1. Primary Science Matters -2010
Day 3 – Session 9
Professional Learning

2. Professional Learning?
What does this mean?
What form can it take?
What will be evidence of professional learning?
Will it make a difference to your practice?
How do you make science teaching interesting for teachers who do not like science?
How do you address your own science knowledge in our finite time? How do you turn difficult science theories into kid-friendly language? These are some of the questions that have been raised by participants in this program. One of the challenges will be for you as professional teachers to try and find solutions to these questions that best suit both you and the teaching context in which you operate.
What does it mean to be a professional teacher? The notion of profession includes a group that will self-administer accountability/regulation and quality assurance measures and requires it members to keep up to date with the latest developments in the field of education and teaching.
The important focus here is on professional learning rather than professional development – the major difference being that the learner is actively integrating new knowledge/skills/ attitudes/values into their current understandings when they undertake professional learning. Professional development does not have this same requirement and consequently is often seen as something that is DONE to participants.
So one our attempts here has been to get you to actively reflect on what you have been experiencing, so that you are forced to look back on what you have done and what it means to you. As you can see from the program there are lots of different ways to do this such as:
3-2-1 reflection
Head, heart, bin, bag
DIGA response sheet
All are examples of written reflections.
Think-Pair-Share
As an example of verbal reflections and so on.
Other forms such reflections could take include:
Journals, Learning logs, portfolios, blogs, wikkis, posters, annotated diagrams (concept maps/mind maps, venn diagrams), cartoons and so on. All are different ways of capturing data as they occur that can then be used as evidence of your professional learning. The mode of providing such evidence of professional learning is really up to you – and your level of creativity. What is important is that it articulates your thinking and how such thinking has progressed/grown. You will need to gather data as it occurs and look for patterns and trends for example so that you can back up statements you make about you progress/growth in learning with evidence. You cannot capture such data and develop the evidence after the event.
Will it make a difference to your practice? This is really up to you. However, if you have evidence to back up statements that you make about your learning and likewise for your own students’ learning, then it makes it very difficult for other to refute your statements. Not only will you only learning be up to date, but you will also have evidence to back you the learning each of your students have undertaken if you follow the same principles. You can then tailor the learning for each of your students. If you think everyone learns similar things, you need only look at the different responses for your colleagues on the moodle in this program to see how diverse responses and reflections on these same experiences can be.