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The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of online learning on university librarians’ professional development and library services.

A mixed-methods study through an explanatory research design was applied to address the study’s objectives. Quantitative data were gathered from 341 librarians working in 221 universities, while qualitative data were gathered from 27 experts working in 21 different universities of Pakistan.

The findings of the study revealed that online learning has a significant positive impact on the professional development of university librarians. Results revealed that online learning assists in the provision of sustainable, innovative library services in university libraries.

The study has offered a model in light of the study's quantitative and qualitative findings. It contributes to theoretical understanding by expanding the existing knowledge base. It offers managerial insights, enabling the development of policies that foster the professional development of library personnel and the implementation of smart library services.

The purpose of this exploratory case study was to investigate the role of School Leaders (SLs) in building Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) in schools, as well as to expand a literature-driven PLC model within the Pakistani context.

The study involved the purposive selection of two schools affiliated with a university. The sample comprised one school leader, one academic coordinator and five teachers from each school, altogether 14 participants. The participants shared similar demographic characteristics. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data, which were analysed thematically.

The findings of the study revealed that both schools have created PLCs to some extent and that school goals and culture were contributing factors in building these communities. Additionally, the SLs played a key role in promoting PLCs by encouraging teacher collaboration. The study concludes that SLs have the potential to strategize their actions to foster positive professional relations among teachers and ensure their well-being.

The study contributes to the literature on professional communities in Pakistan by validating a literature-driven PLC model. The model emphasizes collaboration among teachers, which can be facilitated by SLs. As such, the study implicates SLs in prioritizing the professional development of teachers to enhance student learning and achieve school success.

This study is unique in expanding a literature-driven PLC model within the Pakistani context, with a focus on teacher collaboration as facilitated by SLs. The model has the potential for replication in other contexts and can serve as a useful tool for future research.

Global focus on reforming teachers has resulted in the inclusion of multiple survey questions about teachers’ professional learning activities in large-scale international studies. A cross-national analysis of these survey data will likely enhance our understanding and inform the future direction regarding teacher professional development policy and practice. Yet we do not know whether these surveys measure the key features and their contextual factors of teachers’ professional learning activities to allow a systematic cross-national analysis. Based on international and U.S. literature, I develop a conceptual model of teachers’ professional learning activities in global context and analyze relevant survey items used in three major international studies – TIMSS, PIRLS, and TALIS. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of the coverage of these survey items and a direction for improving data collections of teachers’ professional learning activities in large-scale international studies.

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.

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.

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of healthcare professionals’ practice, where learning is taking place when a digital artefact is implemented for identification of patients’ cognitive impairment. The use of digital artefacts is increasing in various workplaces, to include professionals in healthcare. This paper aims to explore the following research question: How is the professional learning unfolding in patient-based work when a digital artefact transforms the practice?

Various data collection methods are used for this study, consisting of dialogue meetings, interviews and a reference-group meeting. Thematic analysis is used to inductively bring forth the themes of the collected data.

Professionals’ knowledge and experience are of vital importance in learning and changing work practices. Together with their ability to reflect on changes, their knowledge and experience constitute the prefiguration when the introduction of a digital application brings about indeterminacy in the work practice.

This paper makes a contribution to practice-based research as it consolidates previous research and identifies professionals knowledge and learning in a healthcare context. This can be used to further explore and advance the field, as well as to establish the evidence-based importance of transforming practices based on implementation of digital artefacts.

To advance the learning of professional practices in teacher education and medical education, this conceptual paper aims to introduce the idea of representational scaffolding for digital simulations in higher education.

This study outlines the ideas of core practices in two important fields of higher education, namely, teacher and medical education. To facilitate future professionals’ learning of relevant practices, using digital simulations for the approximation of practice offers multiple options for selecting and adjusting representations of practice situations. Adjusting the demands of the learning task in simulations by selecting and modifying representations of practice to match relevant learner characteristics can be characterized as representational scaffolding. Building on research on problem-solving and scientific reasoning, this article identifies leverage points for employing representational scaffolding.

The four suggested sets of representational scaffolds that target relevant features of practice situations in simulations are: informational complexity, typicality, required agency and situation dynamics. Representational scaffolds might be implemented in a strategy for approximating practice that involves the media design, sequencing and adaptation of representational scaffolding.

The outlined conceptualization of representational scaffolding can systematize the design and adaptation of digital simulations in higher education and might contribute to the advancement of future professionals’ learning to further engage in professional practices. This conceptual paper offers a necessary foundation and terminology for approaching related future research.

Situated within the conversation of the global push for teacher quality and for professional learning that positively shapes teaching practice in order to improve student learning, the purpose of this paper is concerned with transformational learning that actively shifts cognition, emotion, and capacity (Drago-Severson, 2009).

This paper is set against the backdrop of one independent, well-resourced Australian school during its professional learning intervention. It draws together findings from a narrative study that examined the lived experiences of 14 educators. The educators interviewed for this study included the researcher (also an educator at the school), two teachers, and 11 school leaders at middle and executive levels.

While the study set out to explore how educators’ experiences of professional learning (trans)form their senses of professional identity, it found that it is not just professional learning, but epiphanic life experiences that shape professional selves and practices. Learning is highly individualized, not one-size-fits-all. It is that which taps into who educators see and feel they are that has the most impact on beliefs, thoughts, behaviors, and practices.

This study suggests that transformational professional learning can occur in a wide range of life arenas. It recommends that the definition of professional learning be broadened, that teachers and schools think more expansively and flexibly about what it is that transforms educators, and about who drives and chooses this learning. Schools and systems can work from their own contexts to design and slowly iterate models of professional learning, from the bottom up and the middle out.

Reviews a range of theories, concepts and learning approaches that are relevant to the development of professionals. Goes on to take a look at how professionals actually learn, once they are in practice. The latter is based on empirical research conducted across 20 professions. Reports on the range of experiences and events that practitioners had found particularly formative in helping them become fully competent professionals; this point often not having been reached until long after their formal professional training had ended. An attempt is made to relate the formative experiences reported to particular theoretical approaches to learning. The experiences are classified into a number of general kinds of “learning mechanism” and these are placed within a “taxonomy of informal professional learning methods”. The results of the research should be of use both to professional developers and to individual professionals. They should assist developers in their planning of placements or post‐formal training. They should help individual professionals to maximise their professional learning, by seeking out particular kinds of experience and making the most of those that come their way.

This paper aims to draw on data from a study of professionals’ experiences of work and learning framed by a complex adaptive systems approach to examine the nexus of work and learning in complex adaptive organisations.

The study used an adapted phenomenographic approach and the complex adaptive systems conceptual framework (CAOCF) to analyse data from semi-structured interviews with fourteen professionals from a variety of organisations and industry sectors within Sydney, Australia.

The findings highlight that work in complex adaptive organisations is best described as fluid work. Further, the findings suggest that fluid work influences professionals towards flexible learning approaches that take place in the flow of work.

This paper empirically demonstrates the nexus of work and learning as experienced by professionals in their day-to-day work, as well as the ways in which fluid work influences flexible and adaptable learning through participation in work.