Theory into practice: Professional development design and implementation in a small high school development project.

摘要

This study analyzes how one professional development organization tries to develop content and pedagogical content knowledge in its teachers. It focuses on a set of small high schools created by the Big Picture Company, which possess a particularly strong vision of what teaching and learning should look like and are currently in the midst of a nation-wide scale-up. Big Picture's effort mirrors the work of many current reform efforts that recognize that developing teacher's content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge is crucial for the success of organizations attempting to implement a particular vision of educational reform. However, given all that is demanded of teachers to become well-versed in both knowledge areas, few opportunities exist for teachers to learn all they need. This study looks at the Big Picture organization's espoused beliefs about content and pedagogical content knowledge. It then examines the influence these beliefs have on their professional development design. Finally, this study pays particular attention to teachers' experiences in a professional development program expressly designed to build content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. Using a multiple embedded case study involving five in-depth portraits of teachers, this dissertation sheds light on how professional development organizations and programs can support teachers effectively in their own professional development, resulting in three major findings. Big Picture revisions traditional dynamics between teacher, student, and content and this impacted the focus of teachers' work and had implications for professional development design and teacher experiences. A second finding is that an organization needs to pay particular attention to developing richer content knowledge as it is essential to the later development of pedagogical content knowledge. A final finding is that developing professional communities of practice among teachers is an effective strategy, among a number of effective strategies employed by Big Picture, in supporting teacher learning.