Overview and research question

There is, notes King (2014), ‘an increasing number of [professional development-related] causal impact studies carried out in the United States and elsewhere’. King’s geographical reference is significant, because, whilst there are certainly exceptions, North American research tends to incorporate a strong emphasis on professional development’s generativity: impact that extends beyond teachers’ practice to student achievement. Such perspectives have spawned what is referred to as a ‘consensus’ about what specific features of professional development provision make it effective – whereby ‘effectiveness’ is interpreted as incorporating generativity. Indeed, one American author referred to it as a ‘national consensus’ (Supovitz, 2001).

In contrast, quite a different tradition of research into professional development is evident in Europe. Whilst, again, there are exceptions, the dominant European perspective reflects a wider conceptualisation of (effective) professional development: one that privileges complexity theory over linear causality, and values the development of teachers themselves, irrespective of whether such development leads to student achievement gains. Moreover, European scholarship variously incorporates a distinct focus on conceptualisation, definitional precision, and theoretical understandings of what professional development is and what does or does not constitute it, and how it occurs.

This symposium reflects the European epistemic tradition. Drawing upon the findings of research projects undertaken in four European countries - Portugal, Poland, Spain, and the UK – the symposium will address the question:

• How does the multidimensionality of both professionalism and professional development manifest itself in the lives and practice of European teachers?

Addressing this question will involve consideration of substantive issues such as the relationship between professionalism and professional development, and the ways in which teacher professionalism has changed over the years. It will also involve consideration of methodological issues – in particular, ways of injecting rigour into examining teacher professionalism and professional development, by adopting a conceptual model as an analytical frame.

This overarching focus of this symposium is changes to teachers’ professionalism, since, as Evans (2008, 2014) notes, change to professionalism is essentially what defines professional development.

Theoretical framework

The symposium fundamentally reflects a complexity-theory-informed perspective on professional development; that is, recognition of professional development as a complex system: ‘an assemblage which incorporates multiple elements or “things”’, and which represents ‘an alternative view to the taken-for-granted linear transactional routine of professional development’ (Scanlon et al., 2022). The specific ‘alternative view’ that permeates the three symposium papers is one that reflects Evans’s (2008, 2014) conceptualisation of professional development as multi-dimensional, and effected by micro-level change to one or more of eleven identified elements or dimensions of developees’ professionalism.

In their review of models of professional development, Boylan et al. (2018) scrutinise five models that had been selected ‘for more in-depth review because they have been, or are potentially, powerful in supporting the research, evaluation and design of professional learning’ (p. 121). Described as offering a ‘paradigmatically distinct approach’ (Boylan et al. 2018), it is the most recently published of these five models – Linda Evans’s (2008, 2014) conceptual model of the componential structure of professional development – that, along with several of Evans’s other, related, theoretical perspectives, serves as the symposium’s specific theoretical framework. The first symposium paper will focus entirely on explaining that model; the other two papers will follow up by illustrating its application. In common with others (e.g. Beresford-Dey & Holme 2017; Guerin, 2021; Johnson, 2018; Zeggelaar et al., 2018) who have adopted Evans’s model(s) as an analytical frame, the researchers presenting their findings in the symposium variously illustrate the multi-dimensional nature of professional development and its relationship with professionalism, through portrayals of key elements and features of European teachers’ work and lives that span half a century.

Beresford-Dey, M. & Holme, R. (2018) Optional assessment submission within Master’s-level learning. Professional Development in Education, 44(3). Boylan, M. et al. (2018) Rethinking models of professional learning as tools: a conceptual analysis to inform research and practice. Professional Development in Education, 44(1). Evans, L. (2014) Leadership for professional development and learning: enhancing our understanding of how teachers develop, Cambridge Journal of Education, 44(2). Evans, L. (2022) Doubt, skepticism, and controversy in professional development scholarship: Advancing a critical research agenda. In I. Menter (Ed.) The Palgrave handbook of teacher education research. Palgrave Macmillan. Guerin, C. (2021) Researcher developers traversing the borderlands: credibility and pedagogy in the third space. Teaching in Higher Education, 26(3). Johnson, I. (2018) Driving learning development professionalism forward from within. Journal of Learning and Development in Higher Education, doi:10.47408/jldhe.v0i0.470. King, F. (2014) Evaluating the impact of teacher professional development. Professional Development in Education, 40(1). Scanlon, D. et al. (2022) A rhizomatic exploration of a professional development non-linear approach to learning and teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 115. Supovitz, J. A. (2001). Translating teaching practice into improved student achievement. In S. Fuhrman (Ed.), National Society for the Study of Education Yearbook. University of Chicago Press. Zeggelaar, A. et al. (2018) Exploring what works in professional development. Professional Development in Education, 44(5).