Towards a model of Teachers’ Continuing Professional Development (CPD): a border crossing journey with embedded contradictions, ethical dilemmas and transformative possibilities

Abstract

ABSTRACT Shulman (1989) argued how ‘outrageously complex’ teaching is and how reform imperatives driving standards should not lead to standardisation and the subsequent loss of soul. We assert that framing a model of teachers’ Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is similarly ‘outrageously complex’, a multifaceted construct that has professional, personal and political ends and purposes and is concerned with needs beyond that of the individual teacher, such as the teaching profession, schooling system, economic and social needs, as well as the wider public-interest values of the state. For this study, we worked as a community of inquiry, drawing from theoretical pluralism in order to conduct an abductive analysis of existing models of teachers’ CPD. Our model of teachers’ CPD offers an explanatory framework that positions teachers’ values, goals and dreams at the centre, involves a relational border crossing journey rather than a final destination, and necessitates ethics (philosophy), critical reflexivity and the empirical as productive ways of staying with the embedded contradictions, ethical dilemmas and transformative possibilities of an advanced professional practice. We present this new model of CPD not as a final analysis but rather as a theory worthy of further research and consideration.