Internationally, the conviction that excellent teaching is an essential ingredient for success in terms of student achievement in schools continues to be strongly promoted (Elmore, 2002; Day et al., 2007; Sahlberg, 2007, Hargreaves & Fullan, 2013;). Drawing on data from countries in Asia, Northern America and Europe, a recent OECD report to the USA (OECD 2011), entitled, Developing Capacity at the Point of Delivery (ibid:235 – 240), identifies teacher recruitment, preparation and on-going professional development as crucial to establishing high quality teaching.  Such concerns around teacher quality have preoccupied policy makers from around the globe at the International Summits on the Teaching Profession that have been held each year from 2011.

The imperative, to improve the quality of each teacher’s professional learning over her/his career, appears to be straightforward but it rapidly evolves into a far more complex prescription when it comes to implementation.

The study described in this paper undertakes to explore this complexity:

a)             by examining what the terms “career” and “professional learning”

may be taken to mean; and

b)            using the framework that results from a) as a basis for analysing the implementation strategies devised to promote career long learning amongst teachers in the context of a particular state schooling system within the UK.

Through this case study the authors aim to critically examine some of the effects and implications that the implementation of career long learning has upon the various organisations and agencies that have a stake in this particular reform.

The paper begins by considering evidence from the literature with regard to the conceptualisation of a teaching career from three different perspectives: how it is experienced by teachers (Hubermann, 1993; Day et al., 2007);  as a form of progression in professional practice (Shulman, 1987; Reeves et al. 1998, Eraut, 2002; Shulman & Sato, 2006; Timperley et al., 2008) and as a set of structures within the workplace (Darling-Hammond,1995; Scribner, 1999; Gould et al, 2007,). It is argued that these three perspectives give rise, in their turn, to varying views of the purpose and nature of professional learning, and, in particular, raise questions as to why and how teachers might find it worthwhile to engage in the process.

Using this framing the paper goes on to examine how the implementation of ‘career-long professional learning’ for teachers is being approached as part of the the recommendations of the review of teacher education in Scotland - Teaching Scotland’s Future (Donaldson 2010). This is most visible in a new Standard for Career Long Professional Learning, introduced as part of a review of professional standards for teachers. It also underpins a new scheme to ensure teachers are keeping up to date with their own learning and development. In Scotland this initiative is ‘Professional Update’ though in other systems it is known, perhaps more controversially, as relicensing or reaccreditation.

Setting these planned reforms in the context of teacher education policy following the devolution of powers to the Scottish Government in 1999 (O’Brien, 2011) the study focuses on the implications that the strategies chosen to support career-long professional development have for the various agencies and actors involved. The paper looks at the nature of the inter-organisational effects that implementation is having, and arguably may have, on universities, local authorities, the General Teaching Council, schools and teachers.  In particular it raises points for discussion as to whether or not the strategies adopted are likely to improve the capacity of the system to respond effectively to the goal of improving the quality of teaching in Scottish schools.

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