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.

As part of my on-going doctoral research, the study acknowledges the contested concepts and tensions surrounding teaching and professionalism among teachers. Activist teaching departs from the conventional managerial practices of teaching and teacher education and recognises contextual interventions that shapes the way teachers enact their professional work and identities. These practices align with what Judyth Sachs has described as teachers taking an active stance through “advising, issue and problem identification, spreading ideas, providing alternative perspectives, evaluating programmes and advocacy” (J. Sachs, 2003, p. 69).

The research argues that activist teaching goes beyond teaching. Where standards take precedence over teachers’ actions and attributes, this research takes the position that teaching is a political act and should not fence-sit to support the status quo. In the case of Scotland’s standards for full registration, teachers are encouraged to critique national and policy influences surrounding teaching and contribute to the development of schools. Although this does not explicitly state that teachers should become activists, this subscribes to democratic professional values which encourage teachers to take an active stance on issues affecting them.

This presentation presents these critical debates surrounding activism in the teaching profession. Through a mapping exercise, the study will be able to identify where these activist teachers are in Scotland and what kind of activist work they do apart from teaching. From there, a cohort of teachers will be invited to reflect on their activist work and professional learning and its implications towards their teaching practices and perspectives. The qualitative data will be analysed to develop a conceptual definition of an ‘activist teacher’ in the context of Scotland and how it can support improvements and equitable teaching practices in schools and expanded involvement in their communities.

Reference:

Sachs, J. (2003). The Activist Teaching Profession. Open University Press and McGraw-Hill Education

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.

Metaphors can clarify meaning in complexity. While a large number of studies about teachers’ metaphors have proven productive as researchers seek to understand the complex processes of teaching and working in classrooms and their professional identities, limited studies have examined that metaphors can act as a tool to promote teachers' professional learning. The purpose of this study is to examine the ways that metaphors constructed by a teacher educator could help describe and make sense of facilitation practices of beginning teachers' professional learning. Drawing on transcribed audio recordings from a teacher training program, interviews with the teacher educator and beginning teachers, and reflective assignments, the analysis identifies two predominant categories of metaphors: organism and non-organism metaphors. Organism metaphors assume the process of beginning teachers' professional learning as growth, while non-organism metaphors employ functional objects such as bridges and lenses to elucidate specific aspects of their professional learning. Findings underscore the multifaceted contributions of metaphors to beginning teachers' professional learning: firstly, by elucidating the dynamic nature of professional learning and rendering abstract concepts tangible; secondly, by fostering the articulation of personal knowledge and the evolution of professional beliefs; and thirdly, by cultivating a community of discourse between educators and novice teachers. This study enhances our understanding of the pedagogical potential of metaphors in teacher education and offers valuable insights for future research in the field.