Experienced teachers' informal learning: Learning activities and changes in behavior and cognition
Introduction
“Realising that moving towards this new pedagogy is necessary, makes me happy on the one hand but also somewhat tense. You encounter a continuously changing situation, changing texts, changing approaches to teaching. To work “on automatic pilot” really belongs to the past now”. (Ted4, one of the teachers in our research group)
Teachers like Ted are faced with continuous change and need to learn how to incorporate new insights into their teaching practice. Ted has not joined a professional development trajectory and has received little support for learning. How do teachers learn in such an informal learning environment? Although there is a body of literature describing teacher learning in formal learning contexts, little is known yet about the kind of teacher learning that occurs in the absence of any facilitation for learning (Richardson & Placier, 2001). In the study reported on in this article the focus is on experienced teachers' informal learning. In this study, informal learning refers to learning in the workplace where systematical support of learning, such as professional development trajectories, is absent. More insight into teachers' learning in the workplace is highly important, because in today's society lifelong learning is becoming the standard in all kind of professional fields. However, when entering the profession, teachers are usually only incidentally supported in their learning (Van Eekelen et al., 2006, Verloop et al., 2001). For experienced teachers, informal learning is usually the only option for learning.
Nevertheless, teachers report that even when learning is not supported there are all kind of activities they undertake during work that they learn from (Dunn and Shriner, 1999, Kwakman, 2003, Lohman and Woolf, 2001). The question then is what this unsupported learning through daily work looks like and whether and how teachers change through this learning. More insight in teacher learning in an informal learning environment may help to organize support for teacher learning in a way that increases activities that contribute to desired changes and decreases activities that prevent this change. The main question addressed in this study is: What is the relation between teachers' learning outcomes and their learning activities in an informal learning environment?
The study aims to contribute to understanding teachers' informal learning by combining the insights from two types of studies on learning activities. The first type of studies provides inventories of work activities teachers report to learn from, such as collaborating, reading, and experimenting with teaching methods (e.g., Lohman & Woolf, 2001). The second type of studies focuses on the mental activities involved in learning (e.g., Mansvelder-Longayroux, Beijaard, & Verloop, 2007). These insights were the starting point for our study in which we collected data during one year from 32 experienced teachers who did not join any professional development program during that year. These data included both qualitative and quantitative data of teachers' learning experiences and their changes in conceptions and behavior.
Section snippets
Context of the study: learning to promote students' active and self-regulated learning
In the present study, teacher learning has been studied in the context of reforms in secondary education implemented in the Netherlands starting in 1998. These reforms encompassed, among other things, mandatory change of the curriculum of all subjects, the creation of new subjects and restrictions on the amount of tests per year. Altogether, the reform potentially had a big impact and certainly was not applauded by all teachers and scholars. (See Veugelers, 2004 for a detailed analysis and
Conceptual framework of teacher learning
In line with a social-constructivist perspective on learning as an active process (Shuell, 1990), we studied learning as it occurs through engagement in learning activities. In educational contexts learning activities are organized by teachers and educators. Learning in the workplace is integrated in the work process and occurs through work activities (Eraut, 2004, Straka, 2004). Most conceptualizations of learning imply a relatively lasting change in behavior or capacity for behavior (Shuell,
Participants
For this study 32 experienced teachers from 21 different schools in larger and medium size cities in the Netherlands were recruited via school principles and teachers' subject matter communities' mailing lists. A minimum of five years of teaching experience was required to make sure that teachers were not working at a novice level. All these teachers taught in the upper grades of secondary pre-university schools in the Netherlands (students aged 15–18). There were one to four teachers per
Teachers' position at the start of the study
Our first question refers to teachers' initial conceptions and behavior regarding ASL. To study this, we decided to divide teachers into groups based on their position relative to other teachers. Four groups of teachers were distinguished based on teachers' scores on the questionnaire on ASL conceptions. 1) ASL-oriented teachers with above average scores on all three scales, 2) Collaboration oriented teachers with above average scores on collaboration and construction, but not on student
Teacher learning and teacher change in the context of reform
In the past decades in the Netherlands educational reform has become the rule rather than the exception and teachers are constantly required to change. We have aimed to describe teacher learning under the circumstances that teachers commonly find themselves: a context in which they are largely left on their own to understand and implement the requirements and practical applications of an ambitious reform. The learning process of the teachers was studied regarding one particular domain of
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank Inge Bakkenes, Jacobiene Meirink, and Rosanne Zwart for their great collaboration in data collection and analysis. In addition we would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions for improving this article.
This research was funded by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) (Project no. 411-01-253).
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