Rethinking professional learning for teachers and ...

Journal of Professional Capital and Community Rethinking professional learning for teachers and school leaders Deborah M. Netolicky

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To cite this document: Deborah M. Netolicky , (2016)," Rethinking professional learning for teachers and school leaders ", Journal of Professional Capital and Community, Vol. 1 Iss 4 pp. 270 - 285 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JPCC-04-2016-0012 Downloaded on: 25 December 2016, At: 05:40 (PT) References: this document contains references to 59 other documents. To copy this document: [email protected] The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 4263 times since 2016* Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by All users group

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Rethinking professional learning for teachers and school leaders

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School of Education, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia

Deborah M. Netolicky


Received 26 April 2016 Revised 8 July 2016 26 July 2016 31 July 2016 Accepted 31 July 2016

Journal of Professional Capital and Community Vol. 1 No. 4, 2016 pp. 270-285 © Emerald Group Publishing Limited 2056-9548 DOI 10.1108/JPCC-04-2016-0012

Abstract Purpose – Situated within the conversation of the global push for teacher quality and for professional learning that positively shapes teaching practice in order to improve student learning, the purpose of this paper is concerned with transformational learning that actively shifts cognition, emotion, and capacity (Drago-Severson, 2009). Design/methodology/approach – This paper is set against the backdrop of one independent, wellresourced Australian school during its professional learning intervention. It draws together findings from a narrative study that examined the lived experiences of 14 educators. The educators interviewed for this study included the researcher (also an educator at the school), two teachers, and 11 school leaders at middle and executive levels. Findings – While the study set out to explore how educators’ experiences of professional learning (trans)form their senses of professional identity, it found that it is not just professional learning, but epiphanic life experiences that shape professional selves and practices. Learning is highly individualized, not one-size-fits-all. It is that which taps into who educators see and feel they are that has the most impact on beliefs, thoughts, behaviors, and practices. Originality/value – This study suggests that transformational professional learning can occur in a wide range of life arenas. It recommends that the definition of professional learning be broadened, that teachers and schools think more expansively and flexibly about what it is that transforms educators, and about who drives and chooses this learning. Schools and systems can work from their own contexts to design and slowly iterate models of professional learning, from the bottom up and the middle out. Keywords Professional learning, Professional development, Professional capital, Professional learning community, Teacher growth, Teacher quality Paper type Research paper

The debate concerning teacher quality for student learning is a propulsive agenda for much theory and practice around professional development. The quality of teachers and their teaching influences student achievement (Wiliam, 2016). Professional learning, as it raises student achievement by developing teachers (Drago-Severson, 2012; Yoon et al., 2007), has become a focus of schools, districts, and governments. Some approach teacher development with a performativity agenda, but negative drivers of educational change develop a culture of fear, competition, and compliance (Fullan, 2011; Fullan and Quinn, 2016). These risk alienating, rather than developing, educators (Schmoker, 1999). Professional development initiatives would benefit from being based in motivation, continuous improvement, collaboration, and building the professional learning culture of schools (Fullan, 2011; Fullan and Quinn, 2016; Wiliam, 2016). Set against the backdrop of the global push for teacher quality, and consequent worldwide initiatives in professional development, this study generated contextspecific interview data in order to answer the questions: (1) what is the role of professional learning on identities or growth?; and (2) what professional learning is (trans)formational?


