Professional learning policies (often also referred to as CPD policies) are increasingly being seen as key to upskilling teacher workforces across, and beyond, Europe. Indeed, as Stevenson (2015, p. 757) points out, the development of professional learning policies seems to ‘point to the spread of ideologies and practices in which national aspirations are framed by an increasingly globalised hegemony’. Understanding the influence of these global meta-narratives on national and local practice is key to ensuring fitness for purpose in context. That is, that the process of ‘vernacular globalisation’ (Appadurai, 1996) or ‘glocalisation’ (Robertson, 1997) is often simply accepted without deeper examination, sometimes resulting in policy directions that are not necessarily best suited or well received. Kennedy (2015, p. 695) argues that ‘the dynamic and global influences on teacher learning mean that the pursuit of adequate theory that helps us understand and shape it is an ongoing one’, and offers a framework to support the analysis of professional learning policies in relation to the forms of professionalism that they support. The framework breaks down professional learning policies into a number of components and exemplifies ways in which they might be said to appeal either to managerial or to democratic perspectives on professionalism.

This paper uses the contemporary Scottish context to try out Kennedy’s framework, seeking to shed light on professional learning policy in Scotland while at the same time evaluating the success of the framework as an analytical tool. Presenting this work in a pan-European context will allow alternative national perspectives to be brought to bear on the analysis, thereby enhancing the evaluative component of the paper. The research questions framing the study are:

1. To what extent does current professional learning policy in Scotland support either managerial or democratic forms of professionalism?
2. How useful is Kennedy’s framework in analysing this particular professional learning policy?

This work aims to contribute to an area of professional learning/CPD literature which is currently less well represented: the applied use of theoretical frameworks which promote greater and wider theoretical understanding of policy in this area.

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