Specifying and identifying signs of ‘resonance’ in teachers’ professionalization processes as a condition for teacher change

Abstract

Many studies on professionalization research deal with the question of how teachers actually learn or how teacher change occurs. In this context, Clarke and Hollingsworth (2002) describe a model for capturing teacher change in different domains (external, personal, domain of practice and domain of consequence) and how changes in one domain can affect other domains over time. The present article suggests the notion of resonance for analyzing teachers’ professionalization processes in order to better understand the reasons for teacher change on a micro level in their complexity. The idea was to supplement the model by the dimension of teachers’ professional conditions, to capture and describe the phenomenon that an active process of engagement with the professional development (PD) content is set in motion. We consider teachers’ resonance to be a condition for a successful professionalization process. Insights from two different research projects from Germany and Norway demonstrate the scope of the notion of resonance. Consequences for facilitators and the design of further PD programs are discussed.