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…

Teacher professional learning and development has recently come to the fore in Scotland as the government and bodies representing teachers view professional development and learning as important ingredients in the renewal of the profession in the context of the post-"McCrone Report" arrangements for teacher conditions of service and…

In an attempt to manage within schools the introduction of a revised Primary School Curriculum in the Republic of Ireland, the Department of Education and Science instigated a seven-year national support programme. Learning from the experiences of other national systems, there was recognition of the strong role of continuing professional…

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…

This article provides an exploration and evaluation of teachers' experiences of participating in a Postgraduate Professional Development opportunity where they learnt alongside their students, thus allowing teacher expertise to grow within a complex web of distributed knowing and collaborative learning. A group of thirteen teachers, each…

This article aims to explore practical constraints that prevent teachers from participating in INSET courses for their continuing professional development. This study, from the course clients' perspectives, examines the points of view of the teacher trainees and administrators involved in a teacher-training course in China. Questionnaires and…

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…

The purpose of this study was to understand factors that make teacher professional development successful and what success might mean in terms of teachers' instructional practices and feelings about change. Specifically, this study focused on the impact of instructional resources on the large-scale curricular reform of 30 urban physical education…

This article reports on research aimed at investigating teachers' views on their professional learning and its influencing factors. Data were gathered by means of a questionnaire (n = 627) and semi-structured interviews with teachers and head teachers in 18 schools located in northern Portugal. Findings suggest that the more formal contexts of…

This paper provides a critical evaluation of the model of professional development elucidated within the Career Entry Development Profile and induction arrangements for newly qualified teachers (NQTs) in England. In addition, it outlines the findings from a small-scale study of NQTs' professional development during their first year of teaching.…

This paper reports on a case study of an in-service teacher-training programme for Greek philology teachers, from 2002 to 2003, which was designed to develop the use of information and communications technologies in their teaching. It draws on questionnaires and interviews with 34 teachers who took part in the training. In addition, the three…

This article is based upon an analysis of a questionnaire sent to 431 education welfare officers throughout local education authorities in England and Wales and follow-up interviews with 59 (13.7%) of the respondents. The questionnaire focused upon profiling the initial induction and continuing professional development needs of the staff. The…

This article reviews the impact of broader policy change and practices on in-service teacher education (INSET) in the Limpopo province. The author argues that name changes from INSET to staff development to continuous teacher professional development or continuous professional development to capacity building and training tend to generalise…

Schools are frequently seen as the solution to social problems, and recent public health issues such as the near epidemic rates of obesity and diabetes are some of the newest pressures facing schools. This investigation is an exploration of physical education teachers' reactions to one school district's attempts to mandate a public health driven…