Defining teaching quality around the world

The purpose of this article is to bring together findings developed from the Schools and Continuing Professional Development in England – State of the Nation Study. This large-scale national study, commissioned by the Training and Development Agency for Schools, investigated the range and kinds of continuing professional development (CPD) activities in which teachers at primary and secondary schools in England participate and the kinds of support provided by schools. Teachers’ professional learning practices and perspectives were researched in relation to three main themes: the benefits, status and effectiveness of CPD; the planning and organization of CPD; and access to CPD. The research was based on a review of the UK literature related to teachers’ CPD for the period 2004–2007, qualitative research (school snapshots) at nine primary and three secondary schools, and a survey of a national representative sample of teachers. Our analysis concludes that teachers’ professional learning in England is generally ineffective and lacks school-level systems and supports. As such, the potential of teachers’ professional learning for enhancing the quality of classroom teaching and learning in schools remains largely untapped.

In this article, we draw upon notions of occupational professionalism and organizational professionalism to interrogate the complex, and sometimes contradictory, teacher learning practices that characterize educational policy enactment. We apply these understandings to the Growing Success assessment and evaluation policy in Ontario, Canada, and in relation to how five educators in varied positions in a regional school district made sense of this policy through professional learning. Our research considers how the interactions between professionalism and teacher learning can be deployed to better understand policy enactment as part of educators’ work and learning. The research reveals that organizational professionalism, characterized by hierarchical modes of decision-making, standardized work practices, external regulation and accountability processes, limited teachers’ learning. However, at the same time more occupational professionalism cultivated forms of professional learning necessary for productive enactment of educational policy. In relation to teacher learning for policy enactment, more occupational professionalism was characterized by, inter alia, commitment to student learning, the generation of dialogue about teachers’ assessment practices, coherence in relation to the whole reform agenda, a focus upon the immediacy of practice, and accountability to one another. The research indicates that even as more organizational professionalism is clearly evident in policy reform, the occupational cultures fostered by districts and schools can have significant beneficial effects for how teacher learning is expressed as a form of policy enactment.

HRMARS - The transformation of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) has increasingly emphasised competency-based curricula aligned with industrial practices. Within this transformation, lecturers play a crucial role in mediating knowledge between educational institutions and industry environments. This study explores how lecturers’ epistemological orientations and informal professional learning influence the implementation of industry-aligned competency curriculum in vocational colleges. A qualitative research design was employed using semi-structured interviews with TVET lecturers from technology-based programmes. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings reveal three interconnected dimensions shaping lecturers’ professional practices: epistemological beliefs about knowledge, informal professional learning mechanisms, and the implementation of industry-driven curriculum transformation. Lecturers generally perceive knowledge as dynamic, contextual, and continuously evolving alongside technological change. Informal learning activities such as peer collaboration, industry engagement, digital learning, and experiential reflection play an important role in supporting lecturers’ professional development. These learning processes enable lecturers to adapt teaching approaches and implement competency-based curriculum through project-based learning and industry simulations. The study suggests that effective curriculum transformation in TVET depends not only on institutional policies but also on lecturers’ epistemological orientations and continuous professional learning practices. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how educators negotiate knowledge and curriculum implementation within contemporary vocational education reforms.

Transformative Learning in Healthcare and Helping Professions Education: Building Resilient Professional Identities is a co-edited book (Carter, Boden, and Peno) with invited chapters from educators who share our passion for learning in healthcare and the helping professions. The purpose of the book is to introduce professional learners (students, residents, and others in professional training) to transformative learning for building resilient professional identities amid practice environments that include widespread burnout and compassion fatigue. With a diverse set of authors engaged in clinical and educational practice in academic medicine, nursing, dentistry, physical therapy, mental health counseling, science education, psychology, social work, and inter-professional collaborative practice, we offer strategies for building resilience throughout the years of professional training and into professional practice. We do so through the experiences of authors involved in healthcare and the helping professions to illustrate how some are coping with the challenges of burnout and compassion fatigue through learning that can be transformative.This book explores the nature of professional identity formation by examining ways that professionals in training can thrive amid the challenges of today’s stressful practice environments. First-hand stories of resilience illustrate how learners, as well as educators in these professions, are addressing adversity, career decision-making, service to the underserved, and the self-care needed to provide excellent care for others. The prominence of transformative learning within adult learning theory is illustrated for its potential to revise the meaning that learners make of their experiences and open up new possibilities for renewed vitality in professional education and practice environments.The book has two primary audiences: professional learners in healthcare and helping professions education, and their educators who are often professional practitioners themselves. These educators have a significant role in influencing the next generation of professionals by serving as mentors, role models, and teachers. The importance of fostering learning that is transformative has never been more important than it is today for those who will work in these demanding professions. We invite readers to discover experiences and strategies for achieving individual wellbeing, as well as opportunities for building a culture within professional education and practice settings that will foster resilience.