It examined the experiences of a group of educators against the catalytic context of one well-resourced, independent, Australian school’s professional growth model. The beginning of the teacher growth initiative (TGI) in 2013 provided a unique time and place against which to set a study of professional learning. Looking more broadly than the Initiative, at participants’ lifelong learning experiences, this study took an insider look at the underexplored perceptions of teachers and combined this with the views of school leaders, including middle leaders who are often absent from research literature. Interviews of the researcher (also an educator at the school), two teachers, and 11 school leaders, illuminated what learning might be considered professionally transformational in shaping educators’ beliefs and practices. Literature on professional learning for educators Differences in teachers make a difference to student learning (Hattie, 2009; Wiliam, 2016), and effective professional learning is crucial to developing quality teachers (Baguley and Kerby, 2012; Desimone et al., 2002). In this paper, professional learning has been used to describe any experience of educator learning, including what some literature and participants call professional development (PD), or continuing professional development: those activities packaged as professional learning experiences for educators, such as talks, courses, and conferences. This reflects Timperley et al.’s (2007) definition of professional development as the delivery of activities and processes, and professional learning as the internal process of creating knowledge and expertise. More than that, this paper situates professional learning as part of the process of professional becoming, which creates shifts in knowledge, practice, or identity (Mockler, 2013). This study was concerned with transformational learning that actively shifts cognition, emotion, and capacity (Drago-Severson, 2009). Transformational learning is concerned with not just what some knows and can do, but with their ways of knowing (Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano, 2016). What is shaped in transformational professional learning is how educators know and their internal capacities for knowing, doing, and being. While professional learning is highly individualized (TNTP, 2015), best practice models have been identified as those that are collaborative and grounded, rather than individual or top down. These include: professional learning communities (Darling-Hammond and Hammerness, 2005; Mullen and Schunk, 2010; Timperley et al., 2007); participatory action research (Grundy, 1994; Kemmis and McTaggart, 2008; Timperley, 2012); and coaching and mentoring (City et al., 2009; Costa and Garmston, 2006; Showers and Joyce, 1996). The interdependent relationship between school and individual (Costa and Garmston, 2006; Sawyer, 2002) is crucial in professional learning. As professional capital is about individual and collective knowing and doing over time (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012), professional learning works best when it addresses and honors parts and whole, person and group. It also benefits from being supported and resourced by schools (Sawyer, 2002; Wiliam, 2016). While sitting outside much professional learning literature, some have questioned the credibility of studies on teacher professional learning, calling for dedicated efforts to develop more trustworthy evidence (Guskey and Yoon, 2009; Yoon et al., 2007). Guskey and Yoon (2009) state that “we have no strong, valid, and scientifically defensible evidence that these kinds of oft-promoted school-based professional learning are effective” (pp. 496-497). Yoon et al.’s (2007) syntheses found that only nine of the then-existing 1,343 studies on teacher professional learning met the standards of credible evidence set by What Works Clearinghouse, the US government body

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responsible for the provision of scientific evidence around education (Yoon et al., 2007; Guskey and Yoon, 2009). While the nine studies they analyzed showed that providing professional development to teachers increased student achievement by an average of 21 percentile points (Guskey and Yoon, 2009; Yoon et al., 2007), they describe the existing knowledge about the relationship between professional learning activities and improvements in student learning as scarce. The present study contributes to identified areas for further research: the relationships of teacher professional learning with teaching, teacher collaboration, teacher leadership, and school leadership (Zammit et al., 2007); and the effect of school reforms on teachers themselves (Yoon et al., 2007) and on leaders. The above review of literature situates the study in terms of the professional learning landscape. Due to this paper’s inductive approach, however – which reflects the exploratory nature of the method – additional literature that emerges from the study’s results is cited in the findings, implications, and significance sections. Narrative method This study, positioned within a social constructionist theoretical frame and focused on the phenomenon of transformational professional learning, sought a method that would provide in-depth insights into teachers’ and school leaders’ perceptions of their learning. Narrative method was selected to align with the purpose and ontology of the study and to provide in-depth insights into lived experiences. It privileges humanness and the plurality of truths (Riessman, 2002), harnessing remembrance and retelling as a way into understanding phenomena, and into uncovering significance in our remembered moments (Leggo and Sameshima, 2014). In this case, the study asked participants to share their experiences of professional learning across their lives and within the context of a school-based intervention. Participants’ stories have been published elsewhere as composite narratives (Netolicky, 2016b) using literary metaphor (Netolicky, 2015), but for the purposes of this paper, participants’ narratives have been summarized as qualitative results, in order to draw together the relevant threads. Site: Lutwidge School The research site for the present study was Lutwidge School (a pseudonymic name). It is an Australian, non-selective, independent, well-resourced pre-kindergarten to Year 12 school, with about 1,500 students from metropolitan, rural, and international backgrounds. The commencement of Lutwidge School’s TGI, explained below, provided a timely opportunity for teachers and academic leaders to reflect on their experiences of professional learning as part of a study that occurred alongside, but separate to, the initiative. The intervention context The TGI, a teacher-directed growth-through-observation-and-coaching intervention, situated within the context of Lutwidge School, provided a backdrop for this study’s participants and their stories of professional learning. Beginning in 2013, it involved teams of teachers developing a school-based model of reflection and conversation around teaching practice. The model of learning being explored by the TGI teams included use of the Danielson Framework for Teaching within an observation-andcoaching cycle. A cognitive coaching (Costa and Garmston, 2006) approach was chosen


