The emergence of a distinctive European scholarship of professional development: challenging mainstream conceptualisations, consensus and causality claims

ABSTRACT

This article’s central focus is the distinction between mainstream North American – particularly US – scholarship and critical European scholarship, in relation to teacher professional learning and development. The era of accountability pervading the US policy landscape, it is noted, has spawned a dominant mainstream scholarship centred around causal chains and a ‘consensus’ about the features of ‘effective’ professional development that generates students’ learning gains. Critical scholarship, in contrast, recognises the complexity of professional development, challenges linear-based, causality assumptive conceptualisations, and, with a focus on their well-being, perceives teachers as primary developees, rather than merely conduits for policy implementation. Drawing on theoretical perspectives on employee-centrism and the epistemic development of scholarship fields, it is argued that mainstream North American scholarship, having been found wanting, must now be declared yesterday’s scholarship, and a distinctively European-led critical scholarship must now take forward an epistemic-development-focused agenda to augment our understanding of teacher professional development.

KEYWORDS:

• epistemic development
• linearity in professional development
• employee-centrism
• effective professional development
• conceptualization of professional development

‘How does American organization theory compare with its European counterpart?’ asked Sami Kassem (1976, 11) nearly half a century ago. Much more recently, Kovačević and Hallinger (2020, 406) proposed that ‘the intellectual emphases of European scholarship may actually differ from scholarship authored in the Anglo-American tradition’ – and, indeed, just as Kassem before them had identified clear distinctions between American and European theoretical perspectives, from their bibliometric analysis of educational leadership and management research, Kovačević and Hallinger (2020) revealed a ‘distinctive European niche’ (p. 406), within which several ‘distinctively European Schools of Thought’ emerged (p. 420).

In professional development research, I too have discerned what I described a decade ago as ‘inter-continental differences in prevalent epistemic trends’ (Evans 2014, 181), and in this article I expand upon that observation, adopting an impressionistic approach to considering whether there is a distinctive European scholarship of teacher professional development, and, if so, what it looks like, and what contribution it makes to the field’s epistemic development.

Yet identifying distinctiveness involves comparison; there must be an ‘other’ or ‘others’ from which something differs enough to stands out as distinct, and the ‘other’ that I contrast with European scholarship is North American scholarship. The notion of regional-specific epistemic traditions and trends has been highlighted in recent years by Hallinger, with a succession of co-authors (e.g. Hallinger 2020; Hallinger and Kovačević 2019; Hallinger and Kulophas 2020), and follows Geert Hofstede’s extensive scholarship on the significance of social and anthropological culture to organisational paradigms and attitudes to leadership. Hofstede’s seminal work (e.g. Hofstede 1980; Minkov and Hofstede 2012) not only highlights distinctions between American and European contributions to organisation studies (e.g. Hofstede 1996; Kassem 1976), but has also identified ‘potential conflicts between the U.S. way of thinking about organizations and the values dominant in other parts of the world’ (Hofstede 1980, 61) – an issue that continues to provoke interest from researchers (see, for example, Wang et al. 2023).

I emphasise at the outset that the impressionistic nature of my analysis involves generalisation whose broad-brush depiction inevitably obscures some subtly nuanced variability. Whilst identifying a dominant mainstream perspective, I do not imply that it is found either universally or exclusively within North American scholarship; there are North America-based scholars whose work is, to varying degrees, aligned with my portrayal of pioneering European professional development research, just as there are Europe-based scholars whose work reflects a prevalent North American mainstream intellectual tradition. In this respect I echo an important issue highlighted by Kassem (1976, 15):

I have tried to outline … the major differences between American and European contributions to organization theory. Readers should be cautioned at once, that … there are Americans with European orientations … just as there are Europeans with American orientations … . But in stressing variations in the two systems of thought, one must necessarily gloss over the internal differences that exist within them.

Notwithstanding such exceptions, my central argument, developed below, is that, in contrast to mainstream North American scholarship, European scholarship is increasingly manifesting the kind of criticality that has the potential to lead the field and push back the boundaries that limit mainstream scholarship’s knowledge gains. I begin by discussing what mainstream North American scholarship of teacher professional development generally looks like, and what, in contrast, European scholarship looks like.

Points of difference: North American and European scholarship

In this section I identify differences between each region’s scholarship as reflected in its epistemic basis, resultant assumptions and beliefs, and conceptualisation of professional development. These three features are inter-connected, each having shaped and continuing to shape the others in a way that makes it difficult to ascertain which came first. I begin with North America, before moving onto Europe.

