Understanding and Influencing Teacher Behavior Change: A career-wide view for sustainable teacher behavior change

• In Event: Cultivating dynamic educators: case studies in teacher behavior change in Africa and Asia

Proposal

This presentation frames the challenge of teacher professional development through the lens of adult learning and human development theories such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and McCluskey’s Theory of Margin . It posits that teacher professional development that is purely supply-driven will have little impact if it does not take into consideration the multiple competing influences on a teachers’ time and readiness to learn. Moreover, given increased attention to the need for more and better teacher preparation through international cooperation, the demands on teachers’ time and cognitive efforts in the classroom are also increasing without consequent reductions in other areas. As such, it is not realistic to expect that any one professional development effort will be enough to equip teachers with the knowledge, ability and willingness to change his or her practice dramatically. Instead, teacher behavior change must include a combination of direct inputs, policy efforts and social supports that are mutually supportive and sustained across all areas of the teaching career span. The presentation also explains the context in which teacher behavior change needs to respond not just to one-off subject or methodological innovations introduced by a given initiative or project, but rather broad skills required to continue to adapt to changes required by shifting student demographics, pupils’ language and learning needs, ever-changing technologies and workforce demands. This is why the book this presentation is drawn from refers to cultivating dynamic—as opposed to static—educators. The author suggests looking outside of traditional learning theories to take into consideration what we know from organizational learning and theories such as lifelong and self-directed learning, and building expertise (Hatano and Oura, 2003) . Finally, this presentation presents the ways in which the other three case studies in this panel fit into this career wide-view of teacher behavior change

Author

• Sarah Pouezevara, RTI International