An Ecological, Dynamical Systems Perspective on Teacher Learning and Professional Development

• In Event: 18.072 - Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: 18.072-12 - Teaching, Learning, and Educational Leadership From a Complexity Perspective

Abstract

Critics of the predominant approach to teacher learning and professional development (PD) question its mechanistic, reductionist, linear underlying assumptions. This paper applies an ecological dynamical systems perspective on skill acquisition as a conceptual lens for understanding teacher learning and PD. We position teachers’ actions in an attractor landscape of possibilities and conceptualize teacher learning and development as a dynamic process of searching and moving through that landscape. We also consider the concept of constraints as it applies to teacher learning and PD and how they might guide this movement. We employ the principle of self-similarity to justify the application of this conceptualization to varying time scales and units of analysis, and discuss implications for the design and evaluation of PD.

Authors

• Joanna K. Garner, Old Dominion University

• Avi Kaplan, Temple University