by Lutwidge School for its emphasis on building internal capacity and selfactualization; coaches were experts in coaching, not givers of advice, providers of solutions, or pedagogical mentors. The researcher was involved in the school’s initiative as the person who wrote the school’s proposal paper in 2012 and the facilitator of that intervention from 2013 to 2016; she is still in that role at the time of writing. While participants were selected from the researcher’s school and the TGI in which she was immersed, this study was not an evaluation of the intervention. Rather, it acted as a background context to the generation of teacher and leader situated stories of professional learning. Participants: researcher, teachers, and school leaders Participants were drawn from a pool of those involved in the TGI. They were: the researcher (also a teacher at the school, the facilitator of the Initiative, and a participating coach and coachee), two teachers from the initiative, six middle leaders, and five executive leaders. All 11 TGI first-pilot-year team members were invited to participate in this study. Four of those teachers volunteered, although two later withdrew. All 19 academic leaders at Lutwidge School were invited to participate; five executive leaders and six middle leaders agreed. Data generation Data were generated in individual, semi-structured narrative-eliciting interviews that posed open, story-inviting questions. The sparing questionsmainly “Tell me about your experience of professional learning” and “Tell me about your experience of the TGI” – were designed to encourage participants to tell stories around their experiences of professional learning and the TGI, including its cognitive coaching and Danielson Framework for Teaching components. In order to “follow participants down their diverse trails” (Riessman, 2002, p. 696), interviews followed a cognitive coaching pattern of “pause, paraphrase, pause, pose question,” allowing data to reflect the idiosyncrasies of participant stories. The focus on paraphrasing participant responses as part of the narrative listening was an in-interview veracity checking measure; participants were able to immediately approve or amend the way in which their stories were being understood. The researcher and teachers were interviewed twice by an independent interviewer in the first-pilot-year of the initiative (2013), while the leaders were interviewed once by the researcher in the second pilot year (2014). Data analysis Transcriptions of interviews provided the primary data of the study and were coded for emerging themes, as well as for outlying perspectives. The study took a hermeneutic approach to data interpretation that involved iteratively, immersively studying data for what was meaningful for participants and what themes emerged, using a combination of inductive and deductive interpretive procedures (Squire, 2008). The researcher conducted an ongoing circle of analysis, repeatedly revisiting data, looking for converging patterns, and individual divergences. For the purpose of this paper, the framework of analysis was the lens of lived experiences of, and perceptions around, professional learning and the TGI in the Lutwidge School context. Ethical measures Ethics underpins the research process and requires constant decision making, and a combination of problem solving and creativity (Kara, 2015). Researchers need to


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contend with the ethical tensions of protecting participants’ anonymity while communicating authentic data (Netolicky, 2015), especially when researching a small community of potential participants, as in this study. The researcher’s insider role, as member and facilitator of the TGI, meant that ethical risks to the (especially teacher) participants needed to be minimized. In order to protect teacher participants, the researcher was deliberately kept from knowing which of the 11 teachers volunteered, or subsequently which participants withdrew. The process involved the researcher emailing the TGI team in May of 2013 to inform them of, and invite them to participate in, the study. Teachers emailed their intention to volunteer to a third party who took on the role of communicating with the teacher participants and keeping their identities concealed from the researcher. Additionally, a person other than the researcher interviewed teacher participants, after being briefed by the researcher about protocols and questions. This independent interviewer had no connection with the research site or the participants and was bound by a confidentiality agreement. After teacher interviews were conducted, audio-recorded interview data were transcribed and de-identified by a third party. This veracity checking step allowed teachers to approve or amend the transcripts before the de-identified, authenticated transcriptions were provided to the researcher. That only four of 11 teachers volunteered to participate, and that two withdrew, reflects the possibility that teacher participants in narrative research may feel vulnerable, exposed, or at risk of having themselves identified. School leaders were interviewed once by the researcher. While the school leaders were not in a dependent relationship with the researcher, there were still ethical and relational complexities; position alone does not equate to a lack of vulnerability. School leaders were informed (in letters and at the beginning of the interview) that they did not have to answer any question with which they feel uncomfortable, could withdraw from the interview or study at any time, and would be given the opportunity to authenticate interview transcripts. The researcher made clear her separate role of researcher, as distinct from her role in the school, and that all data generated would remain anonymous and confidential. Findings The following summary of findings draws together a summary of what this study’s participant groups – the researcher, the teachers, and the school leaders – revealed about professional learning. This study found types of professional learning more wide-ranging than that often found in literature. Perhaps this was due to the open nature of the interviews. Instead of being asked about what professional learning opportunities had been offered and taken up by schools (as in Baguley and Kerby, 2012; Desimone et al., 2002; Garet et al., 2001), participants were asked to recall those times when they learned in ways that they considered transformational, shaping their identities, thinking, or practice. In response, they cast their nets wider than their experiences in education sector work or related courses. Participants chose to discuss epiphanic vignettes, including experiences that were professional and personal, formal and informal, in and out of educational contexts, and singular and collaborative. Professional learning: encompassing life-wide epiphanic moments Lifelong, life-wide professional learning. Professional learning was viewed by the researcher, the teachers, and the school leaders as: collaborative and individual;


