Teachers' continuing professional development (CPD) in England is a controversial area, and there is arguably little evidence of a "coherent" framework around which consistently high-quality CPD has been developed, provided and accessed despite the establishment of the General Teaching Council in 2000, the publication of the CPD Strategy…

Scottish universities, with schools of education or equivalent, have gained a significant role in all other areas of the emerging national Framework for Continuing Professional Development, with the exception of the new one-year Teacher Induction Scheme. However, in the light of renewed political calls for local authorities and universities to act…

After years of neglect, the New Labour government has identified the further education (FE) sector in England as being the crucial means to achieve two policies at the centre of their project: social justice through widening participation in education and enhancing the skills of the nation's workforce to compete in a globalised economy. This has…

This article provides a model of online professional development that is consistent with recommendations from the fields of teacher education, technology staff development and online learning. A graduate mathematics education course designed and implemented using the model is presented to exemplify the model's core components and interactions. The…

Behaviourist and cognitive theories of learning view learning as a process of individual internalisation. Social theorists view learning as a process that is socially constructed and developed in social contexts. Wenger suggests that professional practice is a social process that is constructed in communities. Mentoring in Initial Teacher…

Over recent decades there has been pressure on schools and teachers, in England, to transform teachers' working practice by advocating an improved role for teaching assistants. In reforming the workforce, the government also intended to support schools in building the momentum for change, whilst raising standards of pupil achievement and enhancing…

The first two years of the authors' research study into models of professional development (PD) of a longer duration than workshops or conferences and the impact of those types of PD activities on teaching practice were reported in Boyle et al. (2004, 2005). The research team has now completed the third year of the research and this report updates…

Sponsored by the New Zealand Ministry of Education, the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative has sought to develop teachers' research capability and to build knowledge about teaching and learning with the intention of improving outcomes for learners. Fortunate to receive a two-year grant, our research collaboration investigated secondary…

This article focuses upon the development of transformative teacher professionalism. It explores issues of teacher professional identity and the ways in which this is contributed to by teacher responsiveness to the changing and demanding educational environments in which they find themselves. It includes a review of significant literature within…

Changes in the requirements for training primary school teachers in England over the past 12 years have increasingly demanded more involvement from the schools themselves. University departments and schools have developed partnerships to implement these changes and teachers are increasingly finding themselves taking a key role in the training of…

Many more teachers begin studying for masters' level awards than complete them. This situation is a concern to participants, providers and funders of courses. The research project reported here explores teachers' perceptions of factors affecting their success in completing assessed work. Questionnaire and interview responses from 46 students in…

Consideration of variations in the gross morphology of concept maps can be helpful in the context of lesson planning by promoting the consideration of the multiple perspectives held by students. The three basic concept map structures are described as having particular utility at different stages of the planning process: (a) chain-type maps…

This article briefly examines the way one school approached the development of its contribution to the training of teachers.

Currently, in New Zealand, unprecedented numbers of teachers are involved in professional development activities, with, in essence, practice as the major focal point. In recent years, however, an increasing trend for primary teachers to undertake academic study towards a degree qualification has emerged. Although study towards a degree…

This article begins by examining the rationale for the recent policy changes in the criteria for funding teachers' continuing professional development. It illustrates how in the pursuit of greater national competitiveness, the "evaluative" state has increased central control of the provision of in-service education of teachers through a…