Glossary of Terms
Adult Learning Theory
Adults are self-directed, take responsibility for their own actions, and resist having information arbitrarily imposed on them. Connecting new learning with learners’ previous experience. Adults have a depth of experience and knowledge. Experience is the adult learner's "living textbook". Those who implement PD should help adults connect new learning to the participant's real life knowledge and experience. When storing new sensory input, the brain ‘looks for’ connections to earlier information. These connections are our “learnings”; with no meaningful links to prior experience, little if anything is retained. Adults are ready to learn and engage in learning. Adults are task-motivated and goal-oriented. They will focus their learning on a specific goal related to their role in the school. Adult learning often takes place within a social system with teachers interacting with peers. Thus, educators can collaborate to solve problems, gain instructional skills, and equip themselves with content knowledge.
Lesson Study
A professional development activity where a team (e.g., 3-16) of teachers engages in the following steps:
- Collaborate to identify a lesson focus and develop a lesson plan (the research lesson) based on national and state standards and evidence-based instructional practice;
- One teacher implements the lesson plan;
- The other teachers observe the implementation;
- The team discusses and reflects on the lesson;
- The team revises the lesson;
- A second teacher reteaches the revised lesson;
- The team reports the results to all of the teachers in the school.
Lesson study is successful to the extent that teacher learning occurs. During the lesson study process, there should be a strong emphasis on what students will learn, the presentation of the student learning goal to the students, the anticipatory set of the lesson; the promotion of student engagement in the lesson, how students should respond to their mistakes, teacher questions and student responses, and the lesson closure.
Organization Learning
The process of creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge throughout the entire organization.
Professional Development
Ongoing, research-based, planned, sequential, and coherent educator learning that is applied to teaching that results in improved student learning (e.g., engaging in lesson study).
Situated Cognition
Situated cognition posits that learning is context-bound, tool-dependent, and socially interactive. Learning is constructed through the interaction of those with similar roles in the workplace. The place in which situated cognition occurs is the community of practice, which might be a family, a classroom, a workplace, an online community, a town, or a corporation. This approach contextualizes learning, uncoupling it from a preoccupation with the independent adult learner. Situated learning can include apprenticeships, internships, and practicums where one can learn through modeling, coaching, trial and error, shadowing, site visits, and job-embedded learning activities. DuFour and Eaker (1998), Murphy and Lick (2004), Hord (2004), Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder (2002), Saint-Onge and Wallace (2003), and Brown and Duguid (1991) have all created models of situated, collaborative learning. Research has shown that the weakness of these models is that learning may be taking place at the individual or group level but the learning does not transfer throughout the organization - there is a lack of organizational learning.
Technology
Technology is any tool that makes work more efficient and or enables a person to solve problems. When educators refer to the technology they are usually narrowly referring to one type of technology - a computer or to digital technology.
Training
The development of a skill that does not directly promote student achievement (e.g., learning how to use software or implement a program).