ABSTRACT
Among those who engage in PDPs, there is an emphasis on professional learning. This emphasis strives to eliminate the unidirectional notion that PDPs provide teachers with skills and knowledge. Early defi nitions of professional learning suggested that teachers learned as they worked alone or in collective groups and that their learning was directed by the context in which they worked. Lieberman (1995), as an early advocate of professional learning, suggested that learning “is both personal and professional, individual and collective, inquiry based and technical (p. 592).” More recently, the notion of professional learning is being advanced as a complex and iterative interaction of the teacher, the school, and the learning activity (Opfer & Pedder, 2011). Professional learning provides an important framework for conceptualization and enactment of PDPs.