Linearity, generativity and causality: key perspectives underpinning mainstream North American scholarship

Mainstream North American scholarship – particularly that emanating from the United States (US) – tends to be preoccupied with three issues: generativity, causality, and what is referred to as a ‘consensus’ about what makes for effective professional development. Professional development that incorporates generativity does not end with the initial developee; it requires a secondary beneficiary, and in the case of teacher developees, the generative chain is conceived of as extending through teachers’ practice to pupil or student ‘gains’ – typically, their educational achievement; as Patfield et al. (2022, 1) observe, ‘It is now commonplace to see an explicit coupling of PD [professional development] with improvement in students’ academic achievement’. Such generativity has been the focus of extensive examination (with contributions from, inter alios, Bredeson, Kelley, and Klat 2012; Desimone 2009; Desimone, Smith, and Phillips 2013; Domitrovich et al. 2009; Firestone et al. 2005; Garet et al. 2001; Neuman and Cunningham 2009; Penuel et al. 2007); many North America-based researchers evidently consider it a prerequisite of, and hence a criterion for, effective professional development. Fishman et al. (2003, 643), for example, remark that ‘[f]or us, the most important measure of whether professional development is “working”’ is whether teacher enactment yields evidence of improved student learning and performance’ (p. 655), while Lovett et al. (2008, 1093) suggest that ‘improved student outcomes are the ultimate barometer of effective teacher training and support’, and Garet et al. (2001, 917) bemoan the paucity of ‘direct evidence on the extent to which … characteristics [of professional development] relate to positive outcomes for teachers and students’.

Such perspectives have been fuelled by research claiming to uncover causality. Indeed, the search for causality – specifically, a teacher professional development→student achievement causality chain – has driven what King (2014, 90) identifies as ‘an increasing number of [professional development-related] causal impact studies carried out in the United States and elsewhere’. Carried out a quarter of a century ago, Cohen and Hill’s (1998) search for causal chains led to their finding educational policy to act as a vehicle for developing – and hence influencing – teachers’ practice, which, in turn, affected student performance in mathematics. More recently, Vogt and Rogalla (2009) claim that their quasi-experimental study of ‘Adaptive Teaching Competency’ revealed the intervention to have ‘positive effects on students’ learning outcomes’ (p. 1059), and Vescio et al. (2008, 87)¹ conclude that:

[a]lthough few in number, the collective results of these studies offer an unequivocal answer to the question about whether the literature supports the assumption that student learning increases when teachers participate in PLCs. The answer is a resounding and encouraging yes.

Causality claims have moreover coalesced into what has been referred to as a ‘consensus’ about what makes for effective professional development; as Gore and Rosser (2022, 218) observe, ‘[o]ver the past two decades a consensus has begun to emerge in the literature on best-practice PD [professional development]’. Hill et al. (2013, 476) explain this ‘consensus’ in the following terms:

Through studies conducted over the past two decades, scholars have identified program design elements thought to maximize teacher learning, including a strong content focus, inquiry-oriented learning approaches, collaborative participation, and coherence with school curricula and policies … . Agreement about this list had reached a level such that many in the field felt comfortable characterizing support for the list as a ‘consensus’.

More recently, McKeown et al’.s (2019, 759) synthesis of the ‘consensus’-related literature yields a more expansive list:

Additional critical elements multiple researchers have identified for effective PD … include alignment with school curriculum, goals, and policies; addressing teachers’ and students’ needs and strengths; a collaborative, active learning approach for teachers situated in interactive learning communities; and sufficient time and support for teacher learning.

This consensus has been described by a US-based author as a ‘national’ one (Supovitz 2001), and although this explicit label has evidently not survived the passing of time, the notion of a consensus – in common with acceptance that professional development’s effectiveness is dependent on its generativity – seems to have been embraced and perpetuated predominantly by US-based researchers. Preluding their research-based identification of seven features of effective professional development, Darling-Hammond et al. (2017, 4), for example, note that:

research on effective PD [professional development] has begun to create a consensus about key principles in the design of learning experiences that can impact teachers’ knowledge and practices … positive findings have stimulated a general consensus about typical components of high-quality professional learning for teachers.

Similarly – but without applying the term ‘consensus’ - other researchers evidently subscribe to the notion that there are specific identifiable features of effective professional development interventions; Hunzicker (2011) presents a checklist that ‘can be used to assess any professional development activity in terms of its alignment to the needs of adult learners’ (p. 178), and Desimone and Garet (2015, 253) argue that ‘[t]here is considerable evidence from research in the U.S. that for PD to be effective in improving teaching practice and student learning, at least five features need to be in place … ’ – though they go on to refer to ‘disappointing results’ of research that tested the five-features-framework, and to accept the need to refine it.

