ABSTRACT
How teacher professional development (PD) is conceived, approached and studied communicates the view held of teachers. It also conveys the conception of knowledge underpinning teacher learning and how experience figures into the chosen perspective. Most often, others’ prescriptions of what teachers should know and do takes precedence over teachers’ personal professional understandings of their growth. In this chapter, a different image of teachers—teachers as curriculum makers—will be presented, along with a different notion of teacher knowledge, a personal practical view emerging from the narrative continuities of teachers’ lives. The consequences of not focusing relentless attention on teachers as learners along the career/life span and all that “the paradigm of the practical” (Greene, 1994) has to offer will also be considered, together with the long-term impact on the teaching profession.
