This thesis is a study of teacher professional learning and development. Concepts from research into professionalism and professional learning, and organizational, socio-‐cultural and complexity theory are used to create a theoretical framework. This is then applied to the analysis of how teachers learn and develop professionally and how professional learning and development activities might best be planned and organized. The findings of empirical research involving 12 teachers and 9 Head Teachers and 40 semi-‐structured interviews are presented and discussed. The research involved the participant teachers endeavouring to undertake a small scale, action research project into a self-‐selected aspect of their practice. Significant support was expressed in the research for a form of action research being an aspect of teacher continuous professional development. Factors that enable and which prevent teachers engaging in Action Research are identified. Theories, concepts and empirical evidence are used to argue that teacher professional learning involves social and mediated interaction in complex, multiple environments and that this has significant implications for how we define, organise and undertake teacher professional learning. An approach is presented which is enquiry/evidence based, work-‐based and expansive, and which takes account of teachers’ social situations, teacher, learner and school learning aims and needs, and socially mediated learning processes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:531930 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | McMurtry, David |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=158467 |
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