Danish School of Education ASEM RN3 – 5 October 2016 Teacher training programmes: What counts? Bjarne Wahlgren Danish School of Education Aarhus University

The context for the study The overriding purpose of the study was to reduce the dropout among young adults in the vocational system By implementing new pedagogical strategies By improving the teachers’ competences In this part of the study we are focusing on whether the training of the teachers leeds to a new pedagogical strategi

The teacher training A teacher training program was accomplshed The training programme included courses, seminars and coaching sessions At half of the schools teachers were trained to teach in a more holistic way At the other half of the schools the teachers were trained to teach in a more ‘progressive’ way Both were expected to have a positive effect on the students’ outcome A major part of the teachers training programme was coaching at the schools

The research design An intervention study based training of 320 teachers in16 schools A quasi-experimental set up Interviews with teachers and school leaders Observation in classes

Research questions The overarching question for this part of the project was which impact the training programmes have on the teachers’ daily performances at the school The following factors were expected to have influence on the impact (measured as ‘amount of implementation’)? Quality of the training programme The teachers’ experiences Training of school leaders Management support Type of school Size of training group

Findings Great differences between the schools The second most important factor was the teachers previous experiences and the perception of the usefulness of the methods The most important factor was the organisational preconditions and the actual support from the school leaders

Conclusion and discussion The context for the teacher training do have an immense importance for the implementation of the trained competences The impact could be of more importance than the training program in itself Teacher training programs must include the context for use to improve applying of the learned