The English Masters in Teaching and Learning: A New Arena for Practitioner Inquiry?

Abstract

All new teachers in England (economics permitting) are about to get the opportunity to study for a Masters degree—the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL). Significantly, the MTL is based on many of the principles that research has established as important in professional development: it is to be school based, it is to be personalized and it is to be supported by a ‘coach’ from within the teacher’s own school as well as by a tutor from a nearby higher education institution. Its primary focus is to be on improving the learning experiences of children and young people but at the same time it ambitiously re-visions schools themselves, aiming to develop their capacity to be major contributors to high quality professional development. What is important about these principles is that many of them are precisely those that have been urged by Susan Groundwater-Smith and her various collaborators over the years in their work on continuing professional development (CPD) through practitioner inquiry. However, in this chapter it is argued that despite the many positive aspirations behind by MTL, the principles of high quality CPD advocated by Groundwater-Smith and her colleagues are unlikely to be realised in full. This is because their conception of practitioner inquiry is based on a very different understanding of professionalism from that which underpins the new MTL. Practitioner inquiry is based on traditional notions of ‘individual’ professionalism. By contrast, the MTL is based on a more ‘managed’ vision of professionalism where the professionalism of the individual has to be harnessed to the requirements of the school and beyond that, the government.