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This article reports the outcomes of a project in which teachers' sought to develop their ability to use instructional practices associated with argumentation in the teaching of science—in particular, the use of more dialogic approach based on small group work and the consideration of ideas, evidence, and argument. The project worked with four secondary school science departments over 2 years with the aim of developing a more dialogic approach to the teaching of science as a common...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how rural teachers provided a PLC by leveraging virtual technologies to connect educators of like subject disciplines from several schools, foreign and domestic.Design/methodology/approachA phenomenological case study-based approach was leveraged to investigate established vPLCs at schools (Creswell, 2013; Stake, 2010). Qualitative data were collected from multiple sources to obtain rural teacher perceptions on the impact vPLCs had on their...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to share reflections of the three authors on the process of instructional design and implementation of blended learning for teachers' professional development (PD) in rural western Kenya. It proposes reforms in provision of teachers' professional development to enable professional development providers to access specialized skills in instructional design (ID) and blended learning. Design/methodology/approach - The paper resulted from a design-based...

The main objective of this paper is to briefly present roles of different teacher supervisors according to distinct models, highlighting the importance of collaborative dialogues supported by video recordings. This paper will present results from a qualitative study of an English as a foreign language teacher education course in Brazil. The results indicated that collaborative supervision was an efficient tool to address adversities within educational contexts and that student teachers who...

The American Psychological Association’s Learner-Centered Principles provide empirically-based approaches to improving teaching and learning. However, in order to facilitate learner-centered, technology-rich instruction to K-12 students, teachers must be afforded opportunities to develop key understandings and skills, rarely evident in most professional development programs. In this paper, we synthesize empirically-based studies and recommendations for teacher learning and propose a...

The American Psychological Association’s Learner-Centered Principles provide empirically-based approaches to improving teaching and learning. However, in order to facilitate learner-centered, technology-rich instruction to K-12 students, teachers must be afforded opportunities to develop key understandings and skills, rarely evident in most professional development programs. In this paper, we synthesize empirically-based studies and recommendations for teacher learning and propose a...

Teacher empowerment is a central issue in relation to the efforts to improve the quality of education. However, teacher empowerment will remain an abstract idea if its implementation is not supported by an appropriate strategy. The demands for a quality education will be unreciprocated if teachers do not have the opportunity to empower themselves. This research aims to investigate the teacher empowerment strategy in Indonesia, which has been conducted by employing a community-based teacher...

This paper investigates the concept of online learning community (OLC) to address the issues of teacher professional development practice in twenty-first-century Indonesia. Teachers in Indonesia are trained in a 'conventional way', hence, not ready to prepare the younger generations for entrance into the twenty-first-century complex life and work environment. The pedagogical transformation of a teacher can be facilitated through teacher professional development. Recent studies show that OLC...

The prevalence and adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools in education has often been guided by utopian perspectives without proper research to understand the schooling context and teachers’ ICT development needs. This paper reports on the findings from a study of in-service teachers who are members of a teachers’ union in South Africa. These teachers were surveyed using a questionnaire based on Second Information Technology in Education Study (SITES), which is an...

The professional development of teachers in India is still, by and large, based on formal and outdated professional learning traditions, often characterised by crash courses and one-off workshops. In education, blogs have proven to be an effective means of establishing and maintaining collaborative learning networks and helping members reflect on their professional practices. Information and communications technology (ICT) enabled practices of teacher professional development is still in its...

This paper describes an evaluation study designed to investigate the impact of an ICT-Instructional digital innovation in teaching Mathematics, English and Integrated Science subjects from the teacher capacity building professional development programme to classroom implementation at senior high school levels in Ghana. Interviews and survey data were used for data collection following a week professional development programme on the instructional digital learning training. The study...

This research adopted a design research approach, utilizing a mixture of methods including narratives, ethnographic observations, qualitative interviews and documentation of design artifacts. It was implemented in a challenging context in Western Kenya. The first research question for this study was: How might professional development (PD), offered through a blended learning approach and delivered by appropriate technologies, inform potential change to teaching practice in a challenging...

As part of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID funded Malawi Teacher Professional Development Support project, a sub-task was the piloting of an alternative technology that could be used for improving the quality and consistency of teacher continued professional development (CPD). The pilot, which included 26 open and distance learning (ODL) student teachers, was launched in the spring of 2011 using a low-cost portable MP3 multi-purpose device. A short course on...

Included in the contemporary mathematics curricula in Ghana is the expectation that mathematics teachers will integrate technology in their teaching. However, importance has not been placed on preparing teachers to use ICT in their instruction. This paper reports on a study conducted to explore the feasibility of ICT use in mathematics teaching at senior high school levels in Ghana. Interviews and survey data were used for data collection. Preliminary results showed that mathematics teachers...

Video-recording of lectures and creating of podcasts for playback on the computer and other portable devices which accommodate the new formats of self-developed learning are identified as flipped classroom. The study was focused on the objective to Investigate performance of prospective teachers of flipped classroom and non-flipped classroom with respect to flipped classroom strategy. Therefore, null hypotheses were formulated; there is no significant difference between the mean scores of...

Continuing teacher professional development for all teachers across the entire school system poses a challenge in many contexts, especially in developing countries. Teachers from schools located in remote rural areas usually have fewer professional development opportunities due to the lack of accessibility either to their schools or to professional development resources. On-site school-based professional development is a viable option if innovative design is adapted to generate microlearning...

This article explores how eight secondary school teachers integrated educational technology into English language teaching in Beijing, China and considers their views of the factors influencing technology use. Analysing data from classroom recordings and follow-up interviews, this study revealed that PowerPoint was the most frequently used technological application in the classroom, while the internet and other technological tools were also used by the teachers. They employed educational...

The colleges of education in Ghana have been involved in a continuous professional development for over four years with support of Transforming Teacher Education and Learning (T-TEL). The main purpose of this research was to assess the perceived impact of the continuous professional programme on physics teaching at the colleges of education. Descriptive cross sectional survey was used for the study. An online survey was conducted which was completed by 85 physics tutors. The survey data were...

In this paper we describe our early, qualitative work on “teacher talk moves” such as revoicing, situated within the urban classrooms of highly skilled teachers, including their role in the work of managing multiple constraints while maintaining productive inclusivity. We then describe our attempts to discern the impact of these talk tools on student achievement in multiple classrooms, using both post-hoc controls and in vivo studies. We move on to the challenges present in disseminating...