Positive professional development in teaching: Honoring astronomy educators’ strengths and agency

How can we design effective and inclusive professional development (PD) experiences for astronomy educators? PD for science educators often involves trying to “convince” them to use specific teaching methods, and may implicitly take a negative (deficit) framing of educators. By contrast, we suggest that PD in teaching should start from understanding and honoring how and why educators already teach the way they do — just as effective classes must build from students’ prior knowledge. I conducted dozens of interviews with astronomy and physics faculty about their teaching (published in Physical Review – Physics Education Research). Here I present a case study of an instructor talking about his teaching, viewed through frameworks of teaching principles, agency and motivation. These frameworks work well — and are at odds with typical framing of PD for science educators. I’ll share how I’m using these ideas for PD that I design and lead in North America, Africa, and Central Asia.