What qualities of professional development (PD) support teachers’ learning and practice? Much attention has been focused on how to best conceptualize and approach teachers’ early and on-going professional development. Yet, in spite of over two decades of research, most professional development does not adequately consider what we know about teacher learning.

Through our educational psychology research we have contributed by reconceptualizing professional development as collaborative inquiry. We have shown how, when PD is designed as collaborative inquiry, educators are supported to engage in generative cycles of self- and co-regulated practice and learning. That is, in this contribution to Psychology Today, we explain and illustrate how teachers’ professional learning through inquiry can productively be understood and supported as recursive cycles of intentional, goal-directed, and strategic activity to achieve valued outcomes.

Teachers as self- and co-regulating Learners. Psychology Today. APA Division 15 blog post. Read full article