1. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations

Network 1 was established to contribute to the field of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and to provide an opportunity for scholarly discussion and a forum for the dissemination of research.  Research usually involves (but is not limited to) the development of teachers, principals, schools, and school systems.  The network primarily focuses on the following:

• ways in which teachers/leaders learn and develop throughout their professional career;
• organisational, historical, situational, and policy contexts in which their professional learning occurs;
• knowledge that shapes their professional identity or contributes to their understanding and betterment;
• issues they face throughout their professional career;
• new developments and trends within the field of continuing professional development; and
• conditions and practices that improve and encourage professional development.

Continuing professional development has undergone tremendous change since 2000, including widespread recognition that adults must be lifelong learners, that teaching and learning is not limited to classrooms or formal CPD, that teachers and leaders benefit from induction, and that individual professional learning is necessary but not sufficient for sustainable change within groups and organisations.

Recent areas of interest have included mentoring, teacher knowledge, teacher values and beliefs, collegial relationships, professional learning communities, organisational learning, leadership development, school culture, ‘best practices’ and trends in CPD, action research, models of CPD, and improving conditions for practitioners’ learning.

Network 1 does not focus on the initial preparation of student teachers (see Network 10, Teacher Education Research) although, for example, a comparison of student teachers' initial perspectives on teaching and their perspectives as experienced teachers five years later would be appropriate. Papers about teachers’ or leaders’ induction years and beyond are also appropriate.

Proposals for posters, roundtables, papers, workshops, and symposia directed to Network 1 should be:

• directly related to the aims of Network 1
• clearly articulate implications for professional development
• address issues of European or global interest (see EERA proposal requirements).

Please note that a symposium is not a set of empirical papers related to a theme. Rather, papers for a symposium are broader than empirical papers in that they present key concepts and/or varying perspectives of the symposium theme determined by the organiser of the symposium.  Each symposium must list have a discussant (preferably not one of the presenters) who will read the contributing papers before the conference and synthesise or elaborate the major ideas/threads of the papers, pose new questions/issues/insights/directions that the papers suggest, and lead a discussion.

Chairing A Session

Members of Network 1 who submit proposals and/or are attending the conference are invited to volunteer to chair a Network 1 session during the conference.
Guidelines for chairing a session are provided at the conference. If you are interested, please contact one of the convenors.