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ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of teachers’ professional learning opportunities on instructional quality, which represents a combined approach of behaviorist, cognitivist, and constructivist principles in teaching. We incorporated professional learning communities (PLCs), professional development (PD) days, as well as 3 PD types (traditional, reform-based, and informal) to provide a comprehensive account of teachers’ professional learning opportunities. Using the extant large-scale data, the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS), from 3,213 middle-school teachers in Turkey, we found that PLCs and reform-based PD activities produced statistically significant effects on instructional quality, ranging from high to moderate effects, all other PD variables held constant. Discussion on the results was centered on the schools for being a venue for professional learning and the potential of collaborative structures to promote teachers’ development.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The items used for creating composites were identical to and aligned with the choice made by Vieluf et al. (Citation2012). We used the same underlying theory. However, we preferred to combine and correlate the three composites, which was different from the approach taken by the OECD. For this reason, we did not use the factor scores provided by the TALIS 2008 data set.
2. Our approach to create a latent variable for PLCs was aligned with the approach taken by Vieluf et al. (Citation2012). The only difference was that we included “team conferences” as an indicator for collaboration among teachers, based on the relevant literature and previous work in PLCs. Vieluf et al., however, used “joint teaching” instead, which we think is not a part of the theoretical foundation of PLCs. We created our own variable because OECD only provided factor scores for “exchange and co-ordination” and “professional collaboration”, which were conceptualized differently and did not fit our conceptual model.
3. In most of the studies, PD type has been operationally defined by binary variables, indicating participation and non-participation (i.e., Garet et al., Citation2001). However, Penuel et al. (Citation2007) argue that “teachers can participate in multiple types of PD in the same school year” (p. 943). Therefore, to catch the variation in different types of PD participation, we adapted the strategy suggested by the researchers. The results can be interpreted as teachers’ whole experiences in traditional, reform-based, or informal PD activities.
4. For the secondary analysis of the TALIS data, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) developed a software International Database (IDB) Analyzer (IEA, Citation2009). Because we created latent variables and examined the relationship between observed and unobserved variables, we needed to use a more capable software. However, we incorporated the teacher final weights and took into account all the adjustments required for the secondary analysis of TALIS, suggested by Rutkowski et al. (Citation2014), which the IDB Analyzer can already handle.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Selçuk Doğan
Selçuk Doğan is a researcher at University of Florida and Marmara University, interested in teachers’ professional development, curriculum design (understanding by design), and professional learning communities. He uses large-scale national and international data to examine the inter-correlations and structural relationships among teachers, schools, and instruction from teacher effectiveness and school improvement perspectives.
Nihal Yurtseven
Nihal Yurtseven researched about teacher education, teachers’ professional development, the relationship between professional development and student achievement, and foreign-language learning motivation within the scope of her doctoral dissertation, titled “Action Research Based UbD Practices in EFL Teaching”. Email: [email protected]