Review of Educational Research 2011 Opfer 376 407

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 Review of Educ ational Resear ch September 2011, V ol. 81, No. 3, pp. 376– 407  DOI: 10.3102/ 003465431 1413609 © 2011 AERA. http://rer.aera.net 376 Conceptualizing Teacher Professional Learning V . Darl een Opfer  RAND Education and University of Cambridge  David Pedder University of Leicester This article adopts a complexity theory framework to review the literature on teachers’ profes sional development practices, the generative systems of these  practices, and the impact t hat learni ng experiences have on their know ledge and changes in classroom practices. The review brings together multiple  strands of literature on teacher professional developmen t, teaching and learning, teacher change, and organizatio nal learning. In doing so, it illus- trates that process–product logic has dominated the literature on teacher  pro fessional learning and that this has limited explanatory ability . The review demonstrates the ways the elements of three subsystems (the teacher, the  school, and the learning activity) int eract and combine i n differ ent ways and with varying intensities to influence teacher learning. The limitations of stud- ies focusing on specific elements or subsystems are highlighted. The article concludes that to understand teacher learning scholars must adopt method- ological practices that