Section archive - Professional Development

This study explores human resource (HR) practitioners’ understandings of professional development as a form of capital for job progress. The findings of HR practitioners have implications for educationalists in revealing how professional learning supports practitioners’ growth in capability and self-efficacy of benefit to the individual, organisation and society. Educators need to articulate the longer-term effects of nurturing capacities for collective practice and greater self-knowledge, to contribute to societal interests.

Drawing on a qualitative study of facilitation of teacher peer groups, this paper investigates how teacher leaders integrate experiences from different domains of life in constructing a unique facilitator identity. Focusing on portraits of three teacher leaders, it demonstrates how teachers relate experiences outside of teaching, including academic experiences, other professional experiences, and social experiences, to the skills and orientation necessary for effective facilitation.

The purpose of this article was to present important findings about teacher learning as a fundament for thinking about professional development of preservice and inservice teachers. The author argues that much of a teacher’s behaviour is unconsciously guided by three dimensions (the cognitive, affective and motivational dimensions), and that teacher learning takes place at various levels.

This study explores how professional learning communities (PLCs) can enhance beginning teachers’ professional learning in differentiated instruction (DI). Furthermore, it examines how structural and cultural school conditions foster the development of PLCs in the schools’ organization. A comparative analysis was carried out in three schools with high (case A), medium (case B), and low (case C) levels of beginning teachers’ professional learning in DI.The analysis indicated that the three cases could be situated at different stages of PLC development. The authors can situate case C in the ‘beginning stage’, case B can be allocated to the ‘evolving stage’, and case A can be assigned to the ‘mature stage’. Furthermore, the authors found that organizational structures and cultural school conditionsin these three cases were related to different stages of developing PLC.