3574672242

Urszula Tabor

Biographical conditions of teacher development A qualitative analysis

Summary

The work concerns the conditions of the development of an adult human being , i.e. a teacher, however, the focus is being given to the persona! and professional develop-ment. The issues of development covered in the present work are treated as an interde-pendent system that is why the relations between particular models of development and teacher professional development at the stabilization stage was descrihed, on the basis of a wide rangę of resources from the field of androgogy, pedagogy, psychology and pedeutology.

The work is an outcome of biographical studies conducted among 22 active teachers at the stabilization stage, i.e. between 35 and 65 age span . The research method consti-tuted a long-hour narrative interview during which the materials concerning personal and professional development were collected. The research sample constituted the teachers at the stabilization stage, it being a period of specific developmental changes; both men and women reach the highest productivity and show greater autonomy in creating their own development. Additional factors facilitating or hindering self-cre-ation attempts in the case of teachers may concern formal and informal procedures connected with the path of professional promotion.

Biographical conditions of teacher development consists of 5 chapters. Chapter I entitled Conditions of adult deuelopment shows the mechanisms of adult development at the stabilization stage (between 35 and 65 age span) from the theoretical perspective. The author used well-known development conceptions and, referring to them, presen-ted a parallelism of personal and professional development in middle age. The next chapter A teacher in the period of postmodernist educational changes results from the analysis of teacher competence and task, and the most important modern work conditions in teacher professional development. The author underlined the changes of teacher profession conditioned by the changes of modern civilisation, culture and educa-tion. Chapter 3, i.e. Methodology of own studies is a description of the research method used, the results of which contributed to the author s own taxonomy of development models. The subseąuent two chapters, that is Biographical conditions of teacher dece-lopment and lndiuidual models of teacher hiographies describe the research findings collected by means of biographical intervies, as well as account for the conception of five models of teacher deuelopment distinguished by the author. In the field of individual development the first stage of reconstruction concerned childhood (school age) and ado-lescence, the other being the current wave of life, that is the period of stabilization. Describing the path of professional develeopment of the subjects in question, the author