Contesting continuing professional development: reflections from England

Abstract

This paper argues the competing ways in which continuing professional development (CPD) is currently practised in schooling settings in England is a product of the complex social conditions within which teachers work and learn, and teachers' efforts to make sense of these conditions. Specifically, the paper draws upon research into the teacher learning practices, and conditions of practice, of a group of 18 teachers from one inner-city comprehensive secondary school in the British Midlands. To make sense of competing approaches to CPD within the school, the paper analyses these teachers' experiences in light of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of social practices as contested. The research reveals competing approaches to teacher CPD in relation to the management of teachers' CPD, the focus upon improving test scores and the modes of learning in which teachers participate. The paper shows how conflicting pressures and demands in the context within which teachers work, and teachers' responses to these demands, contribute to contested practices in and across these domains, both arising from and resulting in what is described as a 'hybridised' habitus. The research gestures towards the need to cultivate conditions conducive to more educationally oriented, critical, situated and collaborative CPD. IntroductionThis paper provides insights into the nature of the continuing professional development (CPD) practices of teachers in England under current conditions. Specifically, the paper draws upon the experiences of 18 teachers from one secondary school, specialising in languages, in the British Midlands. The research presented reveals the nature of CPD practices undertaken within the school in the context of work and policy conditions currently influencing teachers in England. In this way, the paper seeks to better understand the range of teachers' professional development practices, in context, which exist within the school.The paper firstly draws upon relevant literature to outline the nature of different approaches and foci to teachers' CPD in England in recent times, revealing numerous competing and contested conditions and approaches to teachers' learning. To explore how this myriad of influences and approaches affect teachers' actual learn-

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