Professional+Learning

=Teacher Professional Learning and Development=

Helen Timperley (2008) outlines the interrelated conditions for professional learning and development that impact positively on valued student outcomes. To read more of Timperley's work please see full article This section synthesises the research on teacher professional learning and development that has been demonstrated to have a positive impact on valued student outcomes. Its findings relate to teachers who have received teacher training and who are in the process of deepening their knowledge and refining their skills.

There are four important understandings that arise from the research evidence that we as a teaching profession need to take notice of:
 * 1) Notwithstanding the influence of factors such as socio-economic status, home and community, student learning is strongly influenced by __what and how teachers teach__.
 * 2) Teaching is a complex activity. Teachers' moment-by-moment decisions about lesson content and process are shaped by multiple factors, not just the agenda of those looking for changes in practice. Such factors include __teachers' knowledge and their beliefs__ about what is important to teach, how students learn, and how to manage student behaviour and meet external demands.
 * 3) It is important to set up conditions that are responsive to the ways in which teachers learn. The following was identified as being important for encouraging learning: engaging learners' prior conceptions about how the world works; developing deep factual and conceptual knowledge, organised into frameworks that facilitate retrieval and application; and promoting __metacognitive and self-regulatory processes that help learners define goals and then monitor their progress__ towards them.
 * 4) __Professional learning is strongly shaped by the context__ in which the teacher practises. This is usually the classroom, which in turn, is strongly influenced by the wider school culture and the community and society in which the school is situated. Teachers' daily experiences in their practice context shape their understandings, and their understandings shape their experiences.