School is facing various issues, ranging from broader themes, such as socio-cultural change to more specific topics, like the presence of pupils lacking basic skills in the local language, teacher Professional Learning (PL) has undergone several changes at various levels (Opfer & Pedder, 2011; Stewart, 2014; Boylan, Coldwell, Maxwell & Jordan 2018). Concerning terminology, we can find expressions going from ‘in-service training’ to ‘professional learning and development’; in terms of locus of control we go from externally provided programmes to more formative, school - based learning. The extension of what provided goes from limited offerings such as accredited courses to varied and blended learning offerings, such as coaching, mentoring and distance learning (Ostinelli & Crescentini, 2021). In some cases, the accent is more on accountability and performance, while in others on teacher professionalism and professionality (Hoyle, 2018).
The transition from In-service Education and Training (INSET) to Continuous Professional Development (CPD), to Professional Learning and Development (PLD) reflects different concepts of PL.
INSET focus on training teachers in some definite skills, sometimes necessary for the implementation of pre-defined curricula; CPD is oriented to updating existing teaching knowledge and practices, PLD tries also to foster new knowledge and expertise in teachers, conceived as developing professionals in a framework combining lifelong and lifewide learning. Also the same idea of stability in the professional role is different in these three kind of PL.
In a previous article (Ostinelli & Crescentini, 2021), we analysed how five European countries (Italy, Germany, England, France, Finland) are developing teacher PL, highlighting their similitudes and differences with a framework based on six dimensions and nine operational fields (indicators). In this study, we reached the conclusion that teacher PL in some countries is more PLD-oriented (Finland), while in other (France, Italy) it is more akin to INSET. Germany and England are representing situations in transition from more traditional to more innovative experiences in teacher PL.
Even if we work in Switzerland, we choose not include it in the participating group of nations. Cause the Swiss teacher PL system is rather intricate. Switzerland is composed by 26 cantons and four official languages, every canton is a state enjoying huge autonomy in matter of education. Needless to say, teacher PL is not practiced in homogenous ways in the country: a look at the study of EDK/IDES on compulsivity of continuous training (EDK/IDES 2020) shows how some cantons, like Basel Stadt, let their teachers of compulsory school almost totally free to choose if participating or not. In the meantime, others, like Ticino, prescribe minimally eight hours of training for every school year. During the past years, several attempt to coordinate the cantonal educational systems were done. The last one is the federal agreement Harmos (CDPE, 2017) that tried, with some success, to harmonise some basic aspects of the various cantonal compulsory educational systems.
We find important to analyse what is going on in teacher PL in Switzerland, also for contributing in finding innovative and more shared ways to practice teacher PL in our country. For doing this, it has been necessary to shift our focus from the European to the Swiss dimension, taking into account all its particularities. For this reason, we are currently developing a deep analysis on teacher PL in Switzerland, including all the 26 cantons. For this process we are using the above mentioned framework (described in the methodology section), that proved its validity in our previous experience. We think that our analysis will prove useful for future and more co-ordinated initiatives in the domain of teacher PL in Switzerland.