Examining How Learner-Centered Professional Development Influences Teachers’ Espoused and Enacted Practices

Polly & Hannafin write extremely well. There are select items I particularly like about this article: the layout is clear, the type setting is much better than most I’ve seen. Of course this could be due to the Journal of Educational Research and not the authors.

However, complimenting the layout or the writing of a research article is not getting to the guts of our analysis. Let’s dive in!

The abstract lead me to believe I wanted to read the article. The article review seemed to cover materials considerably older than I expected, but I am still learning about this field—it could be nothing of note has been said in the last five years, or the authors are delving back a little earlier in order to provide a setting for their work in an earlier version of the learner-centered approach to teaching. Bad: The test events were limited. Only two teachers are reviewed in depth. The tables used to illustrate the alignment of Technology in Mathematics are presented clearly but are too wordy. Furthermore, some of the language is subjective. For the description of “Comprehensive (a LearnerCentered Professional Development (LCPD) characteristic it says “Professional development should be …” it should read Professional development is. The subjects attended training to AAA and then they were studied in their classroom to see how well what they perceived—espoused—they were doing matched with what the (viewer) taped.

BETTER THAN VIEWER?
I would recommend this as light reading to anyone who is teaching K-12 or developmental math.

LIKES ABOUND
– There is a clear explanation of data sources
– The clarity of the writing was impressive
– Even when it seemed the researchers were reporting on how the subjects were not performing, their language was without bias; this was a true recounting of facts, leaving the summation until the end of the piece.

A concept that they developed was what I would call ‘negative space’ if we were speaking of art. The researchers’ analysis encompassed what happened as well as what did not and where or how additional higher-level questions could have been posed.

A FEW MORE DINGS
Figure 1. the “Screen capture of the Video Analysisd Tool (VAT) seems extraneous. It is not clear what we are being shown. This real-estate could be better utilized.

References

Polly, D., & Hannafin, M. J. (2011). Examining How Learner-Centered Professional Development Influences Teachers’ Espoused and Enacted Practices. Journal Of Educational Research, 104(2), 120-130.