Barriers to Professional Learning: How Preexisting Professional Cultures Shape the Nature of Collaboration

• In Event: Describing and Situating Teachers' Collaborative Learning

Abstract

Collaboration and job-embedded structures have been established in the literature as best practices for teacher professional learning. Additionally, researchers have argued that the professional culture of a school highly impacts teachers’ willingness to engage in authentic, and not superficial, collaborative professional learning. Drawing on Hargreaves and Fullan’s (2012) concept of professional capital, we use a multi-case study to explore how new professional learning experiences may uncover teachers’ preexisting professional cultures and norms, rendering it either easier or more difficult for teachers to interact with one another and with the learning experience itself. Findings from our study may provide researchers and practitioners with strategies for shaping a professional school culture that fosters authentic collaboration, trust, and transformation.

Authors

• Amy Nichole Farley, University of Cincinnati

• Courtney Gilday, University of Cincinnati