Introduction

Abstract

By any definition, teachers are knowledge workers. In the school systems of modern societies, they have the primary responsibility to transmit formal knowledge to the next generation of workers and citizens. Teachers’ work is among the most demanding and complicated of jobs focused on knowledge. To do their job well, teachers have to master the changing content and pedagogy of formal fields of specialized knowledge, develop empathic understanding with diverse groups of students and perform a multiplicity of other complex roles. But teaching is also among the most underappreciated jobs and the complexity of teachers’ learning has been virtually ignored, for reasons that this book will examine, in comparison with other professions. A recent overview of teachers and teaching (Beijaard, Korthagen & Verloop 2007, p. 105) observed that: “It is remarkable that with so much attention being paid to student learning in schools, the issue of teacher learning has until recently drawn relatively little attention from researchers.” There has been growing attention to some programmatic aspects of teachers’ learning in some countries. In this book, we examine literature and trends worldwide, and use our Canadian empirical research data to deepen analysis of the global issue of teachers’ learning. In this time when the processing of information has become more prominent than processing materials in so many peoples’ lives, it is indeed ironic that so little is known about the learning processes of these knowledge workers who are so pre-eminent in the transmission of knowledge to others. The basic purpose of this book is to shed more light on the array of teachers’ learning practices.