Generativity, causality and the ‘consensus’, then, combine to delineate mainstream North American – particularly US – scholarship. This combination reflects a linear processual epistemic basis that is represented by the belief that doing A will lead to B, and then to C, etc. – which, Scanlon et al. (2022) lament, ‘appears to be the prominent assumption underpinning professional development approaches’. It is moreover an assumption that is implicit in the mainstream North American conceptualisation of teacher professional development – or, more precisely, of effective professional development – as, broadly, a process or form of agency that equips teachers to improve their practice. Buysse et al. (2009, 239), for example, define professional development as ‘facilitated teaching and learning experiences that are transactional and designed to support the acquisition of professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions as well as the application of this knowledge in practice’, while Bredeson (2002) argues that the purpose of professional development is:

to strengthen individual and collective practice. This purpose is anchored in the belief that the investment of huge sums of money, billions annually in the United States and Europe, will contribute to enhanced professional practice leading to improved student learning outcomes. (Bredeson 2002, 663, emphasis added)

Similarly, Darling-Hammond et al. (2017, v) define professional development ‘as structured professional learning that results in teacher practices and improvements in student learning outcomes’, Copur-Gencturk and Thacker (2021, 138) argue that professional development is ‘a means of equipping inservice teachers with the necessary knowledge and skills to provide quality instruction and enhance their students’ learning’, and, in her review of the new millennium’s first decade of teacher professional development research, as reflected in articles published in Teaching and Teacher Education, Avalos (2011, 10) remarks that ‘at the core’ of professional development scholarship ‘is the understanding that professional development is about teachers learning, learning how to learn, and transforming their knowledge into practice for the benefit of their students’ growth’ (emphasis added).

This simplistic epistemic basis of mainstream North American scholarship contrasts markedly with pioneering European scholarship that, recognising the complexity of professional development, eschews linear-based conceptualisation.

From linearity to complexity: critical European scholarship

Reiterating a point made at the start of this article, I emphasise that some Europe-based researchers of professional development evidently buy into linearity – to the extent that it fuels mainstream scholarship in Europe as much as in North America (and elsewhere). But what I discern within the European literature is a steadily growing critical backlash to linear(ity)-focused perspectives that seems generally more pronounced than criticality emanating from other regions. It is this critical scholarship that I identify as a European scholarship of professional development. What I mean by ‘critical scholarship’ is perhaps best summarised by Alvesson and Deetz (2021, 7): ‘[o]ur take on critical research is … a bit different from researchers strongly focusing on groups they find to be the victims of oppression and injustice’, for while the original meaning of critical theory and research in the social sciences implies a morally based vision of social justice and addresses the impact of power structures on communities, there is a second, broader, interpretation of criticality with which, in common with Alvesson and Deetz, I align myself. This criticality is essentially epistemic in focus, taking aim at scholarship rather than at policy, and often proposing alternative sets of theoretical perspectives that question and challenge mainstream assumptions and beliefs.

European voices feature prominently in the critical chorus of doubt and scepticism that, as I note elsewhere (Evans 2022a), has been building momentum in the professional development field over the last two decades or so. Some voices challenge causality-based perspectives – including the decades-long pursuit of what has been called, rather contemptuously (by, for example, Attard 2017; Korthagen 2017), the ‘holy grail’ of professional development: proof of what makes a professional development intervention effective, as determined by causal chains of evidencable impact. Such criticism is fuelled by research – including, it must be noted, some studies from the US – that in some cases (e.g. Garet et al. 2016; Kraft, Blazar, and Hogan 2018; Osborne et al. 2019) fail to find causal chains, and in other cases expose deep flaws in the designs and methods of causality-claiming research. Indeed, a study carried out by US-based Yoon et al. (2007) marks something of a watershed in modifying perceptions of, and managing expectations relating to, the teacher professional development→student achievement causality chain. Out of over 1,300 studies ‘identified as potentially addressing the effect of teacher professional development on student achievement in three content areas’, Yoon et al. (2007) found only nine that met the What Works Clearinghouse evidence standards, which have become a benchmark for rigour in research that seeks evidence of causality. More recently, applying the thoroughness of ancestry searching ‘to trace backwards from policy documents, to the meta-reviews and reviews they cited, and then back a step further to the original studies that they cited’ (p. 50), UK-based Sims and Fletcher-Wood (2021) uncovered significant flaws in research representing the ‘consensus’. Explicitly addressing the question: Is the consensus warranted by the existing evidence?, they conclude that it is not. They warn that, as their own study illustrates, ‘reviews of reviews can lead to the propagation of weakly warranted findings through the hierarchy of reviews and onward into public policy, practice and research’ (Sims and Fletcher-Wood 2021, 57), and argue that:

there are reasons to be sceptical about the methods employed by researchers in developing the consensus view. In particular, our research highlights the dangers involved in meta-reviews (or reviews of reviews) which are often employed to summarise the evidence from a field in a short space of time, in order to inform policy. (p. 57)

