New Directions for the Design and Study of Professional Development Attending to the Coevolution of Teachers' Participation Across Contexts

Source: Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 59, No. 5, 428-441 (2008)

Research on professional development (PD) focuses on what teachers learn
as a result of their participation in PD. Therefore, the research frames unidirectional questions: To what extent does participation in PD influence teachers' classroom practice?
The authors challenge this unidirectional conceptualization of teacher learning. Instead, they argue for understanding the multidirectional influences between teachers' participation across the PD and classroom settings. Drawing on research in mathematics education, they argue that researchers should investigate what teachers are learning during and after PD, looking at the coevolution of participation between classroom practice and PD. To advance studies of and designs for PD, the authors' perspective leads them to argue for the importance of better understanding how teachers come to make sense of primary artifacts, depictions, and enactments in and through PD.