BackgroundProfessional self-concept is one of the important outcomes of nursing professionalism. There is a lack of adequately planned curriculum may limit nursing students’ practical knowledge, skills and professional self-concept in providing comprehensive geriatric-adult care and promoting nursing professionalism. Professional portfolio learning strategy has allowed nursing students to continue professional development and enhance nursing professionalism in professional clinical practice. However, there is little empirical evidence in nursing education to support the use of professional portfolios in blended learning modality among internship nursing students. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effect of the blended professional portfolio learning on professional self-concept among undergraduate nursing students during Geriatric-Adult internship.MethodsA quasi-experimental study two-group pre-test post-test design. A total of 153 eligible senior undergraduate students completed the study (76 in the intervention group and 77 in the control group). They were recruited from two Bachelor of Sciences in Nursing (BSN) cohorts from nursing schools at Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (MUMS), in Iran, in January 2020. Randomization was undertaken at the level of school via a simple lottery method. The intervention group received the professional portfolio learning program as a holistic blended learning modality, though the control group received conventional learning during professional clinical practice. A demographic questionnaire and the Nurse Professional Self-concept questionnaire were used for data collection.ResultsThe findings imply the effectiveness of the blended PPL program. Results of Generalized Estimating Equation (GEE) analysis was indicated significantly improved professional self-concept development and its dimensions (self-esteem, caring, staff relation, communication, knowledge, leadership) with high effect size. The results of the between-group comparison for professional self-concept and its dimensions at different time points (pre, post and follow up test) showed a significant difference between groups at post-test and follow up test (p < 0.05),while at pre-test there was no important dissimilarity between two groups (p > 0.05).The results of within-group comparison for both control and intervention showed that there were significant differences in professional self-concept and for all its dimensions across the time from pre-test to post-test and follow-up (p < 0.05), and also from post-test to follow-up it was significant (p < 0.05) for both groups.ConclusionThis professional portfolio learning program demonstrates as an innovative and holistic blended teaching-learning approach to improve professional self-concept during professional clinical practice among undergraduate nursing students. It appears that the use of a blended designed of professional portfolio can promote a link between theory and the advancement of geriatric adult nursing internship practice. The data obtained from the present study can be useful for nursing education to evaluate and redesign a curriculum for development of nursing professionalism as a quality improvement process and groundwork to develop new models of teaching-learning and assessment.

In this paper we show how practices of professional learning and practices of leading can be understood as related in ecologies of practices. We will present findings from an international empirical research project that directs us to the connectivity between professional learning and leading practices that emerged as ‘adventitious’, ‘opportune’ and ‘unexpected’ outcomes of long-term professional learning. We will show how practices (like professional learning) that exist in real situations shape other practices (like teaching and leading) when each creates enabling and constraining conditions for the others; they are mutually sustaining when together they form an ecology of practices existing in a dynamic ecological balance. Results build on established literature describing professional learning which customarily describes the characteristics, conditions and outcomes of effective professional development programmes. Specifically, our findings add a new dimension to the descriptions of the influences and accomplishments of professional learning – the development of teacher leading capacities.

Assessing student learning is a complex process requiring teachers to have deep knowledge of the curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy. Changing political climates mean that teachers are expected to respond to new approaches or systems and adjust their classroom practice accordingly. Teachers often engage in professional learning (PL) to assist their knowledge and classroom practice, but what impact does PL have on their assessment practice as well as student learning and achievement?This paper examines optimal PL principles, the New Zealand assessment policy context, and application of assessment for learning principles in a nation‐wide PL programme. Empirical data presented in relation to the five levels of Guskey%s (2002) model evaluating PL indicate successful outcomes at the classroom level. However, application of Carless’ (2005) theoretical framework on embedding PL changes in schools reveals an area of neglect: attending to system (macro) level needs. Collaborative partnerships between schools and the wider community are posited as essential determinants of assessment literacies and transformational PL in times of political change.

