Rethinking Teacher Professional Development
This book presents a new set of ideas to challenge established thinking and to guide researching and designing teacher professional development. Grounded in the work of the Learning4Teaching Project which documented public-sector teachers’ experiences and learning from professional development in three countries, the volume presents a sociomaterial perspective on teacher sensemaking. This teacher-centered perspective disputes the "conventional calculus" in which teachers learn content that they apply in their classrooms. Part I outlines conventional issues in how teacher learning and professional development have been conceptualized and studied; Part II introduces a new group of concepts that rethink these assumptions; and Part III offers important insights to inform professional development across disciplines, cultures, and contexts.
Written by a leading international teacher educator in an accessible style that incorporates visual representations and project data, the book will appeal to practitioners, scholars, and researchers who design and research how teachers learn in professional development.
Donald Freeman is Professor of Education at the University of Michigan, with visiting appointments at Aston University and the University of Graz.