Of bricks and butterflies
Subtitle: four teachers' quest for professional growth
By: by Dianne Elizabeth Stevens.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 432
ISBN-13: 9780494157800
Subjects: Teachers -- In-service training -- Ontario.; Teachers -- Ontario -- Attitudes.
Description: This research explores meaningful professional development from the perspective of four Ontario teachers, all self-directed learners focused on improving practice. Three questions shape the inquiry: In what ways do teachers quest for professional growth? For what reasons do they seek this growth? What helps and hindrances do they encounter?Hope for successful future reform lies in congruence between participants' teaching practice and existing models, standards and activities of professional development advocated by acknowledged researchers. Future research and action directed to expanding understanding and acceptance of optimal concepts of teaching and professional development is essential.School reform, an ongoing concern of educational stakeholders, focuses on improving student learning. Teachers are pivotal to the learning process; thus, professional development agendas are central to successful reform. However, hierarchical issues of power and control, and public images of teachers, can limit or exclude teachers' voices in the design and implementation of professional development initiatives, resulting in tensions that inhibit meaningful professional growth. Moreover, omitting teachers' perspectives has contributed to the well-documented failure of school reform over the past half century. This thesis addresses the imbalance by showcasing teachers' voices.This study substantiates the concept of teachers' practices being embedded in a personal image that reflects teachers' beliefs, values and philosophies of teaching. Furthermore, emergent findings reveal this image of relational, experiential learning is embedded in the reasons and the ways the four participants seek professional growth, and in their evaluation of helps and hindrances. Image is vital to the definition, robustness and sustainability of meaningful professional development.In four interviews with each teacher-participant, the researcher elicits the following teaching perspectives: present attitudes originating in past student experiences; beliefs, values and philosophies; influences of social context; path of professional development; and present teaching practice. Life history methodology offers respect for the individual, allows exploration of the relationship between culture, social structure and individual lives, and facilitates critical change. The researcher, also a teacher-participant, writes from an emic perspective. This arts-enhanced thesis includes poetry, visuals, and participants' artifacts. Teachers' perspective on the professional development experience is symbolically represented by the research metaphor, "of bricks and butterflies."
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-06, Section: A, page: 2120.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 424-432).