Teachers’ response to a new mandatory professional development process: does it make a difference?

Abstract

A Performance and Development Framework has been introduced by the New South Wales Department of Education, the largest provider of schooling in Australia, during a period of unparalleled reform. Engagement with the Framework is mandatory for all the Department’s teachers, and is linked to improving student outcomes through enhanced teacher professional practice. As an initial study of the efficacy of the Performance and Development Framework, this article reports a study of teachers’ understandings of professional learning arising from the first year of the Framework’s implementation. Five teaching staff from one school were interviewed three times during the school year to elicit insights into their professional development during experience of the new system. Three themes emerged: (1) longer serving teachers and less experienced, early-career teachers view the professional learning differently; (2) all the teachers considered the Performance and Development Framework to be a positive development; (3) although there was an uptake of reflective practice, understanding of critical reflection as linked to professional learning was limited. The study concludes that this mandatory professional development process was generally successful in this context, while there is scope for further enhancement, specifically in relation to guiding content and reflective practice.

Keywords:

• Teacher professional development
• teacher accreditation
• mandatory professional development
• New South Wales school education

Notes

1. Those teachers employed in NSW after October 1 2004 or who had been absent from teaching for five or more years.

2. Before the introduction of the Professional Development Framework in NSW (NSW Department of Education 2015b), each year principals were required to certify the efficiency of all their teachers using the Department’s Teacher Assessment Review Schedule (TARS) (NSW Department of Education and Communities 2003, pp. 1–2). This Schedule, and other similar Schedules for principals and executives, operated on the development of the teacher’s practice, but were also a somewhat coercive practice used to prompt an individual to undertake such development in order to maintain his/her position.

3. In NSW, teachers can be employed on a permanent basis, as a temporary (on a full-time basis for a block of time) or as casual (employed on a day-to-day basis).