Re-imagining transformative professional learning for critical teacher professionalism: a conceptual review

Abstract

Transformative professional learning is connected to educational and social transformation and possibilities for critical forms of teacher professionalism. Examining and fostering this connection requires greater conceptual clarity about these constructs and how they are enacted. A conceptual review, combining narrative and systematic methods, was undertaken of research on transformative professional learning that embraced educational and social change, and of accounts of professional learning associated with critical forms of professionalism: activist, transformative, and democratic. A common analytical framework was used consisting of modes of professional learning, educational purpose, knowledge, sociality, agency, and material and systemic arrangements. The conceptual framework used in this review has wider potential for analysing professional learning and its outcomes. The review indicates that transformative professional learning is under-theorised with accounts emphasising only one or two features, usually agency, collaboration, or educational purpose. We argue that transformative professional learning should be grounded, additionally, in clarity about purpose, knowledge, and the relationship to knowledge that is developed. Different possibilities for enacting professional learning are identified that can foster critical teacher professionalism, including those rooted in teacher activism connected to wider social movements.