Page 111 - The SpeakTeach method - Esther de Vrind
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approaches (Kennedy, 2016a). As a result, innovations often failed (Van Driel, Beijaard & Verloop, 2001). Since teachers already have a teaching repertoire that has arisen from experiences, knowledge and attunement to the context, and that has been proven in practice, it is important to take this existing repertoire into account (Van Driel et al., 2001).
It is now generally recognized that teachers develop their knowledge and teaching repertoire on the basis of existing teaching routines (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2007; Bransford, Derry, Berliner & Hammerness, 2005). Two dimensions to this development have been discerned: routines and innovation (Figure 9). On the one hand, it is important that teachers refresh their teaching repertoire. Teaching requires adaptation and innovation in order to respond to changing demands, new insights and knowledge and to fulfil teachers’ own changing needs, preferences and capabilities. On the other hand, routines are necessary in order to save time and to respond efficiently in situations through automatization and quick recognition of patterns on the basis of knowledge and experience (Feldon, 2007). The routines free up cognitive effort since not every aspect of the teaching context has to be analysed every time in order to choose an appropriate reaction. The released cognitive capacity allows teachers to enact innovative approaches and to react to unexpected classroom circumstances (Feldon, 2007; Bransford et al., 2005).
It is important for professional teacher development to take the balance between routines and innovation into account. A one-sided focus on the development of routines leads to boredom and stagnation. Conversely, too much focus on innovation might result in frustration, loss of control and rejection of new teaching proposals (Bransford et al., 2005; Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2007). Bransford and Darling Hammond (2005; 2007) suggest therefore that a stepwise progression which simultaneously builds on existing routines and embeds innovations works best.
In order to support teachers to expand their teaching repertoire, professional development should build on the existing teaching repertoire and provide steps which enable the incorporation of the new teaching proposal. In addition, it should be recognized that teachers must be able to pursue different goals at the same time. In the next section we propose two principles to realize such an adaptive professional development trajectory: modularity to provide flexibility and steps to improve towards more ambitious practices and self-evaluation of existing teaching practice as the starting point of an adaptive learning route for improvement.
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