Teachers as Learners: Building a profession of responsive, expert and uniquely talented individuals

Professor Rachel Lofthouse:

We need a workforce of teachers who can be their best selves, who can use their knowledge, talents and humanity to great effect, who can feel that not only are they financially secure but also intellectually challenged and rewarded through the quality of the work that they do and the opportunities that they have to flourish. If we don’t aim for this - from Initial Teacher Training and Education onwards - we are reducing our ambitions, narrowing the impacts that teachers can have, and will always be challenged by recruitment and retention difficulties rather than building the expert profession our children need. We must acknowledge and support teachers as learners as career-long learners and for this they need access to teacher education not just teacher training.

Teachers learn through their engagement with a knowledge base, through their immersion in practice contexts and through their relationships with others. Teachers’ learning determines how their practice develops over time and what impact their work has on students, colleagues and the settings they work in.

As a teacher educator and researcher, I have undertaken research related to teachers’ professional learning. This body of research led to a conceptual model of professional development. The model is now known as the CoG Model of Professional Learning.

At the heart of the CoG Model is professional learning activity such as mentoring, coaching, action research or lesson study. This activity could be within an initial teacher education or a CPD programme. The professional learning activity creates cycles of practice development taking place in the teachers’ professional context. Having the right tools for the job can help to scaffold, frame, and measure the teachers’ learning. Examples of such tools are video, observation frameworks and effective questions - all now typical of ITT and CPD models.

The CoG Model includes attributes held by individuals and organisations which fuel professional learning. These are creativity, solidarity and authenticity. Creativity refers to being given permission to problem-solve; opportunities to innovate; and access to alternative practices and perspectives enabling practitioners to gain the capacity to develop original thinking and the confidence to go beyond routine practices. Developing a sense of solidarity requires teachers to engage in collaboration with others, to see beyond their personal experiences and immediate concerns and work in the most attuned ways that they can with learners. Authenticity in professional learning is enabled when teachers understand the tensions and priorities of the educational setting in which they work and taking account of the ethical dimensions of their practice.

The CoG model also defines valuable changes and behaviours resulting from professional learning. These changes continue to build individual and organisational capacity. It is essential that teachers are able to articulate their dilemmas and ideas and to share their achievements, ideally through both internal and external networks, but often starting in the one-to-one conversations with peers, coaches or mentors. They also need to invite critique to ensure that their ideas and evidence are reviewed with an informed perspective, as well as to critique others’ work with a generous spirit. As the cycles of practice development and professional learning go hand in hand teachers’ knowledge, professional repertoires and expertise expands, and this allows their settings to become more effective in creating successful education for all.

The CoG Model indicates that professional learning and the development of practice are active and interlocking processes. Cycles of practice development enable learning to be cumulative, and new and effective practices to be generated. This is essential in an education sector and in classrooms that are directly impacted by the social, cultural and emotional lives of children and their families. Teachers need to be able to respond intelligently not just react according to a script. The ongoing system challenge is to ease teachers’ workload pressures, while still creating time for professional development opportunities through which teachers can continue to grow throughout their careers to create a powerful and impactful profession.