Effective Teacher Professionalization in Networks?

This article was published in Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol 26, Issue 4, Author(s): Roelande H. Hofman and Bernadette J. Dijkstra, “Effective Teacher Professionalization in Networks?“, Pages 1031-1040, Copyright Elsevier (May 2010).

Teacher professionalization has been focused to strongly on external experts and a one-size-fits-all set of solutions that often fail to distinguish between the needs of different teachers.

This article describes a research into teacher networks that might be more successful vehicles for professional development of teachers.

The results show that networks that focus on (self-) reflection, that exploit subgroups and networks meetings with a strong content focus, that stimulate enthusiasm and are instructive, that build a community of teachers and that make room for application of new materials/methods in the classroom, are the most promising ways for professional development and job motivation.