occurring in life, school, and work; and requiring elements of support and challenge. Not only was it lifelong, but it was life-wide. For these participants, it is life experiences, as well as professional experiences, that influence their professional beliefs and practices. The researcher noted that, “It is other things in school or in life or in relationships that have changed what I do professionally, rather than a course that says that it will.” One executive school leader explained that their “whole life has shaped who I’ve become” including a relationship with a grandparent who was “a huge influence on my life.” Examples of transformational life experiences, as reported by participants, included family relationships, work in non-education sectors, regular trips to the third world to volunteer at an orphanage, world travel, tragedy, and parenting. Learning experiences that involve immersion over a period of time emerged as powerfully formative. Additionally, four leaders talked about their need for space – the lack of busyness and input – in order to care for themselves enough to be open to learning and give themselves time to process learning. Learning directed by system or organization vs learning directed by the individual. Participants saw professional learning as a balance between that which was mandated and that which was self-directed. Both teacher participants discussed their preference for choosing their own learning trajectories, with one explaining, “There is some professional learning that you choose to do and there is some professional learning that you don’t choose to do but you need to do.” School leaders talked about doing some learning for themselves and “a lot of things for compliance.” Both teachers were critical of professional development that uses ineffective teaching methods or commodifies educational theory and practice. They were frustrated by professional development that “just tells you the same kinds of things but calls it something different” or is couched in “glitzy packaging.” The effectiveness of professional development courses was a point of divergence of leader participants. Three middle leaders said that they could always get something out of a course, while two executive leaders and one middle leader explained that for them courses were mostly not worth their time. For executive leaders this was partly due to the impacts of being taken out of the school environment and role, and partly because they perceived that traditional professional development activities do not change practice or shift thought. One explained that “going externally or having external people come in to tell me things […] won’t change my practice eight times out of 10.” Traditional learning through courses, speakers, or postgraduate study. Returning to being learners themselves facilitated the researcher, teachers’, and school leaders’ reflections on their own learning and leading the learning of others. Further study, or being in a classroom or course, was a reminder of what it is like to be a student and that “one size does not fit all” in terms of professional learning. The six leader participants who had completed their masters study all considered it a significant learning experience. Collaborative learning. Learning through collaboration was important to participants and included teaching teams, postgraduate study groups, and action learning projects. Conferences and courses were seen as opportunities for collaboration, with personal connections deemed the most impactful aspect. One teacher discussed a school-based action learning project as something that “reshaped” them. The project combined elements of self-choice and self-direction, with collaboration and expert consultation, resulting in changes to the teacher’s approach to working with other teachers. “That has been, by far, the most powerful learning thing I’ve ever been through.” One middle leader described a school-based collaborative action research


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project as “extraordinary,” providing a “high level of intellectual engagement,” and developing “shared understanding” among the group. Role models and anti-models. Mentors, role models, and anti-models had a place in the professional learning of participants. One teacher talked about a principal and a deputy principal who were a “huge influence” and “instilled” in them principles about teaching. Two “remarkable” principals put their trust into one executive leader early in their career, giving them “incredible” early-on leadership opportunities and “the confidence to take a next step.” Being “believed in” empowered this leader. One middle leader recounted an experience of a “negative” leader who “used to write down all the things I wasn’t doing right and then hand them to me on a Friday” as shaping the kind of leader they aspired to be: “telling people what they’re doing well” rather than being too “fixated on the things that need improving.” Two other executive leaders also talked about how effective and ineffective leaders had shaped their own leadership practices. Coaching. Professional coaches provided safe, trusted places for this study’s participants to grow. Five leaders discussed coaching relationships as important learning for them. Four executive leaders talked about formal coaching relationships as spaces in which they could reflect on their leadership in a safe and challenging environment. One middle leader talked about how their informal professional friends in non-school contexts help them to develop their teaching and leading. The researcher and school leaders learned through talk and conversation, experiences which they reflected brought their thinking to the surface and extended it. One executive leader explained that conversations with a professional coach have helped to develop their “openness” and “consciousness awareness” while giving them the room to work through school leadership problems. The teacher-as-coach model used by the TGI was felt by these participants to be important, confirming that the relationship must be safe, confidential, and non-evaluative and that coaching relationships in which there is a hierarchical imbalance or an evaluation may be counter-productive (Costa and Garmston, 2003; Heineke, 2013; Netolicky, 2016a). Interviews as sites of learning. Research interviews were found to be a site of learning for school leaders, developing their thinking through the opportunity to verbalize it with an active listener. Five leaders described being interviewed for this study as a learning experience, using words such as “a pleasure,” a “privilege,” and an “indulgence.” One leader explained that the interview had given them “valuable” time and space to reflect upon their own educator self and leadership, thereby allowing them to think differently and in new ways; it was “the first time I thought of it like that.” The interview itself was a site for generation of new knowledge and meaning (Johnson, 2009). The researcher’s epiphany that she grows in times of discomfort came during a research interview, suggesting that talking aloud can surface realizations that would otherwise go unrealized. For the researcher, interviewing school leaders was additionally an opportunity to learn from the stories of others. Social media as heutagogical learning. Professional learning was also shown to include “do it yourself” approaches, pointing toward the study of self-determined learning, or heutagogy (Hase and Kenyon, 2000). In this study, heutagogical approaches included professional reading and online collaborative platforms such as Twitter, blogging, and Voxer, which flattened hierarchies, geographies, and time zones. These were seen as key supports for, and motivators of, learning for the researcher and one teacher, allowing them to connect, communicate, and learn from a global community. The researcher found Twitter and blogging to be “collaborative global