Reflecting what Cornelisson and Kaandorp (2023, 835) refer to as the ‘widespread and growing concerns about the reliability and robustness of causal claims made in management research, including the worrying high proportion of past claims in the literature that have subsequently been proven weak or even groundless’, studies such as Yoon et al.’s (2007) and Sims and Fletcher-Wood’s (2021) reveal the spuriousness of the causality-assumptive discourse that underpins the ‘consensus’ - whose critics (e.g. Gore and Rosser 2022; Korthagen 2017; Mooney Simmie 2023; Opfer and Pedder 2011) seem to be circling above it like vultures, sounding its death knell in ever-increasing numbers. Europe-based researchers are well represented amongst such critics. But the distinction between North American and European scholarship is more fundamental than disagreement over causality and generativity; it is essentially one of conceptualisation, for, as I noted a decade ago:

[the] generative feature of professional development is a pervasive focus of most American research and scholarship, to the extent that it is explicitly or implicitly incorporated into conceptualisations and definitions of professional development. In other geo-cultural contexts, the professional development of teachers is considered a justifiable end in itself - a worthy focus of study, irrespective of whether or not it may be seen to lead to gains in relation to pupil learning. Such work … - evidently more likely to be carried out by European than by North American researchers, reflecting inter-continental differences in prevalent epistemic trends - variously incorporates a distinct focus on conceptualisation, definitional precision, and theoretical understandings of what professional development is, what does or does not constitute it, and how it occurs. (Evans 2014, 181–2, emphasis added)

Whilst it features questioning of and challenges to causality-related perspectives, it is on the basis of conceptualisation that, set against its North American counterpart, critical European scholarship is most recognisably distinct.

Both the ‘consensus’ and the notion of generativity as a prerequisite for effective professional development reflect an interpretation of professional development as a process or form of agency that culminates in perceived gains for secondary beneficiaries: those whose needs and interests are implicitly or explicitly encompassed within the initial developees’ recognised professional purpose(s), remits and responsibilities. Yet such a conceptualisation, I argue below, is deficiently narrow in two respects: it bypasses consideration of the needs and interests of professional development’s putative primary beneficiaries, and it limits professional development to that which is explicit.

The deficiencies of narrow conceptualisation

Writing about teacher morale, job satisfaction and motivation a quarter of a century ago (Evans 1999), I advocated what I called ‘a teacher-centred approach to school leadership’. Intending it to parallel the child-centred philosophy of class teaching that became the Zeitgeist of English primary school education in the latter half of the twentieth century, I summed up my proposed approach as follows:

Adopting a ‘teacher-centred’ approach to school leadership … requires acceptance that, in the work context, there are two groups of people – rather than just one – for whose development and well-being you [educational leaders] share responsibility: two groups whose interests you try to promote and whose needs you try to meet. ‘Teacher-centred’ school leadership is not just about working with teaching – and other - colleagues to work for the good of the children in your care. It is also about adding to what you accept as your responsibilities a second tier of care and solicitude: one that is directed at these colleagues. It is about working for the good of teachers. (Evans 1999, 113–114)

This notion of a ‘second tier of care and solicitude’ is compatible with a more employee-centred conceptualisation of professional development that is somewhat at odds with the generativity-focused conceptualisation that is the mainstay of US scholarship. Similarly reflecting employee-centrism is Kennedy’s (2016, 974) more recently articulated argument that:

[w]e need to replace our current conception of ‘good’ PD [professional development] as comprising a collection of particular design features with a conception that is based on more nuanced understanding of what teachers do, what motivates them, and how they learn and grow. We also need to reconceptualize teachers as people with their own motivations and interests. (emphasis added)

These complementary perspectives – mine and that of Kennedy (who, it should be noted, is US-based, and whose quote above reflects her identification of flaws in the dominant US-based conceptualisation of professional development) – incorporate recognition of the importance of considering putative developees not merely, or only, as conduits for generativity, by, for example, advancing this or that national policy initiative or organisational agenda, but also as individuals who in their own right need to flourish and benefit from life-enhancing development.

Such perspectives are aligned with a discernible focus on employee well-being and employers’ responsibilities towards their workforces that – particularly in general, non-education-specific, contexts – has become recognisable in recent years; as Mumford et al. (2022, 578) observe ‘[c]are for clients, customers and employees is becoming an increasingly important concept in organisational and management research’ (emphasis added). While, historically, research into employee well-being reflected concerns about, and was focused on contexts considered particularly susceptible to, worker exploitation and workplace inequalities, over the years the field’s contextual parameters have widened to encompass what have traditionally been categorised as ‘professional’ workplaces – including schools and universities.

