Nanke Dokter

Summary 257 ‘duration’, ‘collective participation’, ‘content focus/clear goals’, ‘authentic task’, ‘exemplary behavior by the teacher educator’, ‘active learning’, ‘reflection’, ‘coherence’, ‘assessment’ and ‘blended learning’. The training lasted ten weeks and student teachers were asked to coach each other in the use of AL stimulating strategies at their practice schools. They learned actively, i.e., they had to reflect when analyzing and discussing the AL stimulating strategies that they had used in their own, videotaped, lessons, using clearly defined indications for observation. The content focus and goals were aimed at the use of AL stimulating strategies to improve their students’ mathe- matical thinking. Coherence was created by connecting the content to the student teachers’ knowledge base of both mathematics and the Dutch language. The task was authentic, because the AL stimulating strategies were used by the student teachers to stimulate mathematical thinking of the students in their own practice school. The teacher educator showed exemplary behavior during the lessons at the teacher training college and also in example videos on a website that was specifically built for this research: www.lesinschooltaal.nl . For the assessment, alignment in learning goals, activities and outcomes was established by connecting the AL stimulating strategies to existing lessons. For the assessment of these lessons an existing test was used. The last criterium, blended learning, was realized by offering the content both in the lessons and on the website. The effect of the training was investigated using the empirically based integrative model of professional growth as developed by Clarke and Hollingsworth. According to this model, professional growth will occur through the processes of reflection and enactment, in four distinct domains: the personal domain (teacher's knowledge, beliefs, attitudes), the domain of practice (professional experimentation), the domain of consequences (salient outcomes) and the external domain (sources of information, stimulus and support). The learning process can start in either one of these domains and changes in the domains will lead to learning. If the changes are longer lasting, professional growth has occurred. The training is the external domain in this research. The first step was to investigate whether the training was realized as intended, using the ten design criteria. Not all criteria were realized as planned: for several student teachers the goals and the assessment of the goals were not clear. The AL stimulating strategies were not assessed explicitly in the existing test. Enactment of these student teachers was not steered by the assessment goals, and the goals were not clear for them. Therefore, the students did not perform the assignments as asked. This influenced the design criteria authentic tasks, reflection, coherence and blended learning. The criteria active learning and coherence were partly realized as planned: as it turned out, the learning climate in the experimental group was not safe. Student teachers did not dare to speak out loud, because they did not know each other well enough. However, when working in small groups and discussing the recordings of their own lessons, the climate was safe: the student teachers formed these groups themselves. Some student teachers mentioned in the evaluation that the coherence was not clear, whereas others thought it was very clear. Not all design criteria were realized as intended and this may have influenced the results of the effect study. Su