1. Professional Learning and Development

Network 1 was established to contribute to the field of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and to provide an opportunity for scholarly discussion and a forum for the dissemination of research.  Research usually involves (but is not limited to) the learning and development of professionals and others working in education. 

The network primarily focuses on the following:

• ways in which professionals in the field of education learn and develop throughout their professional careers;
• ways in which this professional learning and development improves the education of adults and young people;
• organisational, historical, situational, and policy contexts in which their professional learning occurs;
• knowledge that shapes their professional identity or contributes to their understanding and betterment;
• models, policies and approaches to practice within the field of professional learning and development; and
• conditions and practices that improve and encourage professional learning and development.

Our understanding of professional learning and development has undergone tremendous change, including widespread recognition that adults must be lifelong learners, that teaching and learning are not limited to classrooms or formal CPD, that teachers and leaders benefit from implicit and explicit professional learning support, that individual professional learning is necessary but not sufficient for sustainable change within groups and organisations, and that education and teaching operate within complex environments so impact is rarely a linear process.

Recent areas of interest have included induction and mentoring; professional knowledge, values and beliefs; professional learning cultures; professional learning communities; leadership development; models of professional learning;  practitioner enquiry; policy and evaluation.

Proposals for posters, roundtables, papers, workshops, and symposia directed to Network 1 should:

• be directly related to the aims of Network 1
• clearly articulate implications for professional learning and development
• address issues of European or global interest (see EERA proposal requirements).

Please note that a symposium is not a set of empirical papers related to a theme. Rather, papers for a symposium are broader than empirical papers in that they present key concepts and/or varying perspectives of the symposium theme determined by the organizer of the symposium.  Each symposium must have a discussant (not one of the presenters) who will read the contributing papers before the conference and synthesize or elaborate the major ideas of the papers and pose new insights that the papers suggest.