Sharing practice: problems and possibilities

This qualitative study described the impact of mandatory professional development and school-based professional development as situated learning on English language and literacy teachers' professional knowledge and instructional practices in Qatar's middle school. A hermeneutic approach was used to determine the impact of both a school-based and mandatory professional development on teachers' instructional practices. The theory guiding this study was situated learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991) where professional learning is seen to be context related. Constructivism, andragogy, school leadership theory and reflective inquiry were used to inform this study. The study considered whether reflection and dialogue with other practitioners contribute to effective professional learning that improves English language and literacy pedagogical content knowledge. Data collection methods included individual interviews, a focus group, document analysis and journal writing to provide insight into teacher professional development. The results revealed that both mandatory (formal) professional development and school-based development (professional learning communities as situated learning) could help teachers make changes in their thinking and practice, which might have a bearing on results. However, with a few exceptions, most teachers found mandatory professional development less helpful. The results revealed that teachers need more comprehensive formal training in English language and literacy instructional practices. They also need more opportunities to experience school-based professional development as authentic learning. They also need to collaborate in professional learning communities and specific professional development programmes to assess students' English language and literacy deficiencies. These findings were of significance to both school leaders and teachers as they sought to increase meaningful professional development aimed at improving English language and literacy instruction in their schools. The study recommended rethinking the current mandatory English language and literacy professional development components within a constructivist framework and developing a set of clear guidelines for high-quality literacy professional development to improve teachers' professional learning.

Teachers who work in school-age educare (SAEC) in Sweden possess a variety of educational qualifications. They hold a dual role working as teachers both within the compulsory program and school-age educare. This dual competence requirement means that their professional needs are unique and often different from that of their colleagues who only work in the compulsory school system (Berglund, Lager, Lundkvist and Gustavsson Nyckel, 2019). They reside in a complex context when it comes to opportunities for constructing their personal professional knowledge. Considering that already in 2021, the government announced the creation of a national professional learning program (Regeringen 2021), it is essential to understand what type of professional learning is deemed needed by the SAEC teachers themselves. Through narrative interviews with SAEC teachers, this study aims to map an understanding of how the teachers construct their personal professional knowledge as SAEC teachers. The main research question in this study is: How do SAEC teachers describe the role of professional learning as part of creating and developing their personal professional knowledge? The findings indicate a need for a systematic approach to recognize the qualification of experienced teachers and create a framework for professional learning opportunities for all teachers in SAEC.

ABSTRACTThis study reports on findings from a critical literature review, from 2004 to 2014, in relation to the positioning of beginning teachers’ professional learning during induction. The study uses theoretical frameworks drawn from competing discourses: an instrumental standpoint based on performativity and a dialectical standpoint based on a transformative view of good teaching as an advanced specialised practice. A critical analysis was conducted, using a systematic literature review that yielded 14 peer-reviewed papers, to discursively position teachers’ professional learning and pinpoint questions for future study. Findings showed that while studies reported positive outcomes they were often atheoretical and framed within narrow chains of logic that neglected important strands, such as, teacher “knowledge-of-practice”. The study raises important questions not only about the positioning of beginning teachers’ professional learning but about meaningful professional learning for all teachers across the continuum of teacher education.

Professional learning is critical for teachers to enhance teaching quality and student learning and deal with uncertainty and challenges in modern education environments. Recently, the complexity of teacher professional learning has attracted the attention of many scholars, which has stimulated a rethinking of the nature of teacher professional learning. However, there is a shortage of empirical research focused on the complexity of professional learning for health and physical education (HPE) teachers. Thus, this study explores the nature of professional learning for HPE teachers by examining the professional learning journeys of two HPE teachers from a secondary school in New Zealand. Using an ethnographic approach, the lead researcher collected data through participant observations over 20 weeks, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of relevant artefacts and documents about teacher learning. Data analysis via thematic analysis was conducted during and after the data collection. Informed by complexity thinking as a theoretical framework, the findings suggest that professional learning for HPE teachers can occur in different spaces that afford them various professional learning opportunities and possibilities. In addition, participants’ learning experiences reveal that the professional learning of HPE teachers is non-linear, unpredictable, multifaceted, and self-organised due to individual experiences, roles, needs, preferences, backgrounds, and people and environments they interact with. This study provides empirical evidence to understand the nuanced and complex nature of professional learning for HPE teachers.

