Conference Agenda

1. Research Aim: Globally, education systems are focused on understanding what constitutes quality teaching and its impact on student outcomes. While much attention has been given to pre-service teacher development, governments are now emphasising the need for ongoing professional learning to improve teaching quality, retention, career progression, and system-wide innovation. This literature review provides a synthesis of research evidence on the impacts of teacher professional learning and ongoing investment in professional learning by governments. This review approaches questions of value and worth from a holistic perspective, focussing on the impacts of quality professional learning on students, teachers, and education systems.

2. Theoretical Framework: The paper combines foundational theories of professional learning with research on evidence-informed policymaking to examine how governments and system leaders use research to shape professional learning strategies. This dual focus provides a generative lens for analysing the design, implementation, and impact of professional learning across diverse educational contexts.

3. Methods: The paper is based on a scoping review of global policy and research literature on teacher professional learning. It surveys key studies from various education systems, including OECD nations, identifying trends, gaps, and the impacts of professional learning.

4. Findings: The paper provides evidence that quality professional learning has strong positive impacts on students, teachers, and education systems. It highlights five primary reasons for investing in teacher professional learning: 1. Strengthening quality teaching and improving student learning; 2. Supporting career progression and leadership development; 3. Bolstering retention and job satisfaction; 4. Fostering collaboration and networked learning; 5. Driving system-wide innovation and improvement.

5. Relevance to Conference Theme: The paper strongly aligns with conference themes by emphasising the critical role of professional learning in fostering equitable and high-quality teaching. Professional learning empowers teachers to offer rich educational experiences for students, making it a crucial investment tool for governments.

The evaluation of effectiveness is still to be considered the weak link in teachers' professional learning: it mainly focuses on the satisfaction of teachers (outcomes), not on the change of knowledge, behavior (output) and organizational and actual practice (impact). Teachers' professional learning is a complex and non-linear process, whose cause-effect relationships are difficult to define. The teachers' professional learning evaluation requires comprehensive models of the complex, situated and contextual nature, open to transformative and critical hypotheses of professionalism itself.

The design, methodology and results of a training-investigation conducted in 2024 at the University of Bergamo and aimed at monitoring/evaluating the professional learning of teachers are presented. The study involved 200 teachers enrolled in the secondary school teaching qualification program within the course on school evaluation processes. The research question concerned the effectiveness of the professional learning experience in developing transformative and critical attitudes. It followed a mixed embedded design. The quantitative data were collected through a pre-post intervention 'ad hoc' questionnaire and analyzed with correlational statistical techniques; the qualitative data were collected through documentary reports (tools specifically designed for assessing student learning) and analyzed using MAXQDA software.

The results indicate that the professional learning experience has modified some knowledge and behaviors (output) of teachers: it favored a composite knowledge of school assessment and stimulated less routine and more original methods of intervention. It also had a fair impact on the school organizations to which it belongs given the on-site adoption of the evaluation tools designed during the process (impact).

The study offers some remarks at the debate on professional learning, from a systemic and transformative, non-linear perspective. It helps to discuss on presumed concepts of 'quality' and 'efficiency' of teaching and professional development and to redefine the role of teachers as empowered of development, not mere gears in a mechanism.