Teacher Learning Through Teacher Teams

Teacher collaboration helps to facilitate meaningful and effective learning and enables sustainable development of schools. Teacher teams who collaboratively investigate a shared problem, or design curriculum materials together, significantly contribute to the professional development of teachers in areas of subject matter, curriculum design and data skills. Contributions to this book discuss various perspectives of teachers collaborating in design teams, by investigating the sense of collaboration and its effects, and the conditions that influence and drive it. The studies provided suggest that collaborative design and research supports participants (teachers and teacher educators) to improve their knowledge, specifically in regards to technological pedagogical content and subject matter. Participating teachers further developed curriculum design expertise, such as, understanding the relevance and effectiveness of involving stakeholders in designing and implementing newly designed curricula. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Educational Research and Evaluation.

Joke Voogt is Professor of ICT & Curriculum at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands and Professor of Educational Innovation & ICT at Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands. She is involved in research regarding innovative use of ICT in the curriculum, and the active involvement of teachers in ICT integration through collaborative design of ICT-enhanced learning environments. Jules Pieters is Professor-emeritus of Applied Psychology at the University of Twente, Netherlands. He chaired the Department of Curriculum Design and Educational Innovation. He was involved in research projects on inquiry and collaboration in professional knowledge development of teachers, on co-designing of curriculum materials and learning environments by teachers in teacher development teams, and on knowledge dissemination.

Introduction. Teacher learning through teacher teams: what makes learning through teacher teams successful? 1. Teacher collaboration in curriculum design teams: effects, mechanisms, and conditions 2. Teacher design teams as a strategy for professional development: the role of the facilitator 3. Unpacking the roles of the facilitator in higher education professional learning communities 4. How to become a broker: the role of teacher educators in developing collaborative teacher research teams 5. Extended teams in vocational education: collaboration on the border 6. Data-based decision making in teams: enablers and barriers 7. Is action research necessarily collaborative? Changing mutuality within a project