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) requires that the teacher understands and applies not only knowledge about content, and not only knowledge about teaching strategies, but an intersection of the two. This article provides professional learning considerations for supporting teachers’ PCK and skills with gifted and high-potential students. These considerations are presented through the lens of the professional learning literature, the recent global principles of professional learning established by the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children, and the talent development paradigm. Two questions are addressed including: What is high-quality professional learning and how does it differ for educators of gifted learners? What needs to be emphasized when planning professional learning for supporting teachers’ PCK? The importance of strengthening teachers’ understanding of specific content knowledge and how to teach it through differentiated professional learning experiences using preassessments and then evaluating the effectiveness of those experiences are key for improving student results. Ongoing administrative support needs to be provided to teachers applying differentiated curricular and instructional approaches with gifted students.

This article outlines a fully integrated, sequential exploratory mixed methods research design developed to explore how physical education (PE) teachers across different career phases construct quality in teaching. Responding to calls for more complex and nuanced methodologies in educational research, the study adopts a pragmatic epistemological and ontological stance that enables the combination of qualitative and quantitative research approaches to capture both individual meaning making and broader professional patterns. Four complementary data collection methods were employed: informal professional dialogues, repertory grid interviews, lesson observations, and a rank ordering task. These methods were applied sequentially, with each phase building on the previous, fostering methodological synergy and enabling meaningful integration across data types. The study demonstrates how personal construct psychology can be effectively embedded within a fully integrated mixed methods research framework. This contributes to the advancement of mixed methods research by offering a transferable model for exploring how personal beliefs, professional contexts, and career phases intersect to shape evolving constructs of quality in teaching. Findings reveal that teachers’ constructs of quality develop over time, influenced by personal experiences, professional learning, and shifting policy landscapes, and that tensions persist between teachers’ pedagogical values and externally imposed definitions of quality. By combining idiographic, qualitative research approaches with broader quantitative data, this study offers a nuanced, methodologically rich account of teacher development and practice. The design holds potential for application across disciplines wherein personal meaning making and professional identity are central.

Recent challenges concerning the quality of teachers and the programs that prepare them have resulted in responses from professional organizations that have been more widespread and intense than in the past (Robinson, 2011; Wiseman, 2012). The Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation (BRP) formed by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), the merger of NCATE and Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) into Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) to improve teacher education (Cibulka, 2011), and the Teacher Performance Assessment Initiative which emerged from collaboration between the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) member institutions (Robinson, 2011) are examples of ways that professional organizations have responded to the challenges. In general, calls for performance assessments of teaching to provide both formative and summative information about the quality of teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher preparation programs pervade the current discourse on education at every level, including schools and districts, institutions of higher education, state and national policymaking entities, and professional organizations. As a result, a number of performance assessments have emerged that can provide feedback to teacher education programs about the strengths and weaknesses of their candidates as well as evidence for licensure and certification of teachers. For example, Education Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) was designed to provide information for program improvement through the use of a common set of performance assessments for preservice teachers and has also been adopted by states and districts for summative evaluation purposes (http://edtpa.aacte.org/). The multiple performance measures in systems like edTPA improve upon value added models (VAM) by providing information on teaching quality, not just teacher quality or teacher effectiveness, and provide information sooner than might be accomplished by use of VAM alone (Newton, 2010). For this theme issue, we invited research and conceptual articles related to teacher performance assessments specifically as they affect teacher education, including validation studies of measures used in the assessments. We posed a series of questions that we considered important for researchers to address related to performance assessments, including the following: What are the relationships between current performance assessments and teacher education, either conceptually or in terms of outcomes? What do we know about the use of performance assessments in the context of teacher education, and what do we need to know? How do performance assessments of teachers in schools map onto assessment of teacher education programs, or how don't they? What differences may exist across novice teachers and expert teachers with respect to performance assessment, and how does that impact their professional learning? What are the implications of the relationships between for-profit companies, university teacher education programs, researchers, states, and professional organizations with respect to performance assessments of teachers? What is the relationship between assessment criteria and the research on teaching and learning, and what are its implications for teacher education? How do states make decisions to move to statewide teacher assessment systems? What potential conflicts of interest may exist among various stakeholders in performance assessment efforts? How do policies related to performance assessment of teachers affect opportunities for teacher learning? What can we learn from the history of past efforts to evaluate beginning teachers? What is different this time? What do we know about the validity and reliability of performance assessments and why does this matter? …