Bedford Way Papers: New Designs for Teachers' Professional Learning (PDF)

Policy-making for teachers' CPD in the UK has in the past fifteen years focused on centralised ways of managing the development of teachers, and has seen an exponential growth in government intervention. Within the distinct education systems of the UK teachers work in differing environments, but have a shared context characterised by the development of new professionalism, shareholders' investment in teachers' CPD and the growth of interest in learning networks. At the same time, the role of universities in contributing to teachers' professional learning has been transformed within differing perceptions of what higher education (HE) can contribute to teachers' learning in practice, and the contested intellectual dimensions of teachers' knowledge. This book brings together contributions from CPD practitioners with extensive experience of innovating teacher learning within networked, local authority and HE settings in different parts of the UK. The authors provide insights into the different ways in which the agenda for change in CPD plays out in different contexts. They illustrate the diversity of the educational context in the UK, but they emphasise the need to learn from each other as teacher educators. The authors advocate a different approach to the dominant discourse of CPD in three distinct ways. CPD should come not from a top-down model of best practice, but should focus on shared practice, collaborative CPD and scholarly reflection on practice.