Sources for Learning: The Role of Context in Teacher Professional Learning
December 2, 2021
Sources for learning: The Role of Context in Teacher Professional Learning – André Koffeman.
Earlier this year, I finished my PhD thesis. As I think my findings are relevant for the IPDA community, here it is: my very first blog!
My thesis is about understanding the role of context as a source for teacher learning. I’ve been a teacher and teacher educator in the Netherlands for 25 years now. Over these years I’ve observed how teacher learning seems not so much the result of pro-activity, of planned activities, but rather the consequence of re-activity, of teachers’ responses to unplanned or unexpected challenges and events. And so, I thought: if indeed professional learning emerges out of challenge, then it is relevant to take a closer look at teachers’ contexts, the kinds of challenges these contexts accommodate, and the ways they are perceived and processed by teachers.
To test the hypothesis that teacher learning has a reactive nature, I first looked at teachers’ learning biographies. I found that the vast majority of ‘learning episodes’ reported by these teachers indeed referred to their own first-hand and unplanned experiences. In addition (but far less), I found they tapped into second-hand experiences as well: the ideas and practices of ‘near others’, their workplace colleagues. Thirdly, I found that they reported to learn from ‘distant others’ as well: publications, courses, workshops, etc. Sometimes these first, second and third hand learning episodes had been planned, but mostly they just happened.
For my second study, I itemized these planned and unplanned learning episodes and – with the help of my Master’s students – turned them into a reflection tool. This tool would allow teachers to first get an overview of their own learning as they perceived it here-and-now, as well as of their ambitions to improve their learning. It would also help them reflect on what they made of the differences between the two.
My Master’s students by now appeared as interested in the project as I was, and they were eager to apply the tool. Each of them took it to their workplace colleagues and used it as a starting point for a collective reflection on their professional learning. The results of this third study confirmed what I had found earlier: that teacher learning is mostly reactive and based on first-hand experiences. What it added was an overview of reasons for this: practical, organizational and psychological obstacles that prevent teachers from tapping into the other sources.
Finally, with my students I analyzed these collective results, and together we tried to make sense of the findings: the nature of the three sources, the obstacles experienced, the conditions for more optimal contextual professional learning.
If you’re interested in these findings, you can read the full thesis (enjoy!):
André Koffeman, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
