Are we all on the same page with professional learning? Exploring the relationship between organisational cultures and teacher professional learning in secondary schools

Kathryn Taylor,  EdD candidate, IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, UK Effective teacher professional development (PD) matters. The question is: how can high-quality, transformative PD be realised in schools? Relationships between organisational cultures and teacher learning are complex. I suggest that a clearer understanding of how the language surrounding PD is used and understood offers a route to achieving more ‘hit’ than ‘miss’ in the planning and delivery of PD within schools and beyond. The analytical framework that I am developing may be useful to those who have oversight of PD in their contexts.  It is long established that putting students in classrooms with effective teachers improves their outcomes (Slater et al., 2012). As Wiliam (2011) argues, a bad curriculum taught well is better than a good curriculum taught badly. Since evidence suggests that teacher effectiveness can be improved through appropriate and effective professional development (Kraf