Teacher Professional Growth In An Authentic Learning Environment

摘要

Increments in educational budgets have been devoted to professional development for teachers to help them accommodate their practices to the realities of their classrooms. Previous research has suggested that despite this significant investment, there has been little, if any, positive change. This begs the question of what else might be done to reverse this outcome and contribute to transformational change of the profession. This article reports on a study that closely followed and documented the journeys of professional growth for a group of teachers from their points of view, over a period of six months. Action research was conducted in conjunction with participation in a project centred on the creation of Web sites as culminating performance tasks. Analysis of the data collected led to the conclusion that one possibility could be to facilitate professional development in such a way that it is authentic, based in the classroom and focused on tasks meaningful to and specifically chosen by the teacher.