During the last few decades, well-being-at-work-related issues (irrespective of whether or not the lexicon in vogue at the time labelled them as such) have featured within research that focused more broadly on teachers’ working lives, and education professionals’ job-related attitudes (such as morale, job satisfaction and motivation), as well as within narratives of dissent whose principal focus is neoliberal ideologies that have shaped performativity cultures. Identifying steadily growing interest in the field, Hascher et al. (2021) argue that their well-being is dependent upon ‘a positive imbalance’ in teachers’ professional lives: ‘[t]his means that positive and negative aspects may coexist but the positive dimensions are more pronounced than the negative ones’ (p. 418). Yet, preluding their own review of studies of teacher well-being, they (Hascher and Waber 2021, 2) bemoan the dearth of ‘theoretical work related to TWB [teacher well-being] that explicitly considers the characteristics of the teaching profession’; these authors are accordingly critical of claims of causal links between teacher well-being and teaching quality that have ‘entered scientific discourse without strong evidence’. Their review revealed that ‘[f]eelings of competence and teaching efficacy univocally showed positive correlations with TWB’, and ‘practically significant positive correlations between TWB and a supportive learning or school climate’ (Hascher and Waber 2021, 13).

It is evident, then, that a narrative relating to employee well-being in education contexts is taking shape, and within this narrative the most conceptually and methodologically rigorous studies recognise the importance of organisations’ responsibilities. Arguing ‘strongly for schools and school systems to orient their attitudes, resources, and structures toward wellbeing for all – and certainly for teacher wellbeing’ (p. 5), Walker and Cherkowski (2018), for example, articulate the ‘need to consciously attend to and support teacher wellbeing in similar ways that we are attending to student wellbeing in schools’ (p. 3), while Hobson and Maxwell (2017) note that ‘occupational well-being is crucial for individuals’ overall well-being … which … we consider to be an important goal in its own right’ (p. 168), and that ‘their employing school has or should have a duty of care to them’ (p. 179), adding (p. 186): ‘we urge policymakers, school leaders and others to uphold their duty of care to newly and recently qualified teachers by doing their utmost to create conditions for the optimisation of these teachers’ well-being’ (emphases added).

Employee-centrism provides a conceptual backdrop to a discourse that recognises the importance of exercising a duty of care to employees – the kind of duty of care highlighted by Hobson and Maxwell, above, as an imperative for schools employing early career teachers, but which, to fully satisfy an employee-centric agenda, must be extended to all teachers, as employees whose quality of life is inevitably shaped by their work environments and workplace relations. A key component of such a duty of care is the right to professional development whose effectiveness is assessed not on the basis of its impact on secondary beneficiaries, but on the basis of what benefits it affords teachers themselves, as primary developees.

So-conceptualised, professional development, in encompassing the whole spectrum of explicit-implicit activity, does not over-simplify professional development by limiting it to that which is evidencable, and hence observable. In contrast to a narrow, generativity-focused, conceptualisation that reflects the ‘consensus’ identified within mainstream American scholarship, critical (European) scholarship incorporates consideration of two key issues: the importance of recognising developees as valued and cared-for employees, as discussed above, and the complexity of professional development.

The complexity of professional development

The problem with conceptualisations that are centred on the requirement for a teacher professional development→student achievement causal chain is that they inevitably interpret professional development narrowly, as explicit, clearly identifiable, provision – for, in order for causality to be claimed, the ‘cause’ (that is, the professional development) must be examinable, and therefore visible and identifiable. Only explicit professional development – that which is clearly labelled and recognised as professional learning or development – meets these criteria. Moreover, where they are confined to denoting explicit provision, conceptualisations of professional development exclude what many researchers now estimate (see, for example, Eraut 2004; Evans 2019; Hoekstra and Korthagen 2011; Jarvis and Parker 2005; Korthagen 2017; Rogers 2014) to represent a large proportion of professional learning and development: that which, being informal, and in many cases implicit, lies under the radar of consideration of how people develop professionally. Much professional learning and development, it is now accepted, occurs in ways that are barely perceptible, let alone identifiable and examinable. To distinguish it from ‘formal’ and ‘explicit’ provision, such professional learning and development has been labelled ‘informal’ and/or ‘implicit’ or ‘subliminal’ (see, for example, Brücknerová and Novotný 2017; Eraut 2004; Evans 2019; Sancho-Gil and Domingo-Coscollola 2022; Simons and Ruijters 2004; Smylie 1995).

