Session Information
01 SES 11 A, Teacher Professional Learning and Development in Europe (Part 2)
Symposium continued from 01 SES 09 A, to be continued in 01 SES 12 A
Contribution
Teacher learning in Northern Ireland occurs in the unique context of an education system where the historical and political legacies of the past continue to be manifest in a denominationally divided school system (Gallagher, 2021: p.13) though with a growing ‘integrated’ school system. With a population of 1.9 million, Northern Ireland is a small state within the United Kindgom (UK). Sharing a land border with the Republic of Ireland (RoI), it has been described as having ‘the smallest school population in the UK but with a structural design that is amongst the most complex’ (Gallagher, 2021: p.147). As one of the three devolved administrations of the United Kingdom (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) its Department of Education (DE) has responsibility for education and for teachers in Northern Ireland. However, the development of the teaching profession, and teachers’ professional learning, has been impacted by many factors relating to its unique political context and the legacy of the circumstances in which the Northern Ireland state was established. In fact, devolution in Northern Ireland has followed a ‘stop-start’ approach that impacted on the ways in which innovation in teacher professional learning has evolved. There have been a series of reviews of education in Northern Ireland and the inability to progress the outcomes of these is perhaps indicative of complexities associated with introducing change in education in the Northern Ireland context. It is against this backdrop, that our presentation will explore teacher learning in Northern Ireland. Conceptual models of the teacher and teaching, which are key pillars in the teacher learning strategy as it has evolved since the early 2000s, are considered, looking closely at Teaching: the Reflective Profession (GTCNI, 2007) and Learning Leaders (DE, 2016), as well as arrangements for early professional development (EPD). We will consider the ways in which teacher learning has evolved and some of the challenges facing the wider implementation of policy and teachers’ engagement with it.
References
Department of Education for Northern Ireland - DE (2016) Learning Leaders: A Strategy for Teacher Professional Learning. Bangor: DENI. Gallagher, T., (2021) ‘Governance and leadership in education policy making and school development in a divided society’, School Leadership & Management, 41:1-2, 132-151, DOI: 10.1080/13632434.2021.1887116 General Teaching Council Northern Ireland - GTCN (2007) Teaching: The Reflective Profession Belfast: GTCNI https://gtcni.org.uk/professional-space/professional-competence/teaching-the-reflective-profession
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.