Teacher learning and teacher professional development (TPD) are always key to educational reform (Edwards 2011). The effectiveness of teacher learning activities is one of the core concerns for TPD around the world. Billions of dollars annually have been invested in improving the quality of teachers’ skills and qualifications by developing their opportunities for TPD (Kraft, Blazar, & Hogan, 2018; DeMonte, 2013). However, research on TPD has generally yielded disappointing results with teacher professional learning activities often being characterised as ineffective (Sancar, Atal, & Deryakulu, 2023; Patfield, Gore, & Harris, 2023; Admiraal, Schenke, Jong, Emmelot & Sligte, 2021; Fairman, Smith, Pullen & Lebel, 2023; Merono, Calderón, & Arias-Estero, 2023). 

The ineffectiveness of teacher learning can be attributed to the in-service training style in earlier stage of TPD. Traditional approaches of improving teacher learning emphasize annual credit hours for the sake of credentialing. The training was disconnected from authentic classroom contexts and teachers often passively engaged in these activities, and resulted in their limited motivation (Fariman, et al., 2023; Coldwell, 2017). In considering these drawbacks, much research has tackled this problem and proposed solutions. For example, some called for the need for a clearer definition of TPD and an articulation of its particular characteristics and frameworks (Sancar, et al., 2021). Researchers also proposed conditions to improve the quality of TPD. It would be better if the activities are more intensive, sustained, and practice-based, and if the participation is more active, collaborative, having buy-in from teachers, and subject-specific expertise from outside (Sims & Fletcher-Wood, 2021; Fairman, et al., 2023). However, several recent evaluations of TPD interventions which include all the characteristics have not found a positive impact (Sims & Fletcher-Wood, 2021). In other words, the consensus around the characteristics of effective TPD still lacks evidential warrant.

Clearly, the wicked problems of TPD remain. The questions researchers wondered over for two decades included: What are the conditions that support and promote teachers growth (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002)? How teachers develop professionally (Evans, 2011)? What are the contextual factors impacting it (Kang et al., 2013)? What TPD actually is and what effective TPD really entails (Sancar, et al., 2021)? How this TPD should be designed is somewhat less clear (Sims & Fletcher-Wood, 2021). As it currently is, researchers have a vague consensus in the direction of holisticity. Research needs to examine the TPD concept as a whole (Evans, 2014), and provide a meaningful and holistic perspective of TPD (Sancar, et al., 2021). If holisticity is highlighted, rather than exploring fragmented characteristics, features, and elements of TPD, a different research approach may be needed.

This study draws from Actor-network theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005) as a theoretical perspective and methodological approach to investigate TPD. The major difference between the ANT approach and other empirical researches in TPD is that learning is an effect of the relations within assemblages of human and non-human entities (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). ANT treats entities equally and focuses on relations and its effects. Specifically, learning is considered as relational, connected, and associated through which matter and meaning, object and subject, co-emerge (Mulcahy, 2014). Three conceptual tools of ANT guided this study: translation (Latour, 1987), assemblage, and matter of concern (Latour, 2004). The (in)effectiveness of TPD can then be re-conceptualized as investigating the network effect of TPD activities. By exploring a specific in-service teachers’ hands-on workshop, this study ask the question: how does teacher learning, as a network effect, happen?

Methodologically, ANT provides a means of following the mess as it unfolds, as opposed to smoothing out and closing down (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010), to allow the nuance of practice to be foregrounded (Mitchell, 2020). Differed from traditional trans-missive models, this study conceptualizes teacher learning as a non-linear model, which is more transformative and participative, to understand how learning occurs. Data were collected through a multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995), observing 44 cross-school teacher community workshops, 40 semi-structured interviews, and numerous postings in online social media. These hands-on workshops took place at various locations with half-day or whole -day intensive session. They were mainly held by reputable high school teachers, or “peer speakers” to enact the current curriculum policies in Taiwan. In their attempts to implement the new pedagogical teaching practices and perspectives, the participants felt frustrated when they have to explicitly output their curriculum design on their group posters. Given the situation that many artifacts were presented around the workshop rooms, such as white boards, papers, sticky notes, posters, curriculum guidelines handbooks, textbooks, and so on, human-centered lens might not serve adequately to explore how learning happened. The socio-material networks were observably more suitable to produce new understanding about how learning occurred. Data analysis consists of two steps: identifying the 'matter of concern' and identifying the assemblage. First, I trace the varied concerns for all human and non-human actors: how each actor participates in the workshop, paying particular attention to moments of disturbance, such as when sticky notes were not been posted on the white board in time. Second, I follow these concerns to further discover the variegated, complicated, uncertain, risky, heterogeneous, material and network-y features during the process of the workshop, the workshop was thus an object that had become a ‘thing’, a ‘matter of fact’ that had given rise to complicated entanglements (Latour, 2005). A network of people, things, and discourse, -- an assemblage was thus identified. ANT shifts the focus from cognitive gains to the functioning of networks that impact teacher learning (Rubin et al., 2021). Specifically by tracing backwards through networks, learning is seen as an effect of the creation of networks. A phenomenon could be realized as the effects of a dynamic network that includes not only the peer speaker and the participants, but also the artifacts, the questions and/or doubts the participants raised, and even the snacks around them.

Teacher professional learning were enacted not only by people but also by tools. Five assemblages were identified: willingness to receive, ability to receive, willingness to understand, ability to understand, and ability to practice. Each assemblage was enacted by heterogeneous actors. For example, to enact their ability to receive, the practical language the peer speaker used enrolled participants to be able to acquire the context-embedded academic knowledge. The simplified academic knowledge mobilized participants to be able to externalize what they understood on the sticky notes. In the same vein, to enact their ability to understand, the questions the facilitators asked for each group members were enacted by the sticky notes they wrote, and the flexibility of the procedures allowed by the facilitator mobilized the participants not to quit from the unfamiliar learning tasks. Interestingly, , to enact the ability to practice, the snacks provided around the workshop space kept the frustrated participants from dropping out and enrolled them back to the complicated dialogues. In summary, it was not the individual actors, but the associated relations between actors that linked each other to perform differently throughout the workshop. Using such a non-linear socio-material approach, the findings of this study offers an important shift in our understanding and support of TPD: teacher learning is the result of mobilized networks. To be effective, we need to examine how learning emerges through network effects, rather than as a cognitive process in general. The contribution of this proposal is significant because little research in TPD examined how learning occurred based on ANT. If the silent participation of those heterogeneous actors were overlooked, we would be less possible to scrutinize how human and nonhuman enact and translate each other, resulting in nuanced network effects.

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