platforms” for connecting with like-minded thinkers and engaging in robust international conversations about education. Engagement with social media alerted her to trends, resources, blog posts, and articles which expanded her knowledge, understanding, and awareness. She “could find support and thinking outside of my immediate environment.” For the researcher, blogging allowed more rigorous contribution and comprehensive conversation than microblogging in 140-character bites, and Voxer helped to personalize and extend collaborative conversations. One teacher saw Twitter as “an endless supply of professional learning;” “time effective” “constant PD” which situates them as “part of a worldwide personal learning community.” These two participants described Twitter as constant, daily professional learning with a worldwide personal learning community in which hierarchies are collapsed, a description consistent with Gao et al.’s (2012) analyses of 21 studies on microblogging in education. TGI intervention: a school-based catalytic context for growth Aligned with purpose and beliefs. The researcher and teachers of this study were drawn to the TGI because of their alignment with its purpose, resonance with the school context, and desire for voice and impact. The initiative came out of the Lutwidge School strategic plan and was instigated by the principal, but it was the researcher-as-teacherand-facilitator and the team of classroom teachers who enacted and developed the professional learning model. The school leaders were not directly involved in the TGI but viewed it from a strategic perspective. One executive leader described the intervention as “trusting that people have those capacities within them, just providing them with the opportunities to explore and reflect on that in real ways.” Another explained that it “fits well with my idea that when I want to learn I want to be involved in the process, so it is a collaborative process, as opposed to someone telling you what to do.” This leader added that “it does mean that teachers are setting their own goals and being self-directed learners […] so that all fits very well with my own beliefs about learning.” Although the school leaders saw the TGI as positively shifting the professional culture of Lutwidge School, two middle leaders had some questions around what they saw as a potentially one-size-fits-all approach to professional learning. One also worried that the intervention may become corrupted over time, hijacked by strategic or administrative agendas. A combination of self-direction and collaboration. The researcher and teachers’ experiences of the TGI led to learning, through its combination of self-direction and collaboration. All three noted that sites of learning included the team of teachers involved in the TGI and the classrooms of teachers they observed. The teachers in the TGI were seen by each other as internal experts, educators from whom to learn. “What we’re doing as a group,” one teacher explained, “is we try and map out the best way of doing this […] we’re mapping out the plan that’s going to be followed to improve teacher quality in the future.” The teachers felt that the initiative was doing important work. School leaders also described the together-and-separate benefits of the teacher growth intervention as including the “extremely valuable deprivatizing of practice” to hone “own teaching practice and share good teaching practice across the school.” The Danielson Framework for Teaching. Developing their understanding of the Danielson Framework for Teaching impacted teacher participants’ classroom practice and helped them to apply more specificity in reflections about teaching and in professional goal setting. Both teachers’ knowledge of the “Distinguished” teaching