Implicit professional learning is variously explained in the following terms: ‘[w]hen learning processes are implicit, people do not realise that activities they are undertaking or processes they are involved in, can or will lead to changes in knowledge, skills, attitudes and/or learning ability’ (Simons and Ruijters 2004, 213), and ‘[it] takes place in everyday experience and occurs without intention, from “doing” and from both successes and mistakes. People may not be conscious of it’ (Smylie 1995, 100). Sancho-Gil and Domingo-Coscollola (2022, 429) similarly note that ‘learning emerges everywhere, in interconnected ecosystems, and is often subliminal’². I define implicit professional learning or development as that which the learner or developee is unaware of at the time of its occurrence, but of which s/he may (or may not) subsequently become aware (Evans 2019). This definition exposes a wider problem with conceptualisations, such as the one prevalent in mainstream, causality-focused, North American scholarship, that limit professional development to explicit provision whose generativity is evidencable, for, as I argue elsewhere (Evans 2019, 7):

‘New’ ideas or ways of thinking that have been planted within people’s consciousness (or unconscious awareness) may take time to become gradually assimilated into their practice – and in the interim such ideas or perspectives may have been augmented (or diluted) through interaction with a myriad of other (often unrecognisable or unidentifiable) influences on practice. To assume that any generative impact of professional learning or development will be (immediately) evident represents over-simplistic reasoning that fails to incorporate consideration of the complexity and … the multidimensionality, of professional learning and development.

This notion of the complexity³ of professional development is central to the critical discourse that I identify as an emergent and broadly distinctive European scholarship. Conceptualisations that are built around a requisite generativity tend to reflect ‘linear’ perspectives on professional development and ‘instrumental discourses of linear causality’ (Phantharakphong and Liyanage 2022, 321). But those who, within and beyond Europe, recognise professional development’s complexity, in common with and including those who present themselves as proponents specifically of complexity theory-informed professional development⁴ (e.g. Cochran-Smith et al. 2014; Davis and Sumara 2006, 1997; Goh and Lim 2022; Keay, Carse, and Jess 2019; Opfer and Pedder 2011; Phantharakphong and Liyanage 2022; Sancho-Gil and Domingo-Coscollola 2022; Scanlon, McPhail, and Calderón 2022; Strom and Viesca 2021), denounce such linearity-based perspectives for disregarding or ignoring the mediating potentialities of, inter alia, ‘social and discursive factors and local structural and material conditions’ that make teaching and learning a collective activity carried out in a complex classroom system (Phantharakphong and Liyanage 2022, 317). Scanlon et al. (2022), for example, are critical of ‘a linear, transactional form of professional learning … [whereby] a teacher learns at a professional development event and transfers such learning through their teaching in the classroom’. Applying the notion of rhizomatics, which they explain as ‘a way of thinking that disrupts and muddles a linear mode of operation. … an alternative view to the taken-for-granted linear transactional routine of professional development’ (p. 3), they argue for ‘re-imagining’ professional development as a complex system: ‘an assemblage which incorporates multiple elements or “things”’(p. 1).

Keay et al. (2019) similarly draw upon what they describe as ‘complexity and ecological thinking’ to conceptualise ‘teachers’ professional learning as a non-linear, emergent and long-term capacity building process’ (p. 128) and advocate what they call a ‘complexity-informed approach to teachers’ professional learning’ that also incorporates ‘ideas from ecological thinking’ (p. 129). In the same vein, Opfer and Pedder (2011) note that ‘[a]n important characteristic of the complexity of teacher learning is that it evolves as a nested system involving systems within systems’ and inter-dependent and reciprocally influential systems and sub-systems, giving rise to so many ‘processes, mechanisms, actions and elements’ that their combined effects and outcomes cannot necessarily be predicted (p. 379). Likewise, reporting the findings of their empirical study of secondary school teachers in Spain, Sancho-Gil and Domingo-Coscollola (2022, 428) found that ‘experiences generate teachers’ learning over time and in different ecosystems’ and observe that professional learning ‘is not only linked to a single context. We also noted that learning is instead a (dis)continuous, non-linear, fragmented and fractal process made up of intra-actions between living beings, culture, and matter’.

Tennant (2005, 101) rightly reminds us of the ‘need to take into account the complexities of context in order to understand the functioning of the mind in situ’, and it is the complexity of, inter alia, the ‘environmental interconnections’, the ‘evolving interaction’ between person and environment, and the focus on psychological growth, that the critical discourse recognises as generally missing not only from both the ‘consensus’ on what makes for effective professional development for teachers, and the related linearity implicit in narrow, generativity-focused, conceptualisations and definitions, but also from the profusion of professional development studies that represent the kinds of process-product methodological designs that are prevalent in mainstream American scholarship; as Opfer and Pedder (2011, 377) bemoan, ‘the extant literature suggests that the majority of writings on the topic continue to focus on specific activities, processes, or programs in isolation from the complex teaching and learning environments in which teachers live’. Some such criticism, it is important to remember, comes from within North America. Indeed, referring to the plethora of professional development programmes that pervade their nation’s education sector, US-based Helsing et al. (2008, 441) express frustration that, ‘to our knowledge, none is explicitly linked to theories of adult development’ and ‘[m]ost traditional forms of professional development likely underestimate the complexity of … growth and change process in real-world contexts’ (p. 458); professional development opportunities, they argue, should not only enhance skills and increase knowledge, but also facilitate and support psychological growth.

