The evolving practitioner : a qualitative inquiry into reflections on teacher perspectives in a professional program in higher education
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Teachers' perspectives on teaching and learning in higher education have been identified as a critical area of research. This qualitative study was designed to answer the following question: How does reflecting on teaching and learning within a two year period in a professional development program (the Master Teacher Program, or MTP) contribute (or not) to teachers' changing perspectives on teaching and learning? I interviewed six Quebec CEGEP (college) teachers on five different occasions, as they completed the first four courses in the MTP. The participants were female, taught in different disciplines, programs, and colleges, and had various years of teaching experience. Repeated, semi-structured interviews were analyzed, using the dual processes of categorizing and connecting (Maxwell & Miller, in press). Results converged to reveal four patterns and three major dimensions. Through categorizing, four patterns emerged that described a process of movement from teacher to learner-centeredness. I used the four metaphors of awakening, stretching, exercising, and shaping to represent these four patterns. Furthermore, I corroborated these findings by examining participants' concept maps and their reflective journals. I found additional evidence for the four patterns in the narrative summaries that I constructed, using connecting strategies. These narratives also exposed some of the more contextualized aspects of the evolution in teacher perspectives. In addition to the four patterns, three major dimensions related to teacher perspectives emerged. The participants reported that they had become more aware of the learner and the learning process, more intentional in curriculum planning and teaching, and they increased in self-knowledge, and in particular, in their sense of identity as teacher professionals. Reflection on practice functioned as a major factor underlying changes in perspectives. Time was also a significant factor. Findings showed that it took at least one year for most of the participants to link theory with practice, before they reported implementing changes in pedagogy. Therefore, changes in perspectives preceded changes in practice. The results of this study suggest that professional development programs, such as the MTP, can help teachers evolve as effective practitioners. Moreover, such programs can also help to foster a sense of professional identity among teachers in higher education. Future research can further clarify relationships among perspectives, teaching experience, and disciplinary background, and continue to explore incentives for teachers in higher education to participate in professional development.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.028 | 0.045 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.020 | 0.021 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.009 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
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 itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".