…Teachers are committed to the continuous development of their professional knowledge and practice. They work collaboratively, using research and evidence derived from theory and practice, to improve education and build effective communities of learners. …(Statement of Principle. Victorian Institute of Teaching. Dec, 2003).
Before reporting factors that have motivated the professional development of the first Australian cohort of Doctor of Education students from a Victorian university I will report how the members of the cohort perceive and describe their professional development activities which are discussed in relation to the ideas about professional development embedded in the literature. The term professional development (or PD as it was often abbreviated) was defined by the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA) as ‘deliberate processes designed for the purposes of teacher post-initial professionally related education and training’ (DETYA, 2001: preface). At its 2002 Annual General Meeting, the Professional Teachers’ Council, NSW, provided a more comprehensive set of principles stating that Professional Development should be:
pro-active and visionary leading teachers into new pedagogies and thinking
responsive to contemporary demand upon member associations and teachers
formative and predictive in finding new ways in enhancing the learning capacities and performance of associations and their members
flexible and reflective allowing for learning styles, distance, time and isolation
based on good pedagogy that recognises and values prior learning skills
purposeful in that it meets identified needs of teachers and is relevant to student learning
collaborative and engaging of professional networked partnerships and experts in the professional development of teachers
broad in scope to meet the overall needs of teachers, their professional teacher associations and schools (Professional Teachers’ Council, NSW, 2002).
Within the literature there was a good deal of discussion of the factors, objective and subjective, extrinsic and intrinsic, which influence career and related professional development (Chen, 1998; Hotchkiss and Borrow, 1996; Huberman, 1993; Nias and Aspenwall, 1996; Teese, 2000; DETYA, 2001 and Fogarty and Pete, 2004) including pathways and directions as well as psychological and lifestyle influences. Goode, (1969) argued that professional knowledge be applicable to the concrete problems of living and that the members of society should believe that knowledge can solve these problems. Now, continuing professional development is ‘no longer a luxury but a necessity’ (Bickham, 1998:68). It builds on previous formal education, but also takes into account the informal learning that accompanies professional practice and the need to integrate new knowledge via critical thinking. It allows professionals to learn new techniques and develop awareness of new knowledge in their field. Most
significantly, however, continuing professional development must be effective in helping practitioners enhance their performance. Unprecedented changes in communication and information technology have produced the need for all
professionals to constantly update knowledge and skills (Ingvarson, 1989; Beeson, 2000). As well as undertaking professional development to update skills, Kerka (1994) suggested that being professional implied a commitment to continue with professional education and pursuing practice-enhancing learning, providing the professional educator with the knowledge and skills to perform to appropriate standards (Kerka, 1994).
The opportunities for professional development are numerous, varied and available. Each academic year educators, as professionals, face a plethora of professional development activities, acquiring learning both formally and informally; in
educational institutions, in the workplace, and through leisure activities (Brookfield, 1986; Foley, 2004). Indeed to Foley, all human activity can be seen as having a learning dimension that fits within these forms of learning:
Formal learning is described as being ‘organised by professional educators, having a defined curriculum, and often leads to a qualification. It includes study in universities and TAFE colleges and sequenced training in workplaces’ (Foley, 2004:4).
Informal learning has much less structure to the learning process, however the person is consciously trying to learn from their current experience. Learning occurs through more informal relationships and structures, such as supervisor- employee, or master-apprentice situations, including a power relationship in which one person has a certain degree of authority and power to influence the learning situation. It usually involves individual or group reflection (Foley, 2004:4).
Non-formal learning characterises a situation in which the power relations are more or less equally distributed among all members of the learning situation such as occurs when people see a need for some sort of systematic instruction but in a one-off or sporadic way such as being shown how to operate a variation to a system by a colleague (Foley, 2004:4).
Tacit or incidental learning occurs subconsciously parallel to or alongside another form of activity and is ‘incidental to the task in which the person is involved’. That is, it is tacit and not seen as learning, at least not at the time. It is not distinguished as a type of activity distinct from the other three forms, rather incidental learning can and probably does take place in all three of these settings (Foley, 2004:4).
According to Corcoran (1995), in most educational institutions, professional development was thought of in terms of formal professional development and as informal professional development in the form of short courses or workshops.
Several times a year in-service activities were held that may, or may not, have been relevant to the professional development needs of the employees who were required to attend. Such programs might feature experts who spoke to all the staff on a topic current to the contemporary environment or a number of workshops conducted by trainers. Typically participants would spend a few hours listening and leave with handouts and/or some useful tips. There was seldom any follow-up to the experience and subsequent in-service days usually addressed entirely different sets of topics (Corcoran, 1995).
For the EdD students who were the participants in the current study professional development was an all-enveloping term which covered all and any previous learning or experiential activity which could then be applied to concrete problems within their teaching or professional practice. This was in agreement with teachers throughout Australia who argued that:
most of the things they do entail professional development of one sort or another. They think constantly about their work and ways in which its effectiveness could be improved; they talk about these matters with their colleagues and trial and assess new ways of working as a matter of course
(DETYA, 2001:1).
An increasing number of professional development activities were ‘systematically interwoven with conventional job performance’ (DETYA, 2001:1). Ellen, a long- term TAFE teacher, succinctly expresses the activities represented by the term professional development:
Professional development equals anything that is going to help me develop as a teacher.
When reporting on their past professional development activities the members of the cohort tended to group these activities into three broad categories, formal learning, informal learning and tacit learning.