Asking those who know: a collaborative approach to continuing professional development

Abstract

This paper asks who should be responsible for the design and delivery of improved continuing professional development (CPD). It also questions what roles teacher educators, subject specialists and experienced classroom practitioners should take in developing a research‐led programme for practising teachers. The paper further reviews current provisions for CPD in parts of the UK and the USA and examines efforts to make educational research more relevant to classroom practice. As its backdrop, the paper discusses an innovative CPD programme at Clarion University in the USA that shows how the expertise of three different groups – subject specialists, teacher educators, and classroom teachers – is productively intertwined so that the results of current educational research are transformed into improved classroom practice. It is written from the perspective of both a visiting lecturer from Belfast and the Clarion University project director with the aim of informing the wider debate on CPD.