Professional development can be used as a tool to increase teacher confidence and competence. Consequently, it may improve the quality of education available to students. Previous research suggests that many teachers lack the confidence to teach health despite it being an area that they are expected to teach. This paper locates and considers the…

Praxis development remains invisible in many discussions of professional learning because professional educators take praxis development for granted as an indissoluble part of education and educational work. This special issue provides new insights into professional learning for praxis development, and about the conditions that enable and…

The concept of professional learning communities (PLCs) has received considerable attention in research as well as in school practice since the late 1990s. PLCs have been positively associated with a variety of outcomes for both teachers and students, but differences in the way the concept is operationalised, and the fact that most of the research…

Japanese Lesson Study (JLS) is a professional development method, involving teachers collaboratively planning lessons, observing their enactment, then discussing observations of teaching and learning. This paper explores translation of JLS internationally, seeking to understand how and why it is adapted and how an understanding of national culture…

Many references to coaching, feedback and reflection, collaboration, and monitoring can be found as an essential component of effective teacher continuing professional development (CPD) in various contexts (Desimone 2009, Avalos 2011, Orr etal. 2012, Psychoyos 2012, Kourany 2017, Darling-Hammond et al. 2017, De León 2017); however, the results of…

Highly Accomplished Teachers (HATs) think deeply about skilled pedagogy in ways that illuminate its complexity and the challenges of pedagogical change. The sophistication, breadth, and depth of their thinking often goes well beyond the way that teachers and their responses to professional development (PD) are typically positioned in the…

This paper describes and analyses teacher professional development actions and learning within the context of Higher Education in a Spanish public university. Seven teachers from different areas of knowledge and with different levels of teaching experience in the university participated in the study. Individual class journals were interpreted…

Using social constructivist theories of adult learning and complexity thinking perspectives, a long-term, multi-tiered professional development (PD) programme was designed, implemented and evaluated at Qatar University. This qualitative study explored the systems of influence on 24 university teachers' professional agency for learning and leading…

This paper reports on teachers developing their own data literacy and then acting as data coaches for colleagues in their schools. The 13 teachers from 7 schools in the study analysed standardised data using a data conversation protocol to identify students with significant mathematical misconceptions. They then took data-informed action with…

This study reports the outcomes of a survey investigating the beliefs and self-reported behaviours of a sample of 238 in-service school teachers in Italy and Spain concerning their self-regulated professional learning about the design of learning interventions, an activity generally referred to as Learning Design (LD). The study adopts the lens of…

While coaching is a well-documented form of professional development to support teachers' instructional practices in mathematics, limited research exists on how coaches can support teachers in differentiating their mathematics instruction. Hence, as part of this retrospective case study, we explored how one instructional coach leveraged a coaching…

Drawing on evidence from a series of projects that explored the value of professional development in promoting inclusive practices in Latin American countries, this paper concludes that there is untapped potential in schools that can be mobilised. It points to a series of promising approaches that builds on this potential. The paper also throws…

The purpose of this study was to describe and examine how school leaders in the United States used social media and networking (SMN) for professional development (PD), and to determine which SMN platforms school leaders perceived as most useful for PD. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six school leaders who used SMN for PD to provide…

This article describes the challenge of engaging educators in professional development (PD) that is timely and relevant to their work, and effective in stimulating instructional changes to improve student learning. The authors highlight the competing needs and goals for PD that create tensions among the external accountability demands, school…

In Irish classrooms, one option for educating children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) involves placement in a special class co-located in a mainstream primary school. This study surveyed 125 primary school teachers who taught in these classes. An evaluative framework of teachers' professional development was used to analyse primary teachers'…