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Passion and Purpose: Teacher Professional Development and Student Social and Civic Growth

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International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing

Abstract

In this chapter the author discusses how educational settings are value-filled. She calls for greater awareness about the basic human values that are important to cultivate constructively among the youth and for a serious focus within education on visions and ways to foster children’s and adolescents’ social, emotional, ethical, and civic growth. In the process of implementing and supporting educational changes in this area, both researchers and theorists draw attention to the important role that school principals and teachers play. Key to their professional growth, and thus to school development including student wellbeing, is a better understanding of these leaders’ pedagogical visions. Using a case study, the author presents an analytic framework of teacher professional development that can reveal, both thematically and developmentally, the pedagogical visions that teachers hold as they promote their students’ social and civic growth. The focus is on teachers’ values, aims, and teaching practice, along with their motivation for the work, and the ways they relate their pedagogical vision to incidents in their own life histories. Another focus is on how teachers integrate teaching and learning into their own process of professional growth, and how their professional awareness relates to their students’ social and interpersonal growth. The author argues for greater teacher-researcher collaboration, especially to study teacher professional growth in the intervention process, and the complex relationships between teachers’ professional development and their students’ progress. Further, a tripartite collaboration is needed between those engaged in educational policy, practice, and research.

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Acknowledgement

The research reported in this chapter was supported by grants from the Icelandic Council of Science and the Research Foundation of the University of Iceland. I am also grateful to the teachers and their students who kindly consented to participate in the research and school developmental projects reported here. In addition, I would like to sincerely thank my colleagues for their collaboration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland

    Sigrun Adalbjarnardottir

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  1. Sigrun Adalbjarnardottir
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Correspondence to Sigrun Adalbjarnardottir .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Newcastle University, University Drive, Callaghan, 2308, Australia

    Terence Lovat

  2. Newcastle University, University Drive, Callaghan, 2308, Australia

    Ron Toomey

  3. Newcastle University, University Drive, Callaghan, 2308, Australia

    Neville Clement

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Adalbjarnardottir, S. (2010). Passion and Purpose: Teacher Professional Development and Student Social and Civic Growth. In: Lovat, T., Toomey, R., Clement, N. (eds) International Research Handbook on Values Education and Student Wellbeing. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8675-4_42

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