1) curriculum developers are in favour of open, flexible and authentic curricula; (2) the context in which the curriculum development takes place and the different roles and responsibilities of curriculum developers are challenging; (3) curriculum developers feel insufficiently equipped to carry out their tasks; and (4) involving stakeholders is necessary but results in a “viscous” social–political process. Responsive curriculum development requires a great deal of flexibility and adaptability from curriculum developers. Yet, in our study, “institutional concrete” is found to severely hinder responsive curriculum development processes. To be responsive, such processes need to be supported and institutional barriers need to be removed.
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At a time when much attention is being paid to teachers’ effectiveness, there is little regard for the effectiveness of their professional support. Although professional development facilitators are frequently involved in school improvement projects, little is known about the interventions they should carry out and the effectiveness of these interventions. In this study, five facilitators’ interventions are operationalised. Multilevel regression analyses show, that the intervention “guiding the process” explains a significant part of variance in teachers’ knowledge, attitude and concerns with respect to an innovation and the degree of implementation. The interventions “team training and coaching”, “creating conditions for innovation at school level” and “individual coaching” explain a significant part of variance in teachers’ knowledge with respect to an innovation. In general, it appears that professional development facilitators have considerable influence on teachers’ knowledge and concerns and reasonable influence on teachers’ attitude and the degree of implementation.
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Advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) as well as modern pedagogical perspectives have created new possibilities to facilitate and support learning in higher education (HE). Emerging technologies bring opportunities to reconsider teaching and learning. New ideas and concepts about the educational use of new technologies transform the roles of teachers. In this context the key question of this study is: whether learning as part of a (virtual) community of practice supports teachers' technology professional development. Different learning alternatives such as distance learning, workplace learning as well as blended forms of learning will enhance lifelong learning which forces a rethinking of traditional forms of education. However, most institutions for education foster just-in-case learning while new technologies foster just-in-time learning. As a result of new learning perspectives and the potential pedagogical benefits of ICTs in educational contexts, teachers have to learn how to integrate new technologies in teaching and learning. It is recommended that teacher professional development should be situated in multiple learning settings in which learning is teacher-centred. Next to classroom settings and cross-institutional learning communities, virtual learning communities (VCoPs) are a significant source for learning. There is an overlap between the educational values of interned-based learning and social theories of learning such as Lave & Wenger's situated learning theory and Wenger's theory of communities of practice. Drawing upon these theories, offers a perspective on social learning that emphasizes social processes within (V)CoPs where community participants engage in collective learning and knowledge creation. The data discussed in this paper have been drawn from a cross institutional setting at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. The data were collected and analysed according to a qualitative approach. The paper concludes that VCoPs are learning environments since these network-based learning communities push learners to take more control of their learning and provide tasks which are more contextualised and meaningful.
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Vocational teachers continuously tailor their teaching to changes in occupational practice, technologies, and student diversity. Teacher professional development is crucial for dealing with these changes. A longitudinal study was conducted to study the professional development activities of vocational teachers in the Netherlands. It resulted in a typology of formal and informal professional development activities. This typology consolidates preceding typologies, and specifies these for the context of vocational education. During a two-and-a-half year period, 26 experienced teachers detailed their informal and formal professional development activities in learner reports. The 386 activities identified were grouped in six categories of informal professional development activities and in five categories of formal activities. In total, three quarters of the activities could be characterised as informal, embedded in daily practice. Our typology could encourage vocational schools in facilitating professional development more effectively.
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Explicit language objectives are included in the Swedish national curriculum for mathematics. The curriculum states that students should be given opportunities to develop the ability to formulate problems, use and analyse mathematical concepts and relationships between concepts, show and follow mathematical reasoning, and use mathematical expressions in discussions. Teachers’ competence forms a crucial link to bring an intended curriculum to a curriculum in action. This article investigates a professional development program, ‘Language in Mathematics’, within a national program for mathematics teachers in Sweden that aims at implementing the national curriculum into practice. Two specific aspects are examined: the selection of theoretical notions on language and mathematics and the choice of activities to relate selected theory to practice. From this examination, research on teacher learning in connection to professional development is proposed, which can contribute to a better understanding of teachers’ interpretation of integrated approaches to language and mathematics across national contexts.
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The energy management systems industry in the built environment is currently an important topic. Buildings use about 40% of the total global energy worldwide. Therefore, the energy management system’s sector is one of the most influential sectors to realize changes and transformation of energy use. New data science technologies used in building energy management systems might not only bring many technical challenges, but also they raise significant educational challenges for professionals who work in the field of energy management systems. Learning and educational issues are mainly due to the transformation of professional practices and networks, emerging technologies, and a big shift in how people work, communicate, and share their knowledge across the professional and academic sectors. In this study, we have investigated three different companies active in the building services sector to identify the main motivation and barriers to knowledge adoption, transfer, and exchange between different professionals in the energy management sector and explore the technologies that have been used in this field using the boundary-crossing framework. The results of our study show the importance of understanding professional learning networks in the building services sector. Additionally, the role of learning culture, incentive structure, and technologies behind the educational system of each organization are explained. Boundary-crossing helps to analyze the barriers and challenges in the educational setting and how new educational technologies can be embedded. Based on our results, future studies with a bigger sample and deeper analysis of technologies are needed to have a better understanding of current educational problems.
