Search results

A review of publications in teaching and teacher education over 10 years (2000–2010) on teacher professional development is the subject of this chapter. The first part synthesises production referred to learning, facilitation and collaboration, factors influencing professional development, effectiveness of professional development and issues around the themes. The second part selects from the production nine articles for closer examination. The chapter concludes by noting how the production brings out the complexities of teacher professional learning and how research and development have taken cognizance of these factors and provided food for optimism about their effects, although not yet about their sustainability in time.

Postdoctoral scholars are increasingly pursuing diverse career paths requiring broad skill sets. This study aims to create a more comprehensive understanding of current approaches and strategies for postdoctoral scholars professional learning and development.

This literature review is a systematic examination and synthesis of the current literature describing professional learning and development pertaining to postdoctoral scholars. The objectives and components of initiatives were extracted and narratively synthesized to identity important patterns and themes across the literature.

Commonalities amongst professional learning and development initiatives for postdoctoral scholars included skills development in the following areas: teaching and learning, mentorship, academic careers, academic writing, industry careers, networking, career planning, project management, time management, communication, leadership and balancing work-life demands.

In synthesizing the literature that describes professional learning and development opportunities for postdoctoral scholars, it is apparent that opportunities look different in every setting with no empirical evidence that one strategy is more effective than another. Given the significant resources often required to support professional learning and development initiatives, a deeper understanding of the benefits and deficiencies of various components is needed to ensure scarce resources are invested in the most effective strategies.

Continual professional development is essential to foster and enhance professionals’ abilities. A wide variety of methods have been adopted to support professional learning for healthcare professions but many still focus upon a need to update knowledge and the learning of isolated competencies for practice. The purpose of this paper is to report upon a collaborative partnership that enabled the reframing of a professional development course away from this objectivist epistemology to foster pedagogically appropriate approaches nurturing the development of the knowledge and skills required for extended practice in specimen dissection.

An action research approach informed this study which drew upon aspects of simulated learning, “creative play” and “hands-on” practice to nurture development of the knowledge and mastery of essential skills required for extended practice in dissection. A questionnaire allowed the gathering of quantitative and qualitative data from delegates. Open coding of delegate free-text responses enabled thematic analysis of the data.

Delegates reported upon a positive learning and teaching experience providing them with a unique opportunity to develop the essential skills and knowledge required to enhance their extended practice. Four key themes were identified from delegate feedback: legitimacy of learning experience; safe-space for learning; confidence as a practitioner; and professional and social interactions.

Research into skill development in this field is currently lacking. Findings highlight the value of a creative approach to professional development which enables individuals to master the skills required for practice. It also underlines the importance and value of collaborative partnerships. As allied health professionals advance and extend their roles professional development must move away from the didactic delivery of isolated topics and ensure that it offers legitimate learning experiences allowing skill development and technique mastery alongside knowledge enhancement.

The purpose of this study is to explore Swedish police education teachers’ informal workplace learning and its perceived value for their professional development. Two categories of teachers, police teachers and university teachers, with different professional knowledge and experience, work together at the police education unit.

The method used was in-depth interviews with teachers working at a Swedish police education unit.

Informal workplace learning was perceived by both teacher groups to be of great value for gaining knowledge about the local practice and for their professional development. Their learning emerged in discussions, observations and practically oriented activities in their daily work. Four conclusions: firstly, the teachers’ informal workplace learning was socially and practice-oriented and learning emerged in a collaborative, reciprocal and active process. Secondly, the embodied nature of the learning is evident in the teachers’ joint activities in the teaching practice. Thirdly, it takes time and active involvement in the local practice to become a professional teacher in this kind of education. Fourthly, an educational structure where academic knowledge and experience can be integrated with police knowledge and experience constitutes an important basis for teachers’ professional development in police education and training.

The study’s focus on police education and the professional development of teachers in this specific practice contributes to increased knowledge of the social, practice-oriented and embodied nature of informal workplace learning.

The promise of Next Generation Learning Spaces appears to remain unfulfilled. This chapter explores why and how the design of professional learning for academics teaching in such spaces can and should be transformed. It takes a fresh look at why old professional development is failing and proposes a new way to engage academics in their own professional learning. Rather than continuing with traditional professional development that is most often, ad hoc, formal and centrally driven, comprising mandated professional development workshops and a website that may only be visited once, the chapter explores the move from ‘old’ professional development to ‘new’ professional learning. It draws on the fields of organisational theory, cognitive theory and behavioural economics.

New professional learning is characterised by a ‘pull’ rather than a ‘push’ philosophy. Academic staff themselves drive their own learning, choosing what, when and how they want to learn to become better teachers. Multiple and various learning opportunities embedded in day to day work are just-in-time, self-directed, performance-driven and evaluated within an organisational system. In this way the institutional setting influences behaviour by ‘nudging’ habits and setting defaults resulting in academics making the ‘right’ decisions and doing the ‘right’ thing. By addressing the compelling issue of how to enhance academic staff teaching capability, this chapter can help university leaders to think beyond the professional development approaches of yesterday. Aligning with this new direction will result in enhanced learning and teaching in the future.

