Professional development within the teaching field


Growing professionally in the area of teaching is commonly seen as a process of acquiring knowledge about a specific subject, without considering that the acquisition of social and academic skills is also crucial. It is well known that educating remains not only as a way of transmitting knowledge, but also a provision of a social service. In doing so, teachers are involved in varied school communities which have specific learning, psychological and physiological needs. Consequently, if educators are to meet those needs and progress in their own working field, being constant researchers becomes essential. Thus, reflection, updating, collaboration and exposure of results and conclusions seem to be desirable principles.
As stated before, most education representatives believe that professionalism is synonymous with knowledge acquisition. Not only teachers, but also governmental workers who are in charge of stating educational plans of action assume that developing professionally is a matter of displaying high levels of expertise and control in the classroom. Once these aspects are tackled, their combination results into students’ learning success.
Whenever a research is concluded, the results are to be published, so as to share them with the rest of the discourse community. In academic writing, there are certain words and phrases that help to develop ideas and relate them to one another: they are discourse markers. For instance, in the article High-Quality Teaching: Providing for Rural Teachers’ Development. The Rural Educator (Howley and Howley, 2005) it is possible to identify a huge number of them. Just to illustrate the function of some, “however”, “but”, “nevertheless” and “even though” are used to present contrasting ideas. “In addition”, “moreover” and “furthermore” add information to what has been said; thus, their usage is much more elegant than just making a list or using the conjunction “and”. As well as this, there are expressions such as “therefore” or “as a result” expressing that the second element follows logically from the first. “Such as” and “for example” appear to exemplify concepts or ideas. Last but not least, “first” and “second” help when listing is required.
Regarding professional development, there is an approach founded on data-based improvement that has taken as a guide some of the principles of management approaches to professionalism. Such approaches, regard management development as a formal process where managers are exposed to learning opportunities while doing their work. Within the educational field, teachers improve only if they are able to analyze the ongoing classroom life and standardize their conclusions.
To sum up, making progress in the teaching field implies not only quality of instruction but also autonomy and self-direction. What is more, taking the road of reflection and everyday practice reformulation are the major principles. Thus, “a profession is far more than a group of individuals who are all engaged in the same line of work” (Banfi, 1997, as cited in Pintos, 2009, p. 23).



References

Howley, A. & Howley, C. B. (2005). High-quality teaching: Providing for rural teachers’ professional development. The Rural Educator. Retrieved October 2007, from
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4126/is_200501/ai_n13591361


Pintos, V. (2008) Unit 1: Building up a community of teachers and prospective researchers. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Universidad CAECE. Retrieved August 2009, from
http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=2730