Chapter 6
The Development of Accomplished
Teaching
Margery A. McMahon, Christine Forde and Rosa Murray
6.1 Introduction
In efforts to raise pupil attainment, the question of teacher quality has become a key
policy concern (Schleicher 2011 ). A range of strategies has been used by different
educational systems to raise teaching quality including reforms to the initial
preparation of teachers, raising the entry requirements, the development of teacher
induction schemes and improving school leadership. Increasingly the focus has
turned to the effectiveness of serving teachers where initiatives for teacher appraisal
and accountability have been established alongside strategies to promote ongoing
professional development. However, the anticipated improvements that such
measures would bring have not been realised particularly in reforming and
enhancing practice in the classroom. The question of how you improve and sustain
pedagogic practice over a teacher’s career is an issue currently being grappled with
in Scottish education, mirroring similar concerns in other education systems. Much
of these efforts have been on upskilling teachers (Schleicher 2011 ) to enable them
to deliver reforms in the curriculum and assessment programmes. Scottish educa-
tion is an example of a system trying to put in place strategies to sustain teachers in
their development over a lengthy career as the means of enhancing pedagogic
practice and motivation thereby, improving the quality of teaching in order to raise
the achievement and attainment of diverse groups of learners.
M.A. McMahon (&)C. Forde
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
C. Forde
e-mail: [email protected]
R. Murray
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
©Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017
M.A. Peters et al. (eds.),A Companion to Research in Teacher Education,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4075-7_6
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