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Context When the pandemic hit the world, teachers were forced to change their education from onsite to virtual overnight Understandably, teaching quality decreased in the beginning, as there was little experience in how to adapt the educational design Zuyd University of Applied Sciences ( recognized the problem that teachers were on different didactic and pedagogical levels when it comes to online education Unfortunately, the pandemic made it hard for teachers to connect with each other In the Domain of Health and Welfare, this led to the idea of establishing a professional learning community A professional learning community ( can be seen as an informal group of people who share knowledge and experiences among each other on a common topic they are all highly interested in Zuyd’s vision “passion for development” sets a good basis for the start of such a community. Steps we took In order to find out how a professional learning community can look like in Zuyd, the following steps were taken Firstly, we collected and evaluated literature and best practices around the topic Based on our findings we developed an interview guideline and conducted interviews with eight teachers from the Domain of Health and Welfare Throughout the whole report a SWOT analysis was performed with the literature and best practices filling opportunities and threats and the interviews providing content for strengths and weaknesses Main findings From these sources, we derived enablers for a successful learning community, which led to recommendations for Zuyd on how to strategically position, implement and organize a PLC One of our major recommendations is to make didactic and pedagogical skills an important topic within Zuyd in order to strategically implement the learning community into Zuyd’s strategy Furthermore, we recommend giving the lead in organizing and facilitating the PLC to the blended learning task force To collect a diverse set of interested employees to the core group, the educational managers should personally approach teachers that might be interested The sense of urgency around the topic needs to be addressed regularly through the directors of the Domain, the task force of blended learning, as well as the PLC itself In this way, interest in the topic of didactic and pedagogical skills and blended learning can be enhanced In the report we go into greater detail on how to organize and apply these recommendations. We are convinced that implementing these steps will pay off in the future and will successfully enhance competencies on blended learning and didactic and pedagogical skills through knowledge exchange.
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Worldwide, pupils with migrant backgrounds do not participate in school STEM subjects as successfully as their peers. Migrant pupils’ subject-specific language proficiency lags behind, which hinders participation and learning. Primary teachers experience difficulty in teaching STEM as well as promoting required language development. This study investigates how a professional development program (PDP) focusing on inclusive STEM teaching can promote teacher learning of language-promoting strategies (promoting interaction, scaffolding language and using multilingual resources). Participants were five case study teachers in multilingual schools in the Netherlands (N = 2), Sweden (N = 1) and Norway (N = 2), who taught in primary classrooms with migrant pupils. The PDP focused on three STEM units (sound, maintenance, plant growth) and language-promoting strategies. To trace teachers’ learning, three interviews were conducted with each of the five teachers (one after each unit). The teachers also filled in digital logs (one after each unit). The interviews showed positive changes in teachers’ awareness, beliefs and attitudes towards language-supporting strategies. However, changes in practice and intentions for practice were reported to a lesser extent. This study shows that a PDP can be an effective starting point for teacher learning regarding inclusive STEM teaching. It also illuminates possible enablers (e.g., fostering language awareness) or hinderers (e.g., teachers’ limited STEM knowledge) to be considered in future PDP design.
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Given the complexity of teaching, continuing teacher professional development (CPD) is essential for maintaining and enhancing teaching effectiveness, and bridging the gap between ever-evolving theory and practice. Technological advancements have opened new opportunities for digital tools to support CPD. However, the successful integration of such digital tools into practice poses challenges. It requires adherence to CPD prerequisites and acknowledgment of the complexity of the professional development process. This study explored the applicability of the developed digital PE teacher professional development TARGET-tool in a secondary school PE context. We examined the perceived usability of this tool and gained insights into the process of teachers’ professional development as a result of using the tool. Ten PE teachers from different schools implemented the TARGET- tool within their PE context for a period of 4 to 6 weeks. Individual semi-structured inter- views and the System Usability Scale provided insights into the perceived usability and the process of teacher professional development. The TARGET-tool demonstrated its potential as an effective tool for supporting teachers’ professional development. Future tool improve- ments were identified to further optimize the perceived usability, such as simplifying com- plex features, providing additional support and resources, and improving (data) presenta- tions. Using the Interconnected Model of Professional Growth as a theoretical basis, it was demonstrated how the use of the TARGET-tool engages teachers as active and reflective participants in their professional development and induces changes within the external domain, the domain of practice, the domain of consequences, and the personal domain.
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The knowledge-based economy, advances in information and communication technologies as well as new pedagogical perspectives all influence the needs to improve the population skills and competencies in the 21st century. Emerging technologies bring opportunities to reconsider teaching and learning in higher education. Innovative educational ideas and concepts transform the roles of teacher educators and their students. To accomplish the new roles, teacher educators need to learn to work with a new set of information and communications skills and knowledge. In other words, adequate technology training is a prerequisite for the 21st century teacher educator to develop prospective teachers who are able to use new technologies so as to support and improve their own students' achievement gains. In order to deal with the new challenges, teacher education institutions are designing, developing and facilitating teacher educators' technology professional development programs. However, the majority of these efforts fail, since they are for most part based on a formal, institutional delivery of instrumental knowledge and skills. Adequate technology training is a major factor that can help teacher educators to integrate emerging technologies into the curriculum, which is in turn, beneficial to their students. The technology learning preferences instrument designed, implemented and evaluated in this research is intended to make a link between teacher educators' technology learning needs in the workplace and the way in which professional development programs should be designed, developed and evaluated.
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