Professional Development for Teachers: A World of Change

Vivienne Collinson, Ekaterina Kozina, Yu-Hao Kate Lin, Lorraine Ling, Ian Matheson,
Liz Newcombe, Irena Zogla

Keywords: professional development; educational policy; educational practices

As the industrialised world shifted to an interdependent and global society, formal

schooling was quickly recognised as a major factor in achieving a knowledge society of
lifelong learners capable of transforming and revitalising organisations. Teachers were
encouraged to engage in learning together to improve teaching and, by extension,
improve learning for the children in their care. This article identifies three emerging
trends designed intended to broaden teachers’ learning and enhance teachers’ learning
their practices through continuous professional development: glocalisation, mentoring,
and re-thinking teacher evaluation. The body of the article indicates how these three
trends are unfolding in Australia, England, Latvia, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland,
Taiwan, and the U.S.A.

However, teachers cannot bring about necessary changes without organisational and
systemic change; namely, collaboration with governmental agencies and other
institutions. The authors suggest that transforming schooling in the 21 st century depends
on education policies being supported by expanded teacher participation in education
policy making, more coherent governmental policies across agencies, and collaborative,
differentiated models for career-long continuing professional development.

The world witnessed profound changes during the last half of the 20th century, not the least of
which involved a communications revolution and a rethinking of how people learn, how a
‘knowledge society’ needs ‘knowledge workers’ and ‘citizens of the world’ (Drucker, 1959,
1993), and why organisations must develop career-long learning for their members. The
education profession was not immune to these global shifts in thinking as nations implemented
policies to improve learning for teachers and as local school systems began experimenting with
new approaches for teacher learning.

The article begins with an explanation of why global changes in teachers’ professional
development may be occurring. It is followed by a brief description of three emerging trends
designed to broaden and enhance teachers’ learning through continuous professional
development: glocalisation, mentoring (in the form of induction), and re-thinking teacher
evaluation. The body of the article indicates how these three trends are unfolding in Australia,
England, Latvia, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Taiwan, and the U.S.A.

The trends indicate that teachers’ professional development, while a critical piece for
transforming education in the 21st century for themselves teachers and their students, is integrally
connected to countries’ broader educational and social policies. The authors suggest that
different and differentiated professional development, along with a collaborative model for
change involving expanded teacher participation in policy making and more coherent
governmental policies across agencies would contribute to better understandings and improved
implementation of educational policies in schools.

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Why is professional development changing?

Academics widely agree that the 20th century marked a rare conceptual revolution that has
affected countries and individuals worldwide by reframing people’s understandings of change.
Gone are formerly accepted, modernist concepts such as closed system models, stability and
certainty, natural laws and order, and linear thinking. They have been replaced with post-
modern concepts such as organic systems, unpredictability, interdependence, and constructed
perspectives (e.g., Scott, 2003). Dissemination of new concepts has been accelerated by a
simultaneous communications revolution and by increased global mobility of people.

The birth of the Information Era and the establishment of a knowledge society (Drucker, 1994)
have transformed the world. Such a society requires people to have “a good deal of formal
education and the ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytical knowledge…Above
all, they require a habit of continuous learning” (p. 62). Drucker (1993) outlined a new role for
education in a knowledge society: learning and schools would not simply exist for children, but
would extend through adults’ lives, permeate society, and include knowledge creation and
problem solving. Learning, Drucker predicted, would be based on performance and results
rather than on rules and regulations.

The new thinking envisions “systems [that] are self-regulating and capable of transformation in
an environment of turbulence, dissipation, and even chaos….The teacher’s role [is] no longer
viewed as causal, but as transformative….And learning [is] an adventure in meaning making”
(Soltis, 1993, pp. x, xi). That means that individual adult members (e.g., teachers, principals,
support staff) and groups within the organization (e.g., a school, a department) require advanced
continuous learning as well as opportunities to engage in dialogue and inquiry to create new
knowledge. They need opportunities to work collaboratively, disseminate their learning, and
contribute to their own, their colleagues’, and the organisation’s continuous improvement
(Collinson & Cook, 2007).

