Section archive - Professional Development

This article explores some of the key issues that emerged in the revision of the professional standards in Scottish education which resulted in a suite of professional standards covering different stages of a teacher’s career. The revision of the professional standards was part of a wider project to build teacher professional learning in ways that had an impact on practice and on pupil learning. The focus then turns to an alternative way of constructing a professional standard in order to foster authentic forms of professional learning. The article concludes by exploring the issues that need to be addressed to facilitate the productive use of professional standards in the career-long professional learning of teachers.

This article argues the need for coherent, holistic frameworks offering insightful understandings as well as viable, connected and synergistic solutions to schools in addressing pressing problems arising from the acknowledged gaps between research, practice and professional development. Specifically, three themes conceptualise existing problems faced by schools and their possible solutions: first, bridging the research–policy–practice gap by mobilising knowledge more effectively through knowledge producers and consumers working collaboratively; second, valuing and integrating both tacit knowledge and academic coded knowledge; and third, raising the professionalism and reflectivity of teachers and leaders.

The purpose of this study was (a) to examine the manner in which teachers who were experiencing the implementation of an organisational reform perceived their own professional development process, and (b) to observe the manifestations of these perceptions in the development patterns exhibited among the teachers. The findings identified two dimensions that characterise teachers’ professional- development perceptions and goals: teachers differ from each other in terms of the source of their motivation for professional development (intrinsic or extrinsic), and in the type of development they aim for (lateral or vertical).

The paper will present a case study that investigates the experience of student teachers who simultaneously experience the role of the learner, who requires self-direction, and the role of the teacher, who expands his tool kit so that his students will become self-directed learners. The case study is based on an experiment conducted with students studying for a master’s degree in teaching the sciences. The analysis shows a gap between the recognition of the importance of self-direction in learning and its expression with regard to them as learners and teachers. From the analysis it emerges that most of the participants did not perceive the process of cultivating self-direction in their students as part of their role. The course directed them to a different kind of encounter with their students, and in the process, they identified difficulty in their own self-direction in the learning process.