Yet, in noting that educational leaders in the US are charged with ‘facilitating teacher learning, and negotiating the pressing political context at state and federal levels’, Helsing et al. (2008, 437–8) make an important point – one that goes a long way to explaining the foci on generativity, causality and the ‘consensus’ that characterise mainstream US scholarship. Such scholarship, we may infer from Liebowitz’s (2022) outline of historical trends within, and the current state of, US teacher evaluation policy, is policy-driven:

In response to financial incentives from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program launched in 2009, state legislatures across the country enacted laws aimed at increasing standards for public school teachers through the implementation of more intensive teacher evaluation systems … many states required some or all teachers be evaluated based on student learning gains—through either formal measurements of students’ learning or teachers’ contributions to students’ progress toward locally determined learning objectives, or both. (Liebowitz 2022, 536–7, emphasis added)

Yurkofsky (2022, 301) similarly notes that ‘in response to growing quality concerns policymakers in the United States have increasingly sought to rationalize the public school system by providing rewards and sanctions to districts, schools, and teachers based on student performance’, while Cochran-Smith et al. (2017, 537) refer more broadly to the US’s ‘contemporary accountability landscape’.

But such policy-motivated scholarship comes at a cost: erosion of the field’s epistemic worthiness and credibility.

A significant European contribution to the professional development field’s epistemic development

In examining the nature and patterns of scientific controversies and disputes, Kitcher (2000) refers to ‘the core’ of a scientific community’s ‘practice’. By ‘practice’ he means:

a language, a set of questions taken to be significant, a set of explanatory schemata, a set of accepted statements about the natural phenomena that are the community’s distinctive concern, experimental techniques, instruments, assessments of authority, methodological canons, and statements about how the community’s project relates to human well-being. (p. 22)

The consensus practice of a community ‘is a multidimensional entity each component of which contains exactly those elements universally shared within the community’, explains Kitcher (2000, 23), and this entity ‘identifies the core of the community’s commitments’ (original emphasis). He points out that ‘[i]ndividual practices plainly outrun consensus practice’ (p. 23), and that this deviation from consensus is the basis for controversy, which occurs when one or more members of the community argue(s) for change to any of the aspects of practice listed above.

Kitcher’s description reflects a scientific field’s ‘epistemic state’ in which critical scholarship co-exists with mainstream scholarship, with the latter representing what he refers to as ‘consensus practice’ (not to be confused with ‘the consensus’, referred to above), since, by definition, the mainstream represents the perspectives and belief systems of the majority. Dissension from this mainstream is represented by critical discourses and communities – some of whose members, despite holding deviant beliefs, retain an affiliation with the mainstream to varying degrees, while some break away from it, taking their belief systems with them. In neither case does the deviant belief system represent the mainstream one.

With its potential to provoke change in a field’s epistemic state, critical scholarship represents a route to epistemic development, and, by extension, to epistemic worthiness, for, as Kitcher (2000, 27) remarks, ‘complete homogeneity is frequently a very poor distribution in terms of advancing the community’s epistemic state’ – in other words, it is generally through disagreement and disputes that a field’s epistemic development eventually occurs. The professional development scholarship field’s advancement, then, is likely to be significantly propelled by – and, I argue, dependent upon – a concerted critical challenge to mainstream scholarship, particularly to the linear-process based, causality-assumptive scholarship whose weaknesses I discuss above. Having been found wanting, such mainstream scholarship must surely now be declared yesterday’s scholarship. It is time to move on from it if we are to augment our understanding of teacher professional development.

The distinctive critical scholarship, outlined above, that implicitly or explicitly questions and challenges mainstream North American scholarship has been delineated by significant contributions from Europe-based scholars, including critical masses of researchers from the UK and the Netherlands. Certainly, researchers from other regions, such as Australasia, have also made key contributions to it, and, as I note above, North American scholars too have offered, and continue to offer, critical perspectives. Does this critical scholarship, then, merit the label ‘distinctively European’? I suggest that, broadly speaking, it does – but, subjected to more precise scrutiny (not least, to avoid overlooking the contributions of researchers from other regions), it perhaps does not. Yet its distinct focus on conceptualisation, definitional precision, and theoretical understandings of what professional development is, what does or does not constitute it, and the complexity of how it occurs, certainly seems European-led and European-dominated. (I base this suggestion on my strong impression, derived from extensive familiarity with the literature, that a greater proportion of Europe-based than North America-based researchers of teacher professional development embrace such critical perspectives.) This is a scholarship of doubts and scepticism about causality claims and the pursuit of a holy grail of professional development provision. It is a scholarship of conceptual clarity and definitional precision, of recognising the value of employee-centric perspectives, and of addressing the complexity of the professional development process – which, notwithstanding some significant contributions (from, inter alios, Clarke and Hollingsworth 2002, Eraut 2004, 2007; Evans 2014, 2019; Guskey 1995, 2002; Korthagen 2017; Opfer and Pedder 2011), remains under-researched and under-theorised.