Recruiting and retaining fresh streams of talented members, for example through mentoring,
plays a major role in strengthening the vitality of the organisation. Fresh talent and diversity of
members potentially contribute multiple ideas and perspectives as well as encourage the
questioning of norms that is the starting point for error correction and innovation (Argyris &
Schön, 1978; Gardner, 1963). Organisations have to innovate in order to respond to and survive
rapid and unpredictable changes in their environments (Kikoski & Kikoski, 2004; Preskill &
Torres, 1999). However, self-renewal can no longer rely on single-loop learning; namely,
tinkering around the edges by changing members’ behaviours (practices) but not their thinking.
Rather, individuals in organisations have to aim for double-loop learning; that is, changes in
thinking (beliefs and norms) as well as behaviours (Argyris & Schön, 1978, 1996).

Society has already made an intellectual and conceptual shift, as have numerous businesses and
industries (e.g., Dixon, 1999; Schwandt & Marquardt, 2000). Education is slowly absorbing the
new shift in thinking and is beginning to implement changes that encourage teachers and
principals to engage in learning together for the purpose of improving teaching and, by
extension, learning for the children in their care. But changes as profound and rapid as today’s

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changes generally involve risk and, sometimes, fear. The risk for members of the education
profession is particularly strong because compulsory public education and continuing
professional development for adults have a relatively short history that, for the most part, is
thoroughly imbued with modernist concepts and language. Also risky is the thought that
pioneering practices are premised on new concepts and therefore grounded mostly on faith that
they should work (Doll, 1993). Such is the nature of innovation.

Emerging trends in professional development

This article focuses on three educational trends—glocalisation, mentoring, and re-thinking

teacher evaluation—that appear to have emerged in response to recent global understandings of
lifelong learning and innovation, organisational revitalisation via the development and retention
of members, and continuous improvement and transformation from within. Following is a brief
explanation of these trends.

Glocalisation

Members of the teaching profession are, by now, very familiar with the word ‘globalisation,’ a
convergence of increasing mobility, trade, and communication with profound effects for almost
every country. In fact, since ancient times, trade routes helped spread religions, cuisines, ideas,
and innovations across land and sea. Today’s globalisation is merely happening faster and
creating greater interdependence among peoples and nations.

Sometimes, products, processes, or practices move from the local to a global market with little
change. Recently, for instance, international fashion designers incorporated into their collections
Burmese fabrics that use local lotus plants and local weaving patterns. In education, teachers
anywhere may be using the lesson study process from Japan or the reading recovery program
from New Zealand.

By contrast, theories and concepts that move from the global arena to a local arena rarely stay
exactly the same. For example, democratic governance looks different in France than in the U.S.
To capture the phenomenon, Robertson (1995) coined the term ‘glocalisation.’ Drawing on a
Japanese word and concept, glocalisation originally referred to products with global reach or
application being altered to reflect local tastes or interests.

Today, glocalisation might be described as a blending of global and local, or an adaptation of the
global with a distinct local twist that represents a transformation (e.g., incorporating local values,
norms, culture, materials).
There are parallel, irreversible and mutually interdependent processes by which
globalisation-deepens-localisation-deepens-globalisation and so on…Neither the global
not the local exists without the other. The global-local develops in a symbiotic, unstable
and irreversible set of relationships, in which each gets transformed through billions of
worldwide iterations evolving over time. (Urry, 2003, p. 84)

The phenomenon is somewhat captured in the vernacular phrase, ‘Think globally, act locally.’
For example, in the 1970s, an international hotel chain known for its five-star high-rise hotels

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built a hotel complex in Bali that used local materials and kept building heights below the height
of the rainforest while maintaining its standards of quality and service. In education, most
curricula are a blend in that they share universal concepts, but teachers and books likely
emphasise local values, culture, examples, and problems.

Mentoring

The concept of mentoring also has ancient roots, referring to Homer’s legendary figure,
Odysseus, who left his son and household under the care and tutelage of Mentor. Over time,
mentors have come to mean experienced, trusted advisors or counsellorscounselors, and
mentoring can take many forms. In education, mentoring sometimes serves as a sort of
shorthand for induction programmes, most of which involve significant mentoring.

