ABSTRACT
The changing nature of the contemporary knowledge society, students’ needs, policy changes and persistent threats to long-held associations between teacher professionalism and autonomy, as discussed in Chapter 1, pose challenges both to individuals’ original ‘call to teach’ and the continuing relevance and appropriateness of their existing pedagogical and knowledge repertoires. Yet, ‘it is through professional and personal development that teachers build character, maturity and other virtues in themselves and others, making their schools into moral communities’ (Hargreaves, 2003: 48). This chapter focuses on teacher learning, the cultures that support this, teacher identity (the person in the professional) and the challenges to their wellbeing.