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descriptors from the Framework shaped their classroom practice; they held these in the back of its mind when teaching. The Danielson Framework for Teaching was seen by participants of this study as having the potential to facilitate a common language about teaching in a school, and precise teacher reflection on practice. Across the school, teachers from diverse areas were able to understand common explicit standards as well as be “able to clearly articulate what quality teaching might look like using a common language and even having the rubrics to break it down.” Moments of professional growth for the researcher and teachers involved in the TGI tended to be those in which the researcher and teacher felt discomfort, but were supported. The researcher noted that her focus in the TGI on “those things I wanted to improve” led to discomfort and learning. One teacher noted that the Framework had resulted in them “raising my standards in alignment with it” and “really reflecting on what I do.” Both teachers found themselves rated themselves against the teaching rubric and using it for professional reflection. “I’ve definitely changed, even just little aspects of lessons and planning […] from an awareness of that […] framework.” Despite the researcher and teachers’ generally positive responses to the Framework for Teaching, one middle leader questioned the Framework’s compartmentalization of teaching into parts, wary of its potential to fracture teachers’ discussion of their teaching, disregarding the complex and holistic nature of teaching. This leader was “concerned about atomizing bits [of teaching] […] the process then becomes decontextualized and […] we have lost the big picture because we have focused on these little bits.” This caution was reflected by another leader’s comment that “one size does not fit all” and that “different things apply to different people.” Cognitive coaching. Cognitive coaching training and practice impacted the researcher and the teachers in their coaching roles and also their conversations in other contexts. The researcher noted that it “affected how I speak to people whether it’s my students, my colleagues, my friends, or my own kids.” For her, coaching became a way of being, “a part of the way you talk and how you approach conversation whether in a classroom, a team, or personal relationships.” The researcher and teacher participants reflected that what was most helpful to teachers in growing their practice was mediating thinking rather than giving advice. School leaders, too, felt personally aligned with the use of cognitive coaching as a non-invasive, non-judgmental model of continuous teacher growth. It “naturally aligns” with how one of the leaders “views empowerment” and with their philosophy of building the strengths of others, encouraging teachers to “become more self-aware, more reflective […] to express what you’re good at, where you need to go, and how you need to get there.” Nonlinear learning. These participants showed that professional learning and growth can be surprising, nonlinear, and messy. For instance, the researcher and teachers, while observing lessons for the purposes of coaching others, found that observing the lessons of others impacted their own teaching practice; they found themselves borrowing or drawing from other teachers’ teaching. These kinds of unexpected, synaptic learning happenings reflect Smylie’s (1995) discussion of unplanned, incidental learning that occurs in surprising and unpredictable ways. It is also reminiscent of Garmston and Wellman’s (2013) dynamical school principle “tiny events create major disturbances;” seemingly minor moments can have substantial impacts on educators and their practices.


The researcher’s, teachers’, and leaders’ stories reflect fluid and nonlinear growth with a multiplicity of intersecting, sometimes contradictory, influences. That professional learning is viral and nonlinear reflects the “oil in water” metaphor of one of the leader participants and the “dandelion seeds on the breeze” metaphor of the researcher. Professional growth can be continuous, ongoing, and adaptable. Small, unexpected, epiphanic moments can being transformational of teachers and leaders. Data from this study expose impactful moments, relationships, conversations, and life events that have the potency to shift core beliefs, shape senses of self, and alter learning trajectories, in nonlinear, viral, and synaptic ways. Small things, not necessarily called “professional learning” or “professional development,” can be catalysts for deep and lasting personal learning and individual change. This research has provided evidence of the butterfly effects of change in schools. Leaders in particular saw the TGI was a catalytic context that led to positive shifts in collaboration, reflection, and school culture. One said that their dream was to “shift that critical mass and that critical mass generates momentum […] then we might have this vibrant professional space whereby we are prepared to” be open, vulnerable and continuously improving, together and individually. A middle leader who said, “it’s got to make a difference. To me it’s like sort of oil in water. […] it’s already moving out” beyond the individual and into the organization. An executive leader described the TGI as “a catalyst for a cultural shift” and four leaders felt that there had already been a “qualitative shift” in Lutwidge School culture as a result of the TGI and teachers’ involvement in it. Limitations This study may be seen as limited by its specific context, its small unrepresentative sample of participants, and its limited duration. The researcher’s insider perspective may have influenced the reactivity of the participants, as well as influencing the interpretation of data. As the researcher-participant’s insideroutsider creation, this study and its reporting is informed by the researcher’s role as insider-teacher in the TGI. Yet in examining 14 individuals in one school, from three participant groups, the study was able to provide deep insights into teachers’ and leaders’ lived experiences of professional learning. While some may view the researcher’s insider-outsider subjectivity as limiting, it can be seen as an important lens through which to view school reform and educator perspectives: from within the school system rather than outside it. Implications While this study intended to explore the ways in which educators’ experiences of professional learning (trans)form their senses of professional identity, it found that it is not just professional learning, but epiphanic life experiences that shape professional identities and practices. As pointed out by the TNTP (2015) report, teacher learning and development are highly individualized. What emerged from the study was that it is often not those experiences labeled “professional learning” or “professional development” which are transformational for educators, but experiences of life, relationships, and emotions. Teachers’ and leaders’ beliefs and practices shifted through experiences such as being managed by an ineffective leader, doing volunteer work, being a parent, completing a masters, or travelling to third world countries.


