Search results for: Autonomy

This article examines the effect of a National Writing Project professional development model on a group of middle school writing teachers. Specifically, the authors examine how contact with other professionals in intensive week-long sessions as well as mentoring from the professional development coach affected the teachers’ concept of themselves as professionals, as writers, and as colleagues, as well as how this attitudinal change affected their classrooms and students. The findings reveal that through participating in the literacy academies, these teachers appear to have revived their interest in teaching and gained confidence in their expertise. The authors find that activities with more positive structural features tend to provide professional development with more positive core features, which in turn tend of produce more positive teacher outcomes.

The purpose of this article is to make a contribution to the first two of these tasks which are relatively neglected in the education research literature. The authors begin by unpacking some conceptual complexities involved in debating issues of autonomy and control, distinguishing between three dimensions of autonomy-control: loci and modes of autonomy, domains of autonomy-control and loci and modes of control.