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The debate concerning teacher quality for student learning is a propulsive agenda for much theory and practice around professional development. The quality of teachers and their teaching influences student achievement (Wiliam, 2016). Professional learning, as it raises student achievement by developing teachers (Drago-Severson, 2012; Yoon et al., 2007), has become a focus of schools, districts, and governments.
Some approach teacher development with a performativity agenda, but negative drivers of educational change develop a culture of fear, competition, and compliance (Fullan, 2011; Fullan and Quinn, 2016). These risk alienating, rather than developing, educators (Schmoker, 1999). Professional development initiatives would benefit from being based in motivation, continuous improvement, collaboration, and building the professional learning culture of schools (Fullan, 2011; Fullan and Quinn, 2016; Wiliam, 2016).
Set against the backdrop of the global push for teacher quality, and consequent worldwide initiatives in professional development, this study generated context-specific interview data in order to answer the questions:
what is the role of professional learning on identities or growth?; and
what professional learning is (trans)formational?
It examined the experiences of a group of educators against the catalytic context of one well-resourced, independent, Australian school’s professional growth model. The beginning of the teacher growth initiative (TGI) in 2013 provided a unique time and place against which to set a study of professional learning. Looking more broadly than the Initiative, at participants’ lifelong learning experiences, this study took an insider look at the underexplored perceptions of teachers and combined this with the views of school leaders, including middle leaders who are often absent from research literature. Interviews of the researcher (also an educator at the school), two teachers, and 11 school leaders, illuminated what learning might be considered professionally transformational in shaping educators’ beliefs and practices.
Literature on professional learning for educators
Differences in teachers make a difference to student learning (Hattie, 2009; Wiliam, 2016), and effective professional learning is crucial to developing quality teachers (Baguley and Kerby, 2012; Desimone et al., 2002). In this paper, professional learning has been used to describe any experience of educator learning, including what some literature and participants call professional development (PD), or continuing professional development: those activities packaged as professional learning experiences for educators, such as talks, courses, and conferences. This reflects Timperley