Enabling and Adapting Professional Learning Practices Over Time and Contexts

• In Event: International Perspectives on School Improvement: Sharing Innovation, Borrowing Policy

Abstract

This theoretical paper uses an example from Assessment for Learning, an intervention strategy (Black & Wiliam, 1998) used in many countries, to examine how professional learningin AFL crosses boundaries from research to classroom and explores how this process may result in role conflict. Boundary crossing is viewed from an ecological teacher agency lens, focusing on understanding how teachers attempt to improve formative assessment in their classrooms. An ecological approach highlights that achievement of agency will always result from the interplay of individual efforts, available resources, and contextual and structural factors as they come together in particular, novel and unique situations (Biesta & Tedder, 2007).

Author

• Christine Harrison, Kings College, London