In business and industry, informal mentoring has occurred for a long time. , Informal mentoring
has also occurred in public schools for many decades as experienced teachers voluntarily took
novice teachers under their wing. and In business and industry, formal mentoring has generally
taken the form of apprenticeships. For instance, Wwhite-collar professions such as politicians,
doctors, and lawyers have also embedded formal mentoring for novices in the roles of pages,
interns, or law clerks. Informal mentoring has also occurred in public schools for many decades
as experienced teachers voluntarily took novice teachers under their wing. More recently, the
education community has embraced formal mentoring as a necessary extension of learning about
the highly complex role of teachers and as a way to build habits of learning. Where
organisations or countries have institutionalised mentoring for teachers, the practice of pairing
mentor and novice teachers generally involves a one- to two-year induction programme.
Induction programmes are designed to help increase competence and confidence of novice
teachers and to serve as a link between teacher preparation programs and continuous professional
development, creating a seamless three-part sequence of career-long learning.1

Re-thinking teacher evaluation

Teacher evaluation (or its numerous other names) may be called a variety of terms: annual
performance review, appraisal, assessment, inspection, or supervision. It became a fixture in 20th
century schools, especially after the role of headteacher-as-teaching-colleague became a non-
teaching role of full-time manager or administrator/principal/director.2 Patterned after industry,
school administrators supervised subordinates (teachers) who had clear-cut roles and
responsibilities within a hierarchical bureaucracy.

The predominant model, called the clinical supervision model, generally involves brief
classroom observation(s) by the administrator followed by a written report or checklist and
perhaps some conferencing. But because teachers much prefer to learn with and get ideas or
advice from teachers (Rait, 1995; Wasley, 1991), the traditional top-down model of teacher
evaluation came to be known as ‘a dog and pony show’ and, rather than being perceived as
constructive learning, was viewed as “obtaining someone’s subjective judgment of how good a
teacher is, a judgment based on the assumption that the judge knows what good teaching is and
can recognize it when he sees it” (Stronge & Ostrander, 1997, p. 131). Some teachers received
remedial assistance, few incompetent teachers achieved competency, and few teachers were

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dismissed for instructional incompetence (Tucker & Kindred, 1997), leaving teachers—and the
public—to wonder if the traditional behaviourist model was adequate for a post-modern world in
which teachers’ roles and responsibilities, as well as the professional culture, had already
changed.

Also by the end of the 20th century, the accountability purpose of summative evaluation seemed
at odds with the formative purpose of teacher development and instructional improvement: the
former is episodic whereas the latter is continuous; “one operates as a deficit model, the other as
a growth model; one acts as a stick, the other as a carrot; one represents teacher passivity, the
other, active teacher involvement; one is externally motivated, the other, internally motivated”
(Collinson, 2001, p. 151).

By the end of the 20th century, academia belatedly perceived “a need to change the traditional
evaluative process that treat[ed] teachers as supervised workers rather than collegial
professionals” (Kumrow & Dahlen, 2002, p. 238). Practitioners were already exploring
emerging alternatives like peer coaching, self-evaluation, client surveys, teacher portfolios,
action research, and study groups (Glickman, 1992; Stronge, 1997). This shift “embraces
professional development and better reflects the complexity of teaching” (Kumrow & Dahlen,
2002, p. 238). Additional suggestions for reforms include strategies such as “union participation,
altering the adversarial tone of evaluations, furthering collaboration and teamwork, principal
evaluation, and joint principal and teacher analysis of student learning” (Conley & Glasman,
2008).

How is professional development changing in the 21st century?

In theoretical and conceptual visions of professional development during the last several
decades, the emphasis has shifted from teaching (as a set of skills or competences) to teacher
learning (e.g., Sparks, 2002; Stoll et al., 2003). Nations typically try to institutionalise new ways
of thinking and educational innovations by means of policies. Policy implementation, however,
is generally left to practitioners although they may have had little or no communication with
policy makers. Thus, even if policies represent desirable change, significant difficulties and
unintended consequences may surface during implementation in schools.

For instance, top-down policies may fail because practitioners are not given the reasoning behind
new policies or linkages to existing practices. Sometimes, an educational policy is created in
isolation from other supportive social agencies, or it may be inconsistent with existing financial
or social policies. Sometimes, short-term political thinking weakens long-term social goals or
aspirations. Sometimes, existing structures and norms in schools are inadequate to support
innovative thinking and policies. In the practical world of schools, the following examples
illustrate that this shift is neither simple nor easy, but pioneering attempts in various countries
around the globe provide insights into how new thinking and global change have prompted
innovations in education.

