ABSTRACT
Increasingly, teachers and school leaders find themselves reaching out to others around the world, or looking for self-directed “do it yourself” approaches to their own learning. Self-directed learning is about the self-efficacy of the adult learner. It takes a range of forms, such as practitioner action research, postgraduate study, or use of collaborative and communication technologies such as Twitter and blogging. This chapter explores the rapidly growing field of professional learning that is driven by the learner and sometimes sourced in non-traditional ways or ways not readily acknowledged by schools or education bodies. This kind of professional learning is an act of agency. Its increasing popularity with teachers and school leaders suggests: a resistance to cookie cutter PD that assumes a uniformity of professional learners; a seeking of local alternatives to the barrage of experts from afar; and an embracing of professional learning grounded in ownership and autonomy rather than compliance and accountability.
