Session Information
01 SES 12 A, Teacher Professional Learning and Development (PLD) in Europe (Part 3)
Symposium continued from 01 SES 11 A
Contribution
In this chapter, we focus on approaches to professional learning and development (PLD) in Denmark since the 2014 national school reform. We describe how a formal competence development approach dominated in the initial phase, and how this was gradually supplemented by a top-down-oriented teacher collaboration approach within the framework of professional learning communities (PLCs) (Qvortrup, 2016). As this type of teacher collaboration is often characterised by teachers sharing experiences, discussing student learning, and/or exchanging instructional strategies (de Jong et al., 2022), a central assumption behind this emphasis on collaboration was that collaboration would lead to increased on-the-job learning through feedback and reflection. Neither of the recent PLD approaches, however, seems to have had a significant positive impact on students’ performance. In order to contribute to new ways of thinking about teacher PLD, we zoom in on teacher collaboration as part of the recent PLD effort in Denmark and analyse an empirical example of teacher collaboration in a Danish school. In the example, we follow a series of collaborative events that revolve around two teachers meeting to plan a lesson, the unfolding of the lesson, and the talks and encounters that follow the lesson. The analysis is informed by a complexity-oriented process theoretical perspective (Hernes, 2008, 2014) and it highlights how potential learning opportunities that arise as part of the teachers’ collaborative events do not actualize because the events mainly revolve around the production of consensus, legitimisation of and adaptation to current practices and mutual support. From our analysis the chapter advocates an approach according to which teacher collaboration and PLD should be observed as a result of emerging processes of organisation and complexity management, rather than being the result of top-down management decisions. An implication is that PLD programmes that take this observation into account should be structured around an understanding of the importance of supporting and sustaining PLD processes that emerge as part of the school organisation.
References
de Jong, L., Meirink, J., & Admiraal, W. (2022). School-Based Collaboration as a Learning Context for Teachers: A Systematic Review. International Journal of Educational Research, 112, 101927. Hernes, T. (2008). Understanding Organization as Proces—Theory for a Tangled World. Routledge. Hernes, T. (2014). A Process Theory of Organization. University Press. Qvortrup, L. (2016). Det ved vi om professionelle læringsfællesskaber. (1. ed.). Frederikshavn: Dafolo. [English Title: What We Know about Professional Learning Communities].
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