Above all, this critical scholarship stands in sharp contrast to the mainstream discourse that pervades US scholarship – and that, in large part, is evidently a consequence of federal and/or state policy initiatives aimed at increasing teacher accountability. The policy-driven factor is important, for not only does it explain and support the delineation of mainstream US scholarship as I present it above, but it also carries implications for any country whose policy agenda imposes accountability measures on schools and teachers, and in doing so encourages what risks being derided as weak scholarship, manifested by, inter alia, researchers’ relentless pursuit of holy grails of knowledge that cannot be evidenced with rigorous conviction, and their unquestioning practice of what I call ‘the academic equivalent of simply retweeting chord-striking sound bites’ (Evans 2022b, 332) that perpetuate causality-assumptive conventional wisdom upon which the policy agenda is based. Such is the stuff of epistemic inertia – which prevails when critical discourses go unheard and unheeded.

As I note elsewhere (Evans 2022a), however, if it is to advance its field’s epistemic development, critical discourse must go beyond fault-finding and weakness-exposure; it must be pro-active in making a more positive contribution to enhancing and increasing the epistemic worthiness of the knowledge generated. Such a contribution could be achieved by, inter alia, promulgating and demonstrating criteria for rigour, or by pioneering or generating new theoretical perspectives – including, in the case of professional development scholarship, perspectives that support employee-centrism. Such are the shape and direction of the critical path that needs to be forged within the professional development scholarship field, to cut across its mainstream meandering pedestrian-ways that take us round in circles, leading to nowhere of value or of epistemic worthiness.

Many European scholars have helped forge such a path. In doing so, they have initiated what Kitcher (2000) calls a ‘field of disagreement’ that clearly signals an unsettling of the mainstream field’s ‘epistemic state’. Through rigorous research and scholarship that confronts what Korthagen (2017) calls ‘inconvenient truths about teacher learning’, such unsettling has augmented our knowledge and understanding of professional development. But there remains much to be done, for we must continue to challenge linear, causality-assumptive, thinking that fails to plumb the analytical depths of consideration of why professional development matters, and how it occurs in individuals – and we can only do so effectively by focusing first of all on what we mean by ‘professional development’. Such must be the agenda that defines a European scholarship of teacher professional development whose distinctiveness is defined by the epistemic breakthroughs it contributes to the field of teacher professional learning and development.

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Notes on contributors

Linda Evans

Linda Evans is (full) professor of education at the University of Manchester in the UK, where she is currently the deputy head of the School of Environment, Education and Development. Her research is located in the broad field of working life in education contexts, and incorporates foci on, inter alia, professionalism, professional development, researcher development, workplace attitudes, and leadership. She is known for having developed original theoretical perspectives and conceptualisations, including conceptual models of the componential structures of professionalism and professional development.

Notes

1. Hallinger and Kulophas (2020) identified Vescio et al.’s paper as the most highly cited document on leadership and teacher professional learning included in their review, and noted that ‘[t]he geographic distribution of authors of these [20 most highly-cited] documents was heavily weighted towards North American scholars’ (p. 20).

2. These authors acknowledge Mlodinow (2012, referenced in Sancho-Gil and Domingo-Coscollola 2022, 429) as the originator of this observation.

3. In common with Cooper et al. (2023, 1), who note that ‘the processes of professional learning and development are complex’, I intend the terms ‘complex’ and ‘complexity’ to be understood as generic concepts that are antithetical to linearity, rather than as relating more narrowly to complexity theory – which (complexity theory) applies a more specific meaning of ‘complexity’. Perspectives that recognise professional development’s complexity, without necessarily incorporating complexity theory, may be reflected in non-linear models, such as Opfer and Pedder’s, 2011 and my own (Evans 2014) – the latter of which contends that, fundamentally, professional development occurs at the micro level through change for the better to one or more of what I identify, within my conceptual model of the componential structure of professional development, as the constituent dimensions of what I call an individual’s ‘professionalism’ or ‘mode of being’ at work.

4. Gratacós et al. (2023, 333) explain that ‘[t]he basic assumption of complexity thinking is that systems cannot be reduced to their constitutive elements. Any basic interpretation of its dynamics may lead to a simplistic and mistaken understanding of practices affecting teachers’ self-efficacy’.