Practitioner research: a means of coping with the systemic demands for continual professional development?

Abstract

This article explores the current demands that teachers engage in year-on-year continued professional development (CPD) as a means of showing their ongoing competence to teach. In particular it highlights two types of CPD: the talked about notion of the ‘reflective practitioner’ and the actioned reality of CPD as a measure of technical and competent practice. The paper explores the feelings of teachers towards CPD and then, drawing on a seven-year longitudinal practitioner research study, uses the example of physical education to highlight the discordance between the intentions of the provider and the learning of the teachers. Finally, it uses the self-same study to illustrate the difference between traditional CPD and an idea of professional development that focuses on the use of practitioner research. It argues that through the use of inquiry and research teachers are able to focus their learning on ‘their kids’ and ‘their problems’ rather than engage in CPD which is delivered off-site and which assumes that ‘one size fits all’.