Global ideas, local action

Taiwan is an example of an Asian country incorporating global thinking and practices. For

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instance, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education overhauled its national curriculum in 2004 with a
view to encouraging a lifelong learning society and cultivating its citizens’ knowledge,
capabilities, and creativity. Examples of Taiwan’s new core learning competences for students
likely sound familiar to teachers on several continents: to develop abilities related to independent
thinking and problem solving, to promote abilities related to career planning and lifelong
learning, and to acquire the ability to utilise technology and information (Ministry of Education,
2004). The new national curriculum’s inferred expectations for Taiwanese teachers include
teacher reflection, collaboration, knowledge management, creativity, and lifelong learning in the
form of school-based CPD (see Huang, 2003; Wu, 2001).

Lin (2006) noted that opportunities for teachers’ continuous professional development in the
context of Taiwanese compulsory education generally include:
• seminars and workshops on Wednesday afternoons when teachers do not have lessons. Topics
and presenters are usually chosen in advance by administrators, and teachers are often required
to participate to accumulate the compulsory 18 hours of points per year.
• professional dialogues about current practices and educational issues. These occur during
regular teacher team meetings.
• curriculum development meetings where teachers regularly work together on designing the
school’s curriculum or lesson plans (Chan, 2000; Rao, 1999)
• peer clinical supervision in which a teacher observes, analyses, and discusses a colleague’s
instruction with the goal of improving teacher performance (Chang, 1999; Lu, 1998)
• peer coaching which involves multiple teachers’ observations with the aim of learning new
teaching strategies and techniques (Chang, 2001).

Countries like Taiwan usually choose to initiate changes in education. However, countries like
Latvia had little choice after the disintegration of the USSR forced unprecedented and urgent
change. Latvia had to cope simultaneously with a lengthy Soviet legacy, exposure to the
paradigm shift sweeping the globe, metamorphosis to a democracy, and entry into the European
Union—all in the space of 15 years (see Zogla, 2006). Since 1991, Latvia has passed laws to
decentralise education and create new national standards. Schools that used Russian or minority
languages have to instruct in Latvian while managing multiethnic inclusion. Evaluation and
accreditation of schools have become a collaborative process of internal and external input, and
schools have begun to create professional learning communities, build partnerships with other
schools, and become cultural centres of communities.

Professional development plays an especially important role in helping Latvian teachers and
principals change both their thinking and their practices, and glocalisation is evident in Latvia’s
arrangements for CPD. In addition to strong encouragement for certified teachers to continue
toward a professional diploma or master’s degree, Latvia is experimenting with mentoring,
communities of practice, and networks. Because of a national emphasis on self-evaluation for
teachers and internal evaluation components for school accountability, Latvian CPD may include
critical friends (see Bambino, 2002) and videotape analysis. For the many, broader societal
changes in Latvia (e.g., democratic values, inclusion, diversity, materialism, educating a
population for lifelong learning and a global market), the cascade model has been used to help
teachers (e.g., Wedell, 2005). Predictably, so many concurrent changes have meant that at the
organisational level, CPD targeting and planning have often suffered. Additionally, having to

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deal with so much double-loop learning so quickly has understandably left many teachers feeling
overwhelmed, unprepared, or exhausted.

The Australian version of glocalisation, by contrast, seems to have occurred in response to

supply and demand. Glocalisation is evident in increasing numbers of international students
taught in Australian universities and schools, increasing numbers of offshore programmes run by
Australian universities and schools, more frequent staff/student exchange programmes, and
outsourcing of teacher education (e.g., Canada to Australia).

In 2006, researchers from two universities in Australia conducted a study in which Canadian
teacher education students were interviewed regarding their perceptions of the outsourcing of
teacher education and of engaging in teacher preparation in Australia rather than in their own
country (Ling et al., 2006). Some of the interviewees perceived that Canadian “universities are
filled to capacity so the government doesn’t care if students study abroad.” Some felt that
teacher education in Canada is not a priority and is not taken seriously enough. When asked in a
questionnaire why Canadian students came to study in Australia, one student wrote, “Because I
couldn’t get into [teacher education in the province of] Ontario; too many applicants, not enough
spots.” Another student stated that “in Ontario we are encouraged to go elsewhere – supply lags
behind demand and they [provincial politicians] are not looking ahead.”
The study suggests a situation where it is cheaper for provincial governments to outsource
teacher education than to provide the number of places that are needed to fill shifting demands
for teachers. One explanation was that “the government has not been forthcoming with funding
and as a consequence, the universities cannot train enough teachers to meet the demand.”
This situation seems to exemplify globalisation in that the Canadian government appears to view
the world as its training ground for teachers rather than exclusively envisaging teacher education
as a localised and parochial activity. Outsourcing of teacher education and professional
development could also increase where governments, working within the constraints of resources
or economic rationalism, decrease funding to higher education. Personal or private sector
funding for higher education could encourage more students to study overseas in the hope of
giving themselves greater flexibility of employment while enjoying travel opportunities and
gaining a broader experience.
As outsourcing of teaching grows, university academics and schoolteachers may increasingly
find themselves dealing with students or colleagues who live in a borderless world and who are
truly glocalised “cosmopolitans” in their way of life and attitudes. Cosmopolitans’ behaviors
and attitudes, however, may represent a challenge for some academics and teachers who
continue to operate as “fundamentalists” in a cosmopolitan world (Giddens, 1999). Little
professional development appears to be provided to help educators mitigate the stress of coming
to terms with a new glocalised world and increasingly cosmopolitan students.

