Online Continuous Professional Learning: A Model for Improving Reading Outcomes in Regional and Remote Schools?

Professional learning provides the opportunity to improve teacher practice and student outcomes; however, challenges exist in ensuring that teachers can access quality professional learning. Teachers in regional and remote schools may have even more limited access to the expertise required to support changes in practice than their peers in metropolitan centers. This article reports on a continuing professional learning program designed to support teachers in two regional schools to implement a new approach to teaching reading in their schools. The findings from this research suggest that existing online learning platforms can be used to deliver targeted instructional coaching for teachers and support in-school coaches to improve their knowledge of reading instruction and their instructional coaching skills.

Supporting teacher professionalism through tailored professional learning

The issue of continuing professional learning for educators in the early childhood education and care sector is in the spotlight in Australia due to the government's reform agenda, which seeks to professionalize the workforce. In an effort to ensure quality programmes are on offer for all children, educators are expected to upskill. The assumption is that quality learning opportunities for children are aligned with a more skilled and capable workforce. This is problematic due to the diversity of the early childhood education and care workforce and its ability to convert professionalization opportunities into achievements. The focus of this article is a study that problematized the alignment of professional attributes valued in the policy space and in the field of practice to understand educator agency, a key element of professional capability. Once this alignment is known, professional learning experiences can be tailored to better support the professionalization of these educators.

What digital technology do early childhood educators use and what digital resources do they seek?

Continuing professional learning is vital to early childhood professionals, and the use of digital technology can potentially reduce costs and improve access. In this study, 74 educators across 17 early childhood services in Australian urban and regional locations completed a questionnaire about their personal and professional uses of digital technology to find resources. The results indicate most early childhood educators use digital technology to construct their own professional knowledge bases, and though they make some use of formal resources around national standards, they make greater use of informal resources and discussion groups. They tend to seek practical information and activity ideas and ways to connect with other professionals, although this varies somewhat by years of professional experience, age and the socioeconomic context they work in. Results highlight early childhood educators’ professional learning desires and the potential value of mobile learning for providing access to professional learning for early childhood educators working in resource-limited and geographically limited settings.

Teachers as Connected Professionals

As education becomes increasingly complex, effective continuing professional learning is an important strategy to support teachers in schools. However, current professional development approaches may not meet contemporary teachers’ needs. Seeking to enhance teachers’ professional learning opportunities, this paper presents a model of learning as a connected professional. The model draws upon the findings of a qualitative case study of 13 teachers who interact with others through a personal learning network (PLN). Theories of connectivism, networked learning, and connected learning underpin the model, which conceptualises the whole experience of learning as a connected professional. The model comprises three elements: arenas of learning, teacher as learner, and PLN. Key characteristics of the experience are practices described as linking, stretching, and amplifying. These practices recur in various ways across all three elements of the model. The model promotes professional learning that is active, interest-driven, and autonomous, meeting personal learning needs while being socially connected. As education becomes increasingly complex, effective continuing professional learning is an important strategy to support teachers in schools. However, current professional development approaches may not meet contemporary teachers’ needs. Seeking to enhance teachers’ professional learning opportunities, this paper presents a model of learning as a connected professional. The model draws upon the findings of a qualitative case study of 13 teachers who interact with others through a personal learning network (PLN). Theories of connectivism, networked learning, and connected learning underpin the model, which conceptualises the whole experience of learning as a connected professional. The model comprises three elements: arenas of learning, teacher as learner, and PLN. Key characteristics of the experience are practices described as linking, stretching, and amplifying. These practices recur in various ways across all three elements of the model. The model promotes professional learning that is active, interest-driven, and autonomous, meeting personal learning needs while being socially connected.

Supporting Graduate Teaching Assistants’ (GTA) Continual Professional Learning: The Benefits of Using Action Learning

This paper describes the design and delivery of a new programme of support for PhD students who act as Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) at a research intensive university. Although much attention has been paid to programmes that prepare GTAs for teaching, this scheme was intended to prepare them for continuing professional learning (CPL) about teaching. In this sense, then, the underpinning rationale for the scheme is different to most GTA programmes, and this has implications for the pedagogical approach taken. The design of the scheme was based on the premise that ‘learning in academia’ (i.e. learning about academic work and developing one’s practice) is different from ‘academic learning’, which the PhD participants are both familiar with and successful at (Trevitt, 2008). It follows then that the type of learning most likely to lead to development of practice, is a work-based, experiential approach undertaken by those in other practice-based professions like law, medicine and (non-HE) teaching. The paper describes the rationale and design of a development scheme which aims to prepare and equip GTAs for continuing professional learning during the PhD and on into their later careers. The benefits for the action learning approach are explored, both in terms of what it might offer participants, but also in terms of what it might offer to educational developers as learning set facilitators.