Improving Workplace Learning in Teacher Education

Abstract

Drawing on the multiple perspectives offered by earlier chapters, this final chapter looks specifically at how teacher learning in the workplace—across all career stages—might be improved. We identify some key principles which inform high quality workplace learning. These include: a collegiate learning culture within the workplace in which teachers’ achievements and contributions are valued; teacher learning which occurs both communally and individually, through participation in an accessible and well-planned variety of appropriately challenging tasks; the availability and protection of time and space allocated for teachers’ learning; learning which takes place both during and away from the ‘day job’; a school workplace which is sufficiently flexible to allow for informal learning to occur, alongside formal and planned programmes; and the space for teachers, as adult educators, to undertake often complex roles as facilitators of development within embedded learning cultures. We challenge some current assumptions around definitions of teacher learning, the knowledge bases on which such learning rests and the settings in which it occurs. We debate prevailing ideas that the school, as the immediate practice setting, is the only place in which relevant knowledge can be developed, and identify spaces within and beyond the school in which workplace learning is generated. These include universities, the settings for cross-professional practices, and established and emerging technologies, all of which offer important spaces for teacher learning. Finally, we return to the issue of how we might re-conceptualise teachers’ workplace learning in England’s rapidly changing educational landscapes, and highlight four case studies of good practice.