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This suggests that the definition of professional learning be expanded from traditional school and educational learning experiences, and that the scope of studying professional learning be broadened. The stories of this study’s participants revealed that the best professional learning is more than collaborative, targeted, and ongoing, as suggested by much literature; it also deeply involves the teacher or school leader’s notion of self. Learning that taps into educators’ identities seems to have the most impact on belief, thought, behavior, and practice. The highly individualized nature of professional learning suggests a need for it to be flexible, differentiated, and driven by the individual. The importance of relationships reflects that professional learning is a situated social practice and a collective process profoundly influenced by environment (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012), and by personal and professional networks. Participants were aware of the tensions in relationships, particularly as a result of imbalance of authority or confusion of purpose, and were able to articulate and navigate these tensions. At the most executive levels, the notion of space became very important for these school leaders, who found that they were able to learn when they could step away from the busyness of daily responsibilities. These emergent findings are relevant to recent studies into Twitter, which educators to filter, curate, and share educational content (Holmes et al., 2013), blurring the line between formal and informal learning (Gao et al., 2012). As an “organic and participatory platform,” Twitter is both empowering to educators and an antidote to isolation (Carpenter and Krutka, 2015). The researcher reflections on the difference blogging made to the depth of her online professional connections and conversations adds to others’ findings that Twitter is not always an appropriate platform for engaging in lengthy professional conversations that require elaborated reflection on complex ideas (Gao et al., 2012; Holmes et al., 2013). It also reflects Stewart’s (2015) findings that online communities challenge traditional hierarchies, allowing members to contribute to global conversations with connections based on commonalities of identity, not role. While Twitter provides an individualized experience with a rich, interconnected personal learning networks of diverse educators sharing a wide variety of up-to-date educational material, anytime, anywhere (Carpenter and Krutka, 2015; Deyamport, 2013; Gao et al., 2012; Holmes et al., 2013; Sinanis, 2015), only some teachers are interested in using it for these purposes (Deyamport, 2013; Gao et al., 2012). The emergent findings of the present study around learning technologies reflect what others have found: that these heutagogical means can empower educators who seek to be autonomous intellectuals, leaders, and learners (Carpenter and Krutka, 2015), as well as help to overcome isolation and build relationships in a fusion of personal and professional learning (Sinanis, 2015). The school context emerged in this study as a major player in the professional learning landscape. Participants were most engaged when they perceived organizational identity and purpose to resonate with their personal identity and purpose. The notion of holonomy (Costa and Garmston, 2006; Koestler, 1967, 1972) is reflected in the TGI combination of self-direction and organizational direction. It harnesses the individual and the organizational through its bottom up, middle out approach to a strategic intervention. This is consistent with Hargreaves and Fullan’s (2012) assertion that professional capital is about individual and collective knowing and doing over time. This study does not propose that the TGI model, which emerged out of its specific context, be applied to other schools. Rather, other schools could work from their own contexts to research, pilot, design, and implement a teacher growth