Induction: a transition phase in teacher learning

Regardless of the location of teacher preparation, educators increasingly agree that mentoring
induction into the profession is essential, both to improve teachers’ skills and to extend the body
of knowledge on effective teaching practices. At the same time, they appear to believe that

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induction can enhance the profession while addressing public accountability (A Teaching
Profession, 2001).

For many decades, initial teacher education appeared to be an end rather than a beginning.
However, induction programmes represent a major and relatively recent shift within the
education community, and countries have taken various paths to explore and institutionalise
them. Thus, because mentoring does not yet have universal definition or practices (Gold, 1996),
induction programmes may vary in time, content, and structure. However, they generally
include every novice teacher and represent a transition phase within a career-long learning
plan.32

One of the longest and most carefully orchestrated pilot projects of induction has occurred in
Ireland, involving about one-third of current primary and post-primary teachers (Killeavy &
Murphy, 2006). The pilot project, implemented in 2002, recognized that the transition from
initial preparation to newly qualified classroom teacher is generally stressful and “can have
considerable significance for the professional and personal development of the teacher” (p. 167).

Mentors also play a significant role in the success of the Irish induction project. To that end,
mentors were carefully selected and specifically trained in areas such as counselling, skill
development, coaching, idea generation, support and encouragement, giving advice and
criticism, modelling/observation, and reflection. The project has shown promising results and
will provide recommendations on a national policy of induction for newly qualified teachers.
Continuous professional development (CPD) is already provided by 21 full-time and six part-
time Educational Centres throughout Ireland.

Scotland’s pioneering 2001 policy linking teacher preparation, an induction program, and CPD
remains one of the most cohesive career-long learning policies in any country.34 With a
contractual agreement that each teacher undertake 35 hours of CPD per year, and that it represent
a balance among personal professional development, formal courses, and school-based activities,
CPD is now woven into the fabric of a teacher’s life in Scotland. Both teachers and employers
must make a commitment to CPD in recognition of a national acceptance that this is essential if
teachers are to be able to offer continuous improvement to the education of young people in
Scotland.

Following teacher preparation, newly qualified teachers in Scotland are provided a one-year post
in a school as they work toward the Standard for Full Registration. During this induction year as
probationer teachers, they work on a class contact timetable of 0.7 full time equivalent (FTE) and
0.3 FTE on professional development. Supporters/mentors also have a reduced class contact of
0.1 FTE to enable them to participate in weekly meetings with their probationer teacher and to
conduct classroom observations on a minimum of nine occasions over the school year.45

The 2001 policy meant that for the first time, 35 hours of CPD per annum became a contractual
requirement for all teachers, providing a balance among personal professional development,
formal courses and school-based activities. Each teacher’s programme is recorded in an annual
CPD plan and is designed to take account of individual needs as well as school, local and
national priorities. Recognising that the needs of teachers in their early years may differ from

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those of experienced teachers, Aberdeen University and local authority partners are creating an
extended teacher education structure that will extend mentoring and support into a post-induction
year.

After five years as a fully registered teacher, teachers may work toward an advanced professional
level, choosing one of two routes toward Chartered Teacher status. This innovation is a means
of valuing and recognising teachers who choose to develop their knowledge, understanding, and
skills while remaining in the classroom. It carries several benefits for teachers:
• taking their professional development to new levels
• reviewing and improving their classroom practice
• gaining confidence
• providing a substantial improvement in salary.

