Capacity-building has been promoted by the central level in Chile, through a reform that resembles school districts, where the intermediate level is intended to provide pedagogical support for schools. However, this has proven to be challenging due to different visions about what capacity-building looks like and how it relates to school…

One approach to designing, researching or evaluating professional learning experiences is to use models of learning processes. Here we analyse and critique five significant contemporary analytical models: three variations on path models, proposed by Guskey, by Desimone and by Clarke and Hollingsworth; a model using a systemic conceptualisation of…

In-service professional development aims to change what experienced teachers do and think, using innovations to improve teaching and learning. Teachers' beliefs and classroom practice are linked, but how they interact is less certain, and how they are changed by professional development is presented in the research literature by various models:…

Implementing inclusive education requires on-going commitment to teachers' professional learning. One way of implementing professional learning is to develop learning communities based on Lave and Wenger's ideas of situated learning and learning as social practice. Learning communities, drawing on models of Professional Learning Communities and…

With a continuing disconnect between structural changes to the work of teaching and the work of teachers engaged with students in classrooms, this paper addresses a growing need to attend to the way teacher professional development (TPD) is enacted in today's schools. Specifically, drawing from theories of teacher learning and numerous models of…

Unprecedented policy attention to early childhood education internationally has highlighted the crucial need for a skilled early years workforce. Consequently, professional development of early years educators has become a global policy imperative. At the same time, many maintain that professional development research has reached an impasse. In…

The Arkansas Department of Education Co-teaching Project was designed to assist Arkansas schools in the implementation of more inclusive service delivery models for students with disabilities. The project began due to a need to increase the number of students being served in less restrictive environments, but evolved into a systematic statewide…

Schools are increasingly integrating multidisciplinary education into their programmes. The Minister of Education, Culture and Science has introduced a new, integrated science subject in secondary education in the Netherlands, called Nature, Life and Technology (NLT). This research note describes the design of a generic model for a professional…

This paper examines how the Ministry of Education in Lithuania has approached policy change to the leadership of their schools. The aim of the Time for Leaders Project and subsequent policy is to recapture the enthusiasm of teachers and school leaders that had been in evidence immediately after the country regaining independence in 1990. The Time…

Professional learning to embed educational reform may need to take account of the stage of the reform rather than previous teaching experience. As reforms move to the embedding phase, some teachers have become more expert in executing the reform than others and may be well placed to provide professional learning. In 2007, the New Zealand Ministry…

This paper examines the effectiveness of a professional development model (PDM) devised as part of a research project carried out to support early childhood professionals in Ireland in enhancing their pedagogy. The PDM was constructed on a socio-cultural theoretical framework whereby Vygotsky's zone of proximal development was applied in the…