Christine Fraser

Teachers’ continuing professional development: contested concepts, understandings and models

Teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) is being given increasing importance in countries throughout the world. In Scotland, the changing professional and political context has resulted in unprecedented investment in CPD. However, analysis and evaluation of CPD policies, practice and impact is complex. In seeking to understand some of the complexities, this article proposes a triple‐lens framework, drawing on three different accounts of teacher learning. The framework is then used to analyse three specific examples of CPD initiatives. Conclusions point to the need to consider a much wider conception of teacher learning in which socio‐cultural aspects are given due attention.

Contested Aspects of Becoming a Teacher: Teacher Learning and the Role of Subject Knowledge

Teaching is acknowledged to be complex, multifaceted and dynamic. Curriculum revisions in Scotland, and elsewhere, call for teachers who are adaptable and capable of change. Yet the skills and attributes traditionally valued and acquired by teachers during their education do not necessarily equip them to cope with the shifting landscape of educational change. This article draws on a collaborative review of literature relating to teacher education, undertaken for the Scottish Teachers for a New Era project. It examines the nature of knowledge for teaching generally and in relation to science education in particular to discuss contested aspects and to develop a conceptual framework for future research and development in this area. The main argument for this study is that a reformulation of teacher education is required. This involves changing the way teachers are educated within an accompanying shift in epistemology and a move to interdisciplinarity. It calls for a more egalitarian way of learning as a means to facilitate change within schools for the creation of a more equal and just society.

KEY INFORMANTS’ PERSPECTIVES ON TEACHER LEARNING IN SCOTLAND

ABSTRACT: This article outlines the policy context for teachers’ learning and continuing professional development in Scotland and considers this in relation to the perspectives of key informants gained through interview. The analysis draws on a triple-lens conceptual framework and points to some interesting contradictions between the policy text and the expressed aspirations of the interviewees. Current policy and the associated structural arrangements are viewed as broadly positive, but interviewees express concerns that an unintended emphasis on contractual arrangements might inhibit the more transformative elements of professional learning.

Scottish education: Beyond devolution

Reading, let alone reviewing, a volume of 1024 pages clearly requires stamina. To quote one reviewer of the second edition, Sally Brown, writing in the Scottish Educational Review in 2003, ‘I am now much better informed, if a tad exhausted, by my reading of this important book.’ The contents of the previous edition have been assimilated over a number of years; therefore the task of reviewing the latest edition in a few months was undertaken with some trepidation. As with all titles that undergo revisions, readers are faced with the question ‘Does the new edition earn a place on the bookshelf?’ From the first edition, published to coincide with the formation of the Scottish parliament in 1999, Bryce and Humes’s work rapidly became the definitive reference for Scottish education. The second edition, in 2003, charted the changes in organisation and thinking, as its title suggested, ‘post-devolution’. The need for a third edition, barely five years later, reflects the rapid pace of change resulting not only from educational developments and devolution but also from the political changes of May 2007 when the Scottish National Party (SNP) was returned, albeit as a minority government. Rapid implementation of manifesto pledges, such as reduction in class sizes for early years’ primary school classes and the abolition of the graduate endowment tax joined educational reforms initiated under the Labour– Liberal Democrat coalition. It is against this backdrop of political change that Bryce and Humes set out to document and critique the field of Scottish education. The book is organised into an introduction and 12 further sections, each with its own editor. In the reviewer’s opinion, providing page numbers for the section introductions would be helpful. Comparison of the contents list and index with earlier editions is a useful indicator of current concerns of education ‘north of the border’. For example, multi-agency working makes its debut in a chapter by Graham Connelly, education for citizenship (Ross Deuchar and Henry Maitles) replaces values education, echoing the terminology of curriculum developments, while the chapter on classics has disappeared, reflecting a move towards modern languages such as Mandarin. Following on from the Introduction, which outlines the Scottish context and the editors’ aspirations for the third edition, the next three sections detail policy and provision, administration and control, and the historical and cultural background of Scotland’s distinctive education system. Sections V to VIII examine organisation, management and curriculum in primary and secondary schools. Issues of assessment, certification and achievement are explored in section IX: the reference to school effectiveness and diagnostic assessment is reduced and greater emphasis is placed on the theories and strategies associated with Assessment is for Learning (AiFL). The Curriculum Journal Vol. 20, No. 1, March 2009, 93–99