model starting from their own mission, vision, values, students, staff, and current structures, going slowly and allowing change to iterate from the bottom up, as well as the top down, as suggested by Malone (2015). The tools of the TGI, the Danielson Framework for Teaching and cognitive coaching, altered the researcher’s and teachers’ beliefs and practices as teachers and coaches. Coaching was found to provoke thinking and provide space for reflection (Charteris and Smardon, 2014). The TGI used the Danielson Framework for Teaching as a basis for reflection and coaching conversation, but not, as it is used in some places, as a scorecard for assessing teacher performance. The focus on using mapping frameworks for teachers to improve themselves, rather than to be scored by others, supports those who warn against negative drivers of educational change. A formative focus on continuous improvement, as advocated for by Wiliam (2014b), is an appropriate lens for the use of teaching frameworks when growth is the focus. While the Danielson Framework for Teaching was an important element of the TGI, it was implemented alongside an observation and coaching model that helped to draw out teachers’ reflections; lesson data, conversation, and development of a collaborative professional learning culture, were vital parts of the application of the Framework. Rather than being solutions in themselves to developing quality teaching, mapping frameworks were revealed to be tools that can be added to a school’s arsenal of resources to help build clear, shared understandings of good teaching, incite rich professional conversations around practice, and encourage individual teachers to reflect on and adjust their teaching. This study points to schools benefiting from operating with an awareness of the vulnerability and anxiety of teachers in regards to opening their classrooms (Goodson, 1991; Louis, 2006). The success of the TGI approach in gaining teacher buy-in and inciting reflection on and change of practice, as evidenced in this study’s data, suggests that a growth model focused on building teachers, rather than evaluating them, is an effective approach to building teacher capacity. This approach sits in opposition to punitive or performative schemes, which are based on keeping educators and schools accountable to externally imposed, numerically measured standards, rather than growing educators and schools through growth-focused interventions that operate from a starting point of accepting teachers as reflective professionals with the capacity to improve. Significance Trends emerging from researchers on what constitutes meaningful learning for teachers include that effective teacher professional learning is collaborative, targeted, and ongoing. While the agency of the individual in the self-direction and design of their own learning is important (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2014; Wiliam, 2014a, 2016), there is also a focus on the importance of collaboration to enhance and sustain teacher learning (Fullan and Quinn, 2016; Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012). Some claim that teachers learn best from and with each other (Schmoker, 1999); that the solitary norms of teaching need to be replaced with collective action (Hattie, 2015). In delving into what teachers and school leaders in one school perceive to be transformational professional learning, this study provided insights that have implications for the theorization and implementation of professional learning. It illuminated a facet of how school-based professional learning-in-context impacts on professional identity and makes transformational learning possible. Professional learning was revealed to be an ongoing process made up of epiphanic life moments that


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are professional and personal, formal and informal, in schools and out of schools, singular and collaborative. The study of epiphanies or critical moments (Denzin, 1989; Goodson, 1991; Riessman, 2002) seems a worthwhile lens through which to view professional learning. This study concurs with others that informal learning be investigated further (Cole and Throssell, 2008; Holly, 1989; Smylie, 1995). Transformation of these educators’ identities and practices occurred in environments that were supportive, challenging, and growth-focused, rather than evaluation-driven. Frameworks that provided a map of what good teaching looks like, through explicit shared standards, were shown to provide some commonality of language and a starting point for conversations, but were catalysts for reflection rather than models of growth in themselves. That learning was individual as well as collaborative, for these participants, indicates that differentiation of professional learning opportunities would allow educators to choose appropriate ways into their own growth. Transformational professional learning is that which results in learners being changed by their experiences in ways that positively impact their knowing, doing, and being. This study suggests that transformational professional learning can occur in a wide range of life arenas. It points to a broadening of the definition of professional learning, to allow teachers and schools to think more expansively and flexibly about what it is that transforms educators, and who drives and chooses learning. Individual and collective school change were both revealed to be messy, unpredictable, and fluid processes in which small unexpected moments can have minute and far-reaching butterfly effects. Schools and systems can work from their own contexts to design and slowly iterate models of professional learning, from the bottom up and the middle out, which give educators agency and choice. References Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (2014), “Global trends in professional learning and performance and development: some implications and ideas for the Australian education system”, AITSL, Melbourne. Baguley, M. and Kerby, M. (2012), “Teachers’ perceptions of professional development and the role of the university”, in Danaher, P.A., De George-Walker, L., Henderson, R., Matthews, K.J., Midgeley, W., Noble, K., Tyler, M.A. and Arden, C.H. (Eds), Constructing Capacities: Building Capabilities Through Learning and Engagement, Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle upon Tyne, pp. 107-123. Carpenter, J.P. and Krutka, D.G. (2015), “Engagement through microblogging: educator professional development via Twitter”, Professional Development in Education, Vol. 41 No. 4, pp. 702-728. Charteris, J. and Smardon, D. (2014), “Dialogic peer coaching as teacher leadership for professional inquiry”, International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 108-124. City, E.A., Elmore, R.F., Fiarman, S.E. and Teitel, L. (2009), Instructional Rounds in Education: A Network Approach to Improving Learning and Teaching, Harvard Education Press, Cambridge, MA. Cole, D.R. and Throssell, P. (2008), “Epiphanies in action: teaching and learning in synchronous harmony”, The International Journal of Learning, Vol. 15 No. 7, pp. 175-184. Costa, A.L. and Garmston, R.J. (2003), “Cognitive coaching in retrospect: why it persists”, available at: www.thinkingcollaborative.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/CC-inRetrospect-Why-Persists.pdf (accessed April 6, 2016).

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Corresponding author Deborah M. Netolicky can be contacted at: [email protected]

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