39.4 Teacher Learning
I have argued that at policy level there is a rhetoric that emphasises the importance
of teachers’professional development and learning but at the same time research
has begun to focus on the process of teacher learning and its characteristics and
links to student learning. We have learned much more in the last decade about how
teachers learn best and how this connects to curriculum and student development.
The general consensus is that practice is inadequate and the understandings of
policy makers underpinning practice have been‘too simplistic and [they] have not
understood how learning is embedded in the professional lives, working conditions
and contexts that teachers inhabit.’(Menter and McLaughlin 2015 : 36). What has
emerged from these studies is that teacher learning is highly situated in the context
of the school and that this context exerts great influence over how or whether
teachers learn. Our understanding of these factors is still limited but we know more
than we did.
What we do know is that there are three significant elements in teacher learning:
it is a complex dynamic phenomenon; rooted in the context, systems and in pro-
fessional community (ibid, p. 39). The phenomenon is dynamic because all the
influences on teachers’pedagogy are interacting during the process of learning
about practice—the national policy context, the immediate school context and past
experience and preparation. Opfer and Peddar ( 2011 : 380) in their review of the
evidence showed the interaction between teachers’beliefs, knowledge, past practice
and experience. They called the interaction between these elements the learning
orientation of the teacher. What is important in facilitating learning is that there is
the creation of a gap or of some dissonance, for it is in trying to re-establish
cognitive equilibrium that teachers learn (ibid). The other important element was
the site of professional learning. The creation of collaborative learning is highly
recommended. Collaboration is the process through which teacher learning can be
empowered and so the creation of a professional learning community is important.
It is also the place where teachers can gain support to shift their thinking and
practice. We need to try things out to envisage different ways of working. We know
that‘norms of collegiality and experimentation’(Little 2006 : 15) rather than a
culture of privacy and non-interference are strong facilitators of teacher learning
and change, and translate into higher recorded student attainment. When the norms
and the culture are directed towards teacher learning rather than the protection of
past practice or non-interference, then we see that professional learning is con-
structive and can be powerful. Collaboration can be for good or ill. Teachers can
collaborate in ways that are not good for student learning so it is not an uncritical
area of work. It is the establishment of a teacher professional learning community
that emerges as a key factor in developing learning.
Collecting data is a way to create safe disequilibrium. The data show us that our
experience of our classrooms or systems is not always how others view it. This
examination of data, focusing on the data rather than the person, is a way of
generating gaps for learning and at the same time creating support for change within
586 C. McLaughlin