Re: [xmca] tracking changing terms in the literature

[Helen Grimmett <helen.grimmett@monash.edu>]

Oooh! better qualify what I just said here about usage of professional
learning dropping away...

I just realised that the search terms I was using were set from 1800-2000.
When I changed this to 2008 (the most recent date possible) the graph takes
another climb for professional learning in all of English, American and
British graphs, but professional development falls away dramatically in the
British graph but keeps rising in the American graph!

Hmm, nothing is ever straightforward....

Cheers,
Helen





On 22 September 2011 12:46, Helen Grimmett <helen.grimmett@monash.edu>wrote:

> Thanks Phil and Remi!
> The ngram site was the only one I could make work if I included teachers in
> the criteria. See:
>
> http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=teachers+%27+professional+development%2Cteachers+%27+professional+learning&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3
> Interesting that professional development is obviously still going strong
> in the book publishing industry even though, here in Australia at least,
> schools are being implored to do away with the term and refer to it as
> professional learning. I wonder if the results are different if it was
> graphing academic journals instead of books? Does anyone know of a similar
> program that does this with say Google Scholar? Nevertheless the graphs do
> show that teachers' professional learning only appeared in Google Books in
> the late 1980's which gives me a good starting point. Also interesting to
> see the difference you get when you change the criteria to British English
> and American English. It appears use of professional learning is actually
> dropping away rather than increasing. As usual our education departments
> here in Australia are persisting with ideas that the rest of the world is
> already abandoning!
>
> The argument I am trying to make in my thesis is that professional
> 'learning' is necessary, but not sufficient. What we really need is for
> teachers to 'develop' as professionals (as we talk about development in
> Cultural-Historical theory). Teachers can easily 'learn' about new theories
> of teaching/learning, but if they don't consider the implications of these
> theories and 'develop' their professional practice to implement these new
> ideas then what has been achieved?
>
> Thanks again. I really appreciate your help,
> Helen
>
>
> On 22 September 2011 11:33, Phil Chappell <philchappell@mac.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Helen
>>
>> Try this http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/
>>
>> I searched your terms (see link below)  - you may need to adjust the
>> criteria!
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Phil
>>
>>
>> http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=professional+development%2C+professional+learning&year_start=1800&year_end=2011&corpus=0&smoothing=3
>>
>>
>> On 22/09/2011, at 11:16 AM, Helen Grimmett wrote:
>>
>> > Hi everyone,
>> >
>> > I'm wondering if anyone can help me work out a way to find out when the
>> > educational research literature started moving away from the term
>> > 'professional development' and began using 'professional learning'? I
>> > vaguely remember someone talking here about some sort of web program
>> that
>> > could do this but I can't even work out what words to use to google such
>> a
>> > thing! Maybe there is even an easy way to do this without special
>> software
>> > that my post-ISCAR jet-lagged brain just cannot fathom at the moment!
>> >
>> > Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,
>> > Helen
>> >
>> > --
>> > Helen Grimmett
>> > PhD Student, Teaching Associate
>> > Faculty of Education
>> > Monash University, Peninsula Campus
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>
>
>
> --
> Helen Grimmett
> PhD Student, Teaching Associate
> Faculty of Education
> Monash University, Peninsula Campus
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Helen Grimmett
PhD Student, Teaching Associate
Faculty of Education
Monash University, Peninsula Campus
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