One route toward Chartered Teacher status (the Programme Route) involves a structured course
of study (12 modules) with an accredited provider, most of which are Scottish universities. The
other route (the Accreditation Route, in effect until August 2008 and then updated) is appropriate
for experienced teachers who are confident that their professional actions are already at
Chartered Teacher level and who have sufficient evidence and commentary to support their
application.56 After successfully completing Module 1 (self-evaluation), this route allows
teachers to produce a reflective report supported and illustrated by a portfolio of evidence.

The reflective report represents a critical account of the teacher’s learning through professional
actions, supported by reference to reading of appropriate literature, thus grounding the
professional development in an enhanced knowledge of theory. The reflective report should
show that the teacher:
• has reflected on and demonstrated learning from the activities outlineds in the portfolio
• can identify and analyse the central principles in relation to the professional action
• shows a critical knowledge of relevant literature
• continually sets high standards for their professional performance in the classroom
• has demonstrated sustained enhanced practice.67

Other forms of CPD for teachers include Professional Recognition which offers teachers a
certificate recording their having developed development of expertise in a particular area of
teaching, such as supporting pupil learning, enterprise education, or mentoring and coaching.
Research is considered an integral part of teaching as well and teachers are encouraged to access
practitioner research funding or participation in an emerging researcher network.78 In sum,
Scottish teachers have an expectation of continuous improvement with an emphasis on evidence-
based professional action and on reflection, blending theory and practice.

Few countries have involved as many stakeholders or developed a CPD continuum as

comprehensive and integrated as Scotland’s. However, numerous countries have given strong
support to the induction of teachers into the profession through government policy. In Australia,
for example, the State of Victoria recently implemented an induction process with extensive
mentoring as a requirement for full teacher registration. Unlike Scotland’s professional input
and focus on students, the Victorian adoption of induction acknowledged professional reasons
for induction, including recognition of beginning teachers’ needs, but strongly emphasised

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political reasons, including a focus on global competition and the potential to improve teacher
retention (DEEWR, 2003; Gillard, 2008).

Motivation and policy appear to be the easy part; implementation of policies can be much more
difficult. Australia is not alone in having specific professional and political contexts influencing
the implementation of induction programmes. In the professional arena, new teachers are
increasingly in short-term contract positions, bouncing from school to school and sometimes
staying only one term. Beginning teachers, particularly at the secondary level, are also
increasingly asked to teach outside their area of subject expertise because of shortages (e.g.,
mathematics and science). Additionally, new teachers are frequently sent to the most difficult
schools or relegated to teach the “left over” classes; namely, students or classes that experienced
teachers have chosen not to teach. Such conditions do not support the development of reflection,
collaborative relationships, or regular dialogue, observation, and feedback (Commonwealth of
Australia, 1998; Victorian Department of Education, 2008).

In the political arena, policies routinely embody state or party ideology and goals. What is being
questioned in Australia is the implication that induction might infer an “official knowledge” and
a “common culture” for teachers, thus encouraging “how to” prescriptions of practice while
inhibiting deeper questions and inquiry into assumptions about school culture and teaching
practices. Language, too, can be co-opted by politicians. For instance, collegiality is generally
perceived among professionals to be a desirable relationship, but Smyth (2001) argued that in
Australia, collegiality is “a policy option being wielded very effectively at the moment to
dramatically redefine what is meant by the notion of skill and competency in teaching in light of
national economic imperatives” (p. 101).

Professional growth, performance improvement

The emerging trend to change teacher evaluations is very different from national or state
adoption of induction and mentoring programmes. This trend has just begun, it is still in a quiet
grass-roots experimentation phase, and it impacts experienced teachers instead of novice
teachers. Re-thinking teacher evaluation as professional learning and growth represents a major
break with the past.

Re-thinking teacher evaluation today may be following a path similar to the re-thinking of
student assessment during the last two decades. As national curricula evolved to accommodate
changes such as inclusion, increasing student diversity, and growing understandings of how
children learn, teachers and organisations sought new, formative ways to assess students’
understanding and learning. To that end, teachers attended numerous workshops on ‘authentic
assessment,’ portfolios, reading records, student journals, projects, and performances (see Allen,
1998; Fisher & Frey, 2007). Most of these alternatives emphasised formative growth of
students.

