Teacher Professional Development, Professional Learning, and Learning Ecosystems

The SOLE model identifies three nested systems which may contribute to (or block) teachers' professional development and learning—the classroom system, the school system, and the wider education system. We argue that teachers' professional learning and development takes place through participation in activity with others, in each of these systems.

Teachers learn primarily through their purposeful and agentive participation in new professional practices—in their teaching, usually in their classroom, with learners. And so, learning through professional practice (or praxis) is at the core of the model. Teachers' and learners' learning are co-located through their joint participation in classroom activity. Teachers also learn through participation in communities of practice—with other teachers—within and between schools, and through engagement with other (non-teacher) communities of practice—such as teacher educators, trainers, education officers, schools inspectors, academics, curriculum and textbook bodies, and examiners—which make up the wider landscapes of practice and constitute the education system.

The Supported Open Learning Ecosystems (SOLE) model causes us to ask to how teachers’ participation in activity—which is their learning and development—within any one of these systems influences their participation in activity in the others. In other words, how does professional learning and development cross the boundaries from one system to the next, and what more could be done to strengthen these boundary effects? Through the lens of (SOLE), we consider how teachers’ exploration of praxis in their classrooms can be encouraged and nurtured by top-down professional development programmes, and how professional learning can be shared from the bottom-up to other teachers in schools and to those supporting teacher development across the wider education system.

The SOLE model also highlights the importance of examining the role of the school system as a mediator between the classroom system and education system levels—examining the role of school leadership and teacher collaboration within or between schools—in the implementation of professional development programmes and in the sharing and co-development of professional learning(s) from practice(s) between teachers, schools, and the wider education system.