This monograph reports on the strategic and operational roles of learning and development (L&D) professionals in Irish, UK European and US organisations including multinational corporations, small to medium enterprises, the public sector and not for profit organisations. This paper aims to investigate the contextual factors influencing L&D roles in organisations, the strategic and operational roles that L&D professionals play in organisations, the competencies and career trajectories of L&D professionals, the perceptions of multiple internal stakeholders of the effectiveness of L&D roles and the relationships between context, L&D roles, competencies/expertise and perceived organisational effectiveness.

The study findings are based on the use of multiple methods. The authors gathered data from executives, senior managers, line managers, employee and L&D professionals using multiple methods: a survey (n = 440), Delphi study (n = 125) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30).

The analysis revealed that L&D professionals increasingly respond to a multiplicity of external and internal contextual influences and internal stakeholders perceived the effectiveness of L&D professionals differently with significant gaps in perceptions of what L&D contributes to organisational effectiveness. L&D professionals perform both strategic and operational roles in organisations and they progress through four career levels. Each L&D role and career level requires a distinct and unique set of foundational competencies and L&D expertise. The authors found that different contextual predictors were important in explaining the perceived effectiveness of L&D roles and the importance attached to different foundational competencies and areas of L&D expertise.

This is one of the few studies to have investigated the L&D professional role in organisations from the perspective of multiple stakeholders using multiple research methods.

The purpose of this paper is an investigation into the experiences of professional development of human resource (HR) practitioners in the North of Scotland, and the use of non-formal learning in that development.

In-depth semi-structured interviews from a purposively selected sample of HR practitioners were conducted. Data from these interviews was analysed on a phenomenographic basis, to discover the qualitatively different ways in which HR practitioners describe, experience, understand and analyse their professional development and the use of non-formal learning in that development.

What emerged from the analysis were two sets of categories of description, one for each of the phenomena. An outcome space for each of the phenomena emerged, illustrating the hierarchical relationship within each set of categories of description as well as the dimensions of variation relating to the phenomena. These outcome spaces represent the collective experience of the practitioners on the subjects of professional development and non-formal learning.

Sample size and the specific geographical area are acknowledged as limitations. Another factor which may be considered a limitation is that the author's position as an HR lecturer with a keen interest in the subject could lead to this being considered an “insider” study. All these factors are acknowledged. These have been mitigated against by the careful preparation undertaken during the research process which resulted from the author's awareness of these limitations.

This study has given a voice to the HR practitioners in the North of Scotland with regard to their experiences and attitudes towards their professional development and the role of non-formal learning in that development. This study gives employers, other practitioners and professional bodies an opportunity to learn from the practitioners themselves as to how they can help practitioners in terms of their development.

This paper aims to investigate the prediction of current and evolutionary perceptions of professional development through five learning strategies at work and through training and how individual and job characteristics predict those strategies.

Variables were measured in a cross-sectional survey, with 962 individuals. Relationships were tested through linear regression analysis and structural equation modeling.

The criterion variable current professional development is positively associated to three learning strategies: intrinsic and extrinsic reflection, seeking help from others and trial and error. The relationship between this latter learning strategy and that criterion variable is moderated by work experience. Hours of training also predict that criterion variable. Seeking help from others and educational level predict perceived evolutionary development. Socio-cultural and technical-organizational work environment variables predict those five strategies.

The cross-sectional research design yields potential for monomethod bias. Longitudinal, multilevel and multiple collection design studies should be conducted in the future.

A wide range of occupations and organizational contexts was investigated by using two different measures of professional development as criterion variables. A larger effect size was found for one of them, given just three learning strategies as antecedent variables. Training and formal education had smaller effects. The importance of taking into account different characteristics of workplace learning environments is highlighted.

The aim of this paper is to examine and discuss academic librarians’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges of adopting e-learning for continuing professional development.

To elicit the necessary information, this study adopted a descriptive survey design, using questionnaire as instrument for data collection. The study population consists of five tertiary institutions – two universities, two polytechnics and one college of education, selected as sample using the purposive sampling technique. The study also conducted a literature review on studies done on benefits and challenges of e-learning for professional development. The literature review is built on resources from online and offline.

Academic librarians in Lagos State were unanimous in their perception of benefits and challenges of adoption of e-learning for continuing professional development. The major benefits of e-learning were that e-learning opens up new frontiers for professional learning, supports knowledge generation and management and gives librarians an opportunity to broaden their knowledge. However, the major challenges to adopting e-learning for continuing professional development were inadequate power supply, inadequate knowledge of how to operate e-learning tools and limited bandwidth.

This paper establishes that the role of academic librarians in the provision of information for learning and study in academic institutions places them in an advantageous position to engage in e-learning activities for professional development. It also extols the need for top library management to deploy all resources within their reach to develop technology-enhanced learning system. This should also be complemented with the development and implementation of e-learning curriculum in library schools in Nigeria to inculcate e-learning culture.

The paper contributes to empirical research on e-learning for continuing professional development among librarians in Nigeria. Librarians who are interested in professional development will find this article useful.

The purpose of this self-study is to examine how transformative leadership in student organizations contributes to doctoral students’ professional development in higher education. Drawing from Mezirow’s (1997) notion of transformative learning and Bass’s (1990) theory of transformational leadership, the researchers discuss how an academic student organization, Alpha Upsilon Alpha, provided opportunities for transformative leadership in scholarship and service thus crafted academic identities and re-envisioned student organizations as spaces of transformative professional development.