During the last decade, however, formative assessment innovations for students in some
countries have co-existed with national policies that emphasise summative assessment in the
form of standardised tests (e.g., the U.S.). The American policy was designed to improve
instruction and to narrow the student achievement gap, especially for poor and minority children.

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The U.K.England, on the other hand, adopted a philosophy (DfES, 2004) that embraces the
concept of the whole child and integrates different providers to support each child in a holistic
way. Yet despite some significant successes in both countries, many inequalities still persist,
millions of children in the U.K.England and the U.S. live in poverty (Berliner, 2006; Hirsch,
2007), the number of students who drop out of school is high (DfES, 2006; Laird et al., 2006),
and social mobility fairs poorly compared to other advanced countries (Blandon et al., 2005).

Part of recent criticism has focused on a lack of cohesion of public policies supporting education
policies (e.g., Berliner, 2006). The U.K.England, recognising that poverty and educational
disadvantage are intrinsically linked, and acknowledging a shift in thinking to consider the
holistic needs of children, has taken a multi-agency approach by joining responsibility for
schools, children, and families within a single department—the Department for Schools,
Children and Families (DfSCF). CPD provisions for teachers in the U.K.England are now
designed to break down traditional boundaries and build collaboration among education, health,
and social services providers.

To tackle the dropout issue, the U.K.England intends to dramatically change curriculum
offerings and address currently limited vocational opportunities for 14- to 19-year-old students.
The government will introduce 14 specialised diplomas with a vocational focus—the first five
diplomas in 2008, and the remainder in place by 2010 (DfES, 2005). Here, too, CPD will be
necessary for teachers, particularly in relation to breaking down the boundaries that exist
between school, further education, and the workplace.

Shifts in thinking about relationships among curriculum, instruction, and assessment, along with
shifts in thinking about schools in society and interagency collaboration, are paralleled by shifts
in thinking about teacher evaluation and by shifts in understandings about teacher collaboration.
Collaboration, especially through collective inquiry, is now widely accepted as necessary for
teacher learning, for effective mentoring, and for the improvement of instruction. The premise is
that with “interactions between co-learners, professionals are able to use their knowledge on
behalf of others while further developing their own knowledge” (Davis et al., 2003, p. 290).

Pockets of innovation that recognise collaborative learning and the complexity of teaching are
beginning to occur, but like alternative assessments for students, these innovations co-exist with
efforts to judge teachers’ performance and base their salaries on students’ annual results on
standardized tests (e.g., Whoriskey, 2006). TAlthough the innovations also reflect increasing
collaboration among administrators, teachers, and local unions, . Mmost of the alternatives
apply only to experienced teachers, suggesting that CPD should be differentiated for novices and
experienced teachers.

A sample of alternatives to traditional teacher evaluation in the U.S. includes the following
innovations. Each alternative appears to encourage knowledge construction and creation,
improvement of teaching through improvement of teacher learning, and the building of
organisational capacity by establishing expectations of professional collaboration among
teachers.89
• One school system uses state standards and a developmental continuum of teacher
competency (beginning, emerging, applying, integrating, innovating) to offer three

11
 choices for evaluation: traditional clinical supervision by the administrator, peer
evaluation that includes a self-assessment component, or a portfolio to demonstrate
teaching proficiency (Palazuelos, 2007).
• One school system offers experienced teachers an alternative “resembling an action
research project. Teachers identify goals for improvement, develop and implement an
action plan, and share results with colleagues” (Ray-Taylor et al., 2006, p. 24).
• An elementary school has replaced traditional evaluation of tenured teachers with
lesson study. Lesson study involves teams of teachers conducting two cycles of lesson
study per year on a faculty-selected, school-wide theme (e.g., a new curriculum, an
innovation). The teams research, collaboratively plan a lesson, observe and analyse the
taught lesson, collect data on student learning, discuss and refine the instruction, and
share findings with colleagues (Lewis et al., 2006).

Alternatives such as these begin to blur the former line between evaluation and CPD. Most
alternatives are more complex and time-consuming than traditional teacher evaluation, but they
also provide richer feedback to teachers, and they focus closely on teacher learning as a means to
improving instruction. These innovations, however, are too recently institutionalised to know
how they will influence student learning or teacher satisfaction.

Collaboration: a possibility for change

Nations around the world have recognised that learning, innovation, and continuous
improvement are necessary to their growth and prosperity. They understand that “the
postmodern world is fast, compressed, complex and uncertain [and] is presenting immense
problems and challenges for our modernistic school systems and teachers who work within
them” (Hargreaves, 1994, p. 9). Nations also understand that schooling plays a major role in
creating knowledge workers and innovative societies in the 21st century. Teachers’ learning,
then, becomes a crucial piece of the puzzle, but what appears necessary as well is teacher
involvement in educational policy making coupled with coherent social and financial policies to
support educational policies.

Nations, it seems, have to find ways to effect “local” education policies that are compatible with
global thinking and application, and teachers have to find ways to learn and teach increasingly
cosmopolitan populations. Typically, teachers hear about educational policies when they must
implement them. This is contrary to the collaboration and decentralised leadership and decision
making that characterise flexible, responsive, and innovative organisations (e.g., Hargreaves &
Fink, 2006; Leithwood et al., 1999; Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000; Rosenholtz, 1989). The Scottish and
Irish models (described earlier) represent a promising break from past thinking and offer new
possibilities for involving local authorities and teachers in collaborative educational policy
making prior to implementation.

At the school level, too, the involvement of teachers is vital for successful change. Shared
leadership and collaboration require learning and behaviours for both teachers and principals —
new social relationships, sharing of knowledge, blurred and flexible roles, access to information,
skills of questioning, inquiry, dialogue, and argumentation—learning that is appropriate to and
differentiated for teachers/leaders at various levels of knowledge and skills (Collinson, in press).

12
However, teachers cannot bring about necessary changes without organisational and systemic
change occurring alongside their changing attitudes, values and approaches; namely,
collaboration with governmental agencies and other institutions (e.g., universities). In the
absence of such collaboration, changes from within the profession “can only amount to little
more than tinkering with the technical skills of teaching, while the broader issues are defined and
determined elsewhere (Smyth, 2001, p. 7).

Similarly, governments should by now understand that thinking about schooling in the short term
frequently subverts collaboration which is more time-consuming and messy. For instance, in
Taiwan, it was not enough to want a lifelong learning society, and in Latvia, it was not enough to
want democratic governance without a full understanding of what that means for schools and
society. Changes like these, reflecting global changes already underway, demand discussions of
shared values, long-term visions of schools and society, new understandings about learning, and
examination of assumptions and outcomes.

Educational policies that are not coherent with or supported by social and financial policies have
a long history of failure and unintended consequences. Teachers and principals, like other
knowledge workers in a world of change, need continuing professional development. The 21st
century suggests that major changes are already occurring in CPD, some from the top down,
some from the bottom up, and some through collaboration. Recent emerging trends for
broadening and enhancing teachers’ learning through CPD suggest that a collaborative model for
change can contribute to better understandings, stronger policies, and improved implementation
in schools.

Notes

1. The purpose of induction in the U.S.A. seems to focus on slowing teacher attrition rates or, conversely,
improving retention rates of novice teachers who for decades have left the profession early and in
alarmingly high numbers, especially those who begin teaching in poor areas (Ingersoll & Kralik, 2004).
2. Teacher evaluation may also be known as annual performance review, appraisal, assessment,
inspection, or supervision.
23. A brief comparison of programmes within England, Wales, and Scotland may be found in Earley and
Bubb, 2004. Induction efforts in Switzerland, Shanghai, New Zealand, Japan, and France were
summarised by Wong et al. (2005). In 2006, Ontario, Canada implemented a New Teacher Induction
Program for all novice teachers in the province.
34. More information is available from the General Teaching Council for Scotland web site
(http://www.gtcs.org.uk/Home/home.asp).
45. Scotland has chosen to allow mentor reports to contribute to the Head Teacher’s recommendation
concerning full registration status. This evaluative role of mentors is a contested aspect in the literature.
56. The original agreement indicated that the Accreditation Route for Chartered Teacher would cease to
be available in August, 2008. On June 7, 2008, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong
Learning announced that a new, flexible route to Chartered Teacher will be piloted and evaluated.
67. American teachers may recognise the Accreditation Route as somewhat similar to the requirements
for National Board Certification.
78. Teachers who aspire to leadership roles must also show a similar commitment to CPD as they
undertake a programme of development leading to the Scottish Qualification for Headship.

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89. Changes in practice for alternative evaluations for principals and superintendents lag behind
implementation of alternative evaluations for teachers (e.g., Dipaola, 2001; Stufflebeam & Nevo, 1993).

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