Professional standards for teachers : a case study of professional learning

This paper analyses the current Australian policy and research context in relation to developing quality teachers. Like other countries, many educational authorities in Australia are developing professional standards for teachers and the evaluation of teachers against those standards as a
mechanism for ensuring and extending the quality of teaching in schools. A key policy consideration involves the use of professional standards as tools for extending professional learning and/or for credentialing and appraisal. This paper considers these uses of standards by drawing on an evaluation of Education Queensland’s Professional Standards for Teachers pilot.
The pilot focused on using a set of standards as a framework for professional learning. Teachers’ perspectives on the standards and their intended use, their engagement with the standards during the pilot and the nature of professional learning associated with that engagement are discussed in light of current policy debates about professional standards.

Changing teacher professional learning : transitioning from train - the trainer to participatory action research

Diffusion-adoption professional learning models which position teachers ascompliant technicians of policy and practices are limited in their long term effects on teacher professionalism. In contrast, co-researching models of professional learning hold the potential to engage teachers and researchers in explorations of mutual concern which impact on professionalism and contribute to development of both theory and practice.

This article describes professional learning within the context of an Australian state department of education during a period of reform. The contextual influences and design of a collaborative, film-driven participatory action research design which explored teacher learning and application of multiliteracies theory are explored. A spiral of cycles of action research incorporated engagentent with multiliteracies theory and collaborative planning; filming of teacher classroom 'action' and reflective interviews; collaborative observation of and reflection on the resultant filmic artefacts.

The filmic artefacts offered rich multimodal examples of teaching practices,
incorporatíng visual, audio, gestural and spatial classroom information, far beyond the purely linguistic recounts and descriptions which characterise many professional development workshops. Incorporation of collaborative filmic research techniques enabled multimodal observation of teaching practices across a number of sites, with observation unrestricted by temporal or physical parameters.

The relevance of professional institutions to students and early career practitioners in the property and construction industries within Australia

The role of professional institutions and the transition from student membership to full professional membership among real estate and construction students in Australia is examined. Students’ perceptions of professional qualifications and institution membership is explored to show that graduates seek networking and career advancement opportunities over professional training and development opportunities. The expectation of many young practitioners is that they will work outside Australia during their career and this has significant implications for the future policy development of professional bodies. The paper provides a valuable insight into the aspirations of young professionals and goes some way to identifying the reasons for the low level of transition from student membership to full membership of the national and international professional bodies.

Australian employers perspectives on student and graduate entrants and built environment professional bodies

A new generation of members are needed for professional bodies in the built environment and surveying in order to survive and thrive in the 21st century. Wilkinson and Zillante (2007) identified issues of under recruitment and an ageing membership in the Building Surveying profession in Australia; however other built environment professional bodies globally are experiencing similar issues. Not only do professional bodies need to recruit student members into the profession during their studies but they need to convert these student members to full members. Warren and Wilkinson’s (2008) survey of 661 Australian student perceptions of built environment professional bodies showed that students value professional qualifications but that there is a lack of understanding of the role of professional bodies. The second stage of this research examined the perceptions of Australian employers of surveying, property and construction students and graduates and membership of professional bodies. The research sought to identify what measures are currently adopted in terms of encouraging professional body membership in the workplace. This paper presents the results of the employer interviews and reveals another perspective of the critical issue for professional institutions globally.

The emotional context of self-management in chronic illness: A qualitative study of the role of health professional support in the self-management of type 2 diabetes

Background: Support for patient self-management is an accepted role for health professionals. Little evidence exists on the appropriate basis for the role of health professionals in achieving optimum self-management outcomes. This study explores the perceptions of people with type 2 diabetes about their self-management strategies and how relationships with health professionals may support this.

Methods: Four focus groups were conducted with people with type 2 diabetes:  two with English speaking and one each with Turkish and Arabic-speaking. Transcripts from the groups were analysed drawing on grounded hermeneutics and interpretive description.

Results: We describe three conceptually linked categories of text from the focus groups based on emotional context of self management, dominant approaches to self management and support from health professionals for self management. All groups described important emotional contexts to living with and self-managing diabetes and these linked closely with how they approached their diabetes management and what they looked for from health professionals. Culture seemed an important influence in shaping these linkages.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest people construct their own individual self-management and self-care program, springing from an important emotional base. This is shaped in part by culture and in turn determines the aims each  person has in pursuing self-management strategies and the role they make available to health professionals to support them. While health professionals'  support for self-care strategies will be more congruent with patients' expectations if they explore each person's social, emotional and cultural circumstances, pursuit of improved health outcomes may involve a careful balance between supporting as well as helping shift the emotional constructs surrounding a patient life with diabetes.

Filming for professional learning : collaborations in innovation

It is not unusual for academics to bemoan the reticence of teachers in adopting innovative tools and pedagogies, never more so than in the area of new technologies and multimodal literacies in classrooms. Typically, educational bureaucracies seek to dictate change in new technologies through a diffusion-adoption model of professional learning where ‘inservicing’ or ‘professional development’ of teachers is used to influence them to implement curriculum innovations. Typically a set of resources are developed for this purpose and teachers engage with workshop leaders as passive recipients of knowledge rather than active knowledge constructors. This paper explores an alternative form of engagement in which teachers are co-opted as collaborators and documenters of educational change. Its innovation is to use filming of teacher interviews and classroom practice – in this case to extend the teachers’ repertories.

This article will discuss the film-infused model of professional learning which was developed within the context of a research project on literacy teachers’ engagement with multimodality, but has potential for wider application. The research context will be outlined and four elements of a film-infused professional learning model will be discussed in detail. The effects of this model on the resource development and professional learning will then be addressed.

Science professional development for early childhood educators : some identified issues

In a small research project, using a qualitative approach we surveyed eleven pre-school teachers/coordinators asking them for information about the science experiences within their EC setting. We identified the opportunities they had for science professional development and clarified the level of their qualifications and those of a further 22 staff. In addition, we conducted four case studies to interrogate this further, and interviewed four early childhood educators asking for more detail about the science they provided and about their comfort in teaching science. The interviews revealed that although early childhood educators indicated that they provided a large number of varied experiences, often they were unsure of the science content or the science understanding. This limited their abilities to develop the activities further. Early childhood educators also indicated that whilst there was access to some science professional development, more would be welcome. The types of professional development which they felt would be most beneficial were "hands-on" play experiences - a "quick fix" approach. This presentation will discuss the findings of the research through a socio-cultural framework, noting some of the issues being raised in our discussions with the educators.