ABSTRACT
One central purpose of continuing professional education is to bring practising professionals into contact with new knowledge and ideas. Sometimes this is conceived in terms of general updating, sometimes as a stimulus to critical thinking and self-evaluation, sometimes as the dissemination of a particular innovation, sometimes as part of the process of implementing a new mandatory policy. The evidence that subsequent practice is affected by CPE is scanty and more often negative than positive. Indeed, evidence of what has been learned has rarely been collected, as most evaluations have focused on the perceived relevance of the content and the perceived quality of the processes. Having been engaged for some time with practice-oriented Masters courses for mid-career professionals and shorter in-service programmes for schoolteachers, it became clear to me that the whole question of professional learning during and after CPE had been little examined. Even in the education sector, empirical research was limited and the whole field appeared to be underconceptualized.
