The emergence of a distinctive European scholarship of professional development: challenging mainstream conceptualisations, consensus and causality claims

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article’s central focus is the distinction between mainstream North American – particularly US – scholarship and critical European scholarship, in relation to teacher professional learning and development. The era of accountability pervading the US policy landscape, it is noted, has spawned a dominant mainstream scholarship centred around causal chains and a ‘consensus’ about the features of ‘effective’ professional development that generates students’ learning gains. Critical scholarship, in contrast, recognises the complexity of professional development, challenges linear-based, causality assumptive conceptualisations, and, with a focus on their well-being, perceives teachers as primary developees, rather than merely conduits for policy implementation. Drawing on theoretical perspectives on employee-centrism and the epistemic development of scholarship fields, it is argued that mainstream North American scholarship, having been found wanting, must now be declared yesterday’s scholarship, and a distinctively European-led critical scholarship must now take forward an epistemic-development-focused agenda to augment our understanding of teacher professional development.