Framing an Ecological Perspective on Teacher Professional Development

From a teacher’s perspective, teacher learning happens through a complex web of learning experiences. However, research on teacher professional development (PD) typically focuses on the direct influence of single activities or programs. PD researchers less often acknowledge the interactive impacts on teacher learning of the multiple experiences teachers have in different contexts. This conceptual paper works toward a more thoroughgoing ecological framing of teacher PD by bringing forth three dimensions of teacher learning that are often overlooked: scope, interconnectedness, and temporality. The essay centers on the type of design that is widely considered high-quality PD—namely, experiences that are collaborative and situated in teachers’ instructional context—and considers those experiences from the perspective of these three dimensions. I illustrate this framework and its affordances with data from a 4-year research project rooted in video-based mathematics teacher conversations. The focus on scope allows researchers to name and distinguish contexts that are salient to their different studies. The focus on interconnectedness uncovers the interactive relationship between the immediate and broader PD contexts. Finally, the focus on temporality affords the understanding of different phases in learning and extends linear conceptions of progress. Together, these dimensions provide a rich conceptualization to better inform the work of teacher educators.