Teachers' and young peoples' learning are co-located through shared participation in classroom activity.

Teacher development programmes exist primarily to improve the quality or equity of teaching and learning practices and, through this, to improve student learning outcomes. Improving teaching and learning means changing what teachers and learners do in classrooms (and also why and how they do it). In other words—improving teaching and learning (outcomes) of necessity involves changing the nature of classroom activity—for both teachers and learners.

Changing the nature classroom activity is essential to improving teaching and learning—the intended outcomes of teacher development—but we argue that participation in new forms of classroom activity is also the core process of teachers’ professional learning.

We argue that teachers’ participation in, and development of, new forms of pedagogic practice—in the authentic setting of their classrooms and schools—is the primary mechanism for teachers’ professional learning. This could be thought of as professional learning in and for practice (Salo et al., 2024).

We also argue that such professional learning is a form of praxis. It requires both action-in and reflection-on practice, driven by the intention to transform.

For SOLE, we define teachers' praxis as:

Theoretically informed action and reflection to transform learning.

Praxis unites teachers’ professional learning and young people’s learning through:

• teachers’ intention to transform learning
• teachers’ and learners’ shared participation in classroom activity
• learners’ feedback to teachers, arising from their participation in classroom activity.