Search results for: Loughran John

This article explores how a group of pre-service elementary science student teachers came to understand the development of their Pedagogical Content Knowledge over the course of a semester’s study in a science methods course. The results illustrate real possibilities for ways of enhancing student teachers’ ongoing professional learning in teacher preparation and offer a window into how the nature of Pedagogical Content Knowledge in pre-service education might be better understood and developed.

This article reports on a study which sought to understand the experience of teachers who have responsibility for leading professional learning in their schools. The first part of the article describes the Leading Professional Learning program designed by Monash University. The program aimed to build teachers’ capacity to lead professional learning within their school settings. The second part of the article analyses the cases written by program participants. The analysis reveals important facets of the relational and emotional dimensions of leading professional learning in schools.

This article considers the professional development of 75 primary and secondary teachers in Melbourne, who had been charged with the responsibility of leading the professional learning of their colleagues in their schools. To support these leaders in their roles, the Victorian state government’s Department of Education applied to the Pedagogy and Professional Learning Research Group at Monash University to develop and implement an appropriate Professional Learning program. The participants in the program reflected on their learning through the formalised process of case writing. The article offers insights into the journey of these educators of teachers as they have developed deeper understandings of what it means to be a teacher educator.

The authors explore the possibility of understanding teaching as a discipline in its own right, rather than as a domain that is ancillary to the many academic disciplines. While teaching looks easy and is widely regarded as easy, the image of teaching as transmission and the perspective of technical rationality mask the many ways in which challenging and engaging teaching represents a highly disciplined view. When extended to teacher education, the perspective of teaching as a discipline sheds powerful light on longstanding frustrations reported by those learning to teach.