Professional development, although thoroughly researched and increasingly important in the study of teachers, still has many unclear dimensions and conditions (Evans, 2014).

The contributions of many authors, such as Christopher Day (1990) and more recently Sachs (2016), Evans (2019) and Mockler (2022), are diverse and essential. Everything indicates that professional development depends on different dimensions and conditions, but also, as Hargreaves and Goodson (2006) have pointed out, on the historical eras in which teachers live, models of society, preferred pedagogies and logics of action, such as humanisation or neoliberalism.

The aim of this proposal is to delve deeper both into the behaviours, attitudes and professional competences that are expressive of teachers' professional development and their entanglements and conditions; and the significant others, practices and contexts (schools, educational and public policies, and historical periods) with impact on teacher professional development and transformative professionalism (Lopes, et al., 2024; Lopes et al. 2023).

This is why the study is based on 106 life stories of teachers in Portugal who began their careers around 1974 (the year of the democratic revolution) and have retired or are now retiring. In addition to the democratic revolution, these teachers followed the approval and implementation of the Basic Law of the Education System, Portugal's accession to the then EEC, the 1990s and the ‘passion for education’ (in the words of then Prime Minister António Guterrez) and then the economic crisis and neoliberalism.

According with the objectives, this research study has been developed in two strands: one identifying the aspects of the construction of teacher professionalism over the last 50 years, important because the career of these teacher is a very heuristic context for the study of professional development at European and international level; and the other concerning the identification of attitudes, behaviours, competences and intellectual aspects informing professional development.

Theoretically this research study links Evans‘ model with studies on teachers’ life cycles, relating behaviours, competences, attitudes and knowledge to teacher careers and respective socio-historical stages (Thomas Dota & Lopes, 2022).

Some central elements of Linda Evans' model need to be hightighted. Firstly, the necessary relationship between professional development and professionalism. Professional development is defined as "the process whereby people's professionalism may be considered to be enhanced (Evans, 2019: 7)" (ibid. p. 465-466). Meanwhile, professional development is not restricted to behavioural changes; it also implies intellectual and attitudinal changes, often invisible or which become visible much later. It is in this domain that we have learned the most.

With regard to life cycles, it is important to identify what each historical period or ecological context - the significant others, practices and contexts (schools, educational and public policies, and historical periods) - allows or denies teachers purposes, with impact on teacher professional development and transformative professionalism (Lopes, et al., 2024; Lopes et al. 2023).

In order to effectively capture aspects of professional development, one condition is common to all of the 106 interviewed teachers, veteran or retired teachers: they were known, among their peers, for their professional commitment.

The interview was organised around two main topics: how did you come to be a teacher? what has your career been like since you entered the profession? During the initial contact, the teachers were asked to bring an object that reflected their professional life in a special way, to facilitate the start of the interaction. Ethical precepts were ensured. The analysis was carried out by a team of six members who met every week to articulate definitions and interpretations. In an attempt to bridge the two paths of research - the one centred on Linda Evans‘model and the one relating to teachers’ life cycles as they relate to historical eras - two types of paradigmatic analysis were carried out: an inductive analysis and a deductive one (Polkinghorne, 1995). The deductive using dimensions and sub dimensions of Evans’ model a) to delve deeper into what counts as teachers' professional development, and the inductive one b) to identify which aspects of teachers' life cycles and socio-political contexts constrain or promote each kind of professional development. The qualitative data analysis programme NVivo was used for both inductive and deductive analysis. The deductive analysis used Evans' dimensions: attitudinal, behavioural and intellectual and their sub-dimensions. In the inductive analysis, 5 emerging themes were identified: pathways; architectures of practice, periods of practice, factors of change, and feelings, perceptions and affections. In this research study only Pathways was considered. Pathways “refers to the periods of the teachers' professional career and the stages that we were able to identify and in which chronologies and experiences are intertwined: for example, a teacher who starts working before the 25th of April, in the 1980s lives according to what the context offers to her, but also according to what she wants, since she has already about ten (10) years of professional experience (which also influences her expectations and perceptions). Times were identified (1970s before and after 25 April; 1980s; 1990s; 2000s; 2010s) and phases (first 5 years of service; 10 years of service; 20 years of service, 30 years of service; 40 years of service), not always coinciding” (Lopes, et al., 2023, p. 5). In the deductive analysis positive and negative aspects towards PD were identified. Positive aspects are those which shape the professionalism of these teachers: competence, processes and products, in the behavioural component, and the motivational, evaluative, and some perceptual changes in the attitudinal component. The discourses regarding the intellectual dimension are very consistent and positive.

The autonomy and freedom to build their professional identity and profession, mostly with students and colleagues, on one side and the importance of Intellectual development nurturing all the process must be highlighted in the deductive analysis as they inform about what is really important for this teachers, who built the recognised quality of Portuguese public schools But we still need to ask, with Evans, about “what creates [PD] characteristics (2002, p. 133). In order to do so, to resort to inductive analysis is needed, more specifically to the emergent theme Pathways, where the times, geographies and life cycles of teachers intersect (Lopes & Thomas Dotta, 2023). The findings, crossing deductive and inductive analysis, components of Evans’ model of professional development and socio-historical contexts and life cycles (Thomas Dotta & Lopes. 2022), allow to outline the foundations of an intellectual and socio-ecological perspective on teachers' professional development. Firstly, the importance of intellectual development in the context of professional development, given that in recent decades, under neoliberal influence, greater importance has been given to the behavioural dimension. Alexander and Perche (2024), when arguing about the importance of the intellectual well-being of teachers, clarify that it is a dynamic well-being. Second, this intellectual well-being depends on structural forces, which draws attention to the importance of PD ‘ecological framing’ (Alexander & Perche, 2024), we relate with ecology of teacher professional identity construction (Lopes, 2007; 2009) linking the ecology of human development (Bronfenbrenner) and a socio-historical approach. Evans (2023), proposing a critical approach with an epistemic focus, focuses on teacher wellbeing, providing ‘a conceptual backdrop to a discourse that recognises the importance of exercising a duty of care’ (p.8), a duty of care on the part of governments, policy makers, school leaders, and communities.

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