Removing Barriers to Professional Development
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN education has been described as an organized effort to change teachers with the expected result of improving their teaching practice and student learning (Angelo 2001; Guskey 1986). Unfortunately, professional development initiatives have been criticized for their failure to produce significant changes in either teaching practice or student learning. Most recently, this criticism has been extended to education technology initiatives. Some instructors, described in the literature as early adopters and innovators, are quick to incorporate technology into their teaching and are able to use existing support mechanisms to accomplish their goals. Instructor resistance to new educational technologies is most often attributed to the poor implementation of technology initiatives: there is inadequate training, support, and/or planning (Cuban 2001). However, focusing on implementation neglects another important and pervasive barrier to technology adoption. Successful instructors using technology are described as facilitating a learner-centered class management structure and achieving a qualitatively improved depth and scope of student learning (Cuban 2001; Ertmer 1999). This learner-focused view of teaching directly contradicts the traditional model of the teacher as an authority who transmits knowledge by telling students what they must learn (Cuban 2001). Beyond mastering new teaching strategies and new technologies, many teachers are required to adopt new views of teaching and learning to be successful users of educational technologies. To explore this issue, the Health and Community Studies Division at Grant MacEwan College in Alberta, Canada, conducted a study to examine the types of professional development activities that met the needs of our instructors who are involved in online course development. This project was made possible with funding support from the Office of Learning Technologies within Human Resources Development Canada. The research results were used to create a model for bridging course development and professional development. The collaborative model is geared toward the hesitant technology user, and allows for individualized support and continuing education opportunities. This model also proposes a framework for instructors to learn actively while they are developing an online course, and to apply new knowledge and skills to immediate course development tasks. Research Findings Using a case study approach, 10 interviews were conducted to provide in-depth information about the experiences and opinions of instructors involved in online course development. Participants generally acknowledged that information and professional development opportunities were available to them; however, participants often did not make use of the opportunities. Instructors who participated in our study wanted professional development opportunities that: * They could use right away or were related to a current project; * Had built-in follow-up procedures; * Fit into their busy schedules; * Matched their learning styles; * Focused on curriculum; * Included leadership or direction from the program chair; and * Included a support person (technology facilitator) who they could call with questions. Active learning. Adult learners enhance their learning by connecting what they already know to new learning. They are also focused on learning opportunities that directly support their perceived need, and address immediate problems or situations (Brookfield 1991; Knowles 1980). Participants found that effective professional development provided just-in-time learning. This differs from just-in-case learning that is provided in case an instructor may need it in the future (Bates 2000; Gallant 2000). Instructors stated that they quickly forgot how to use education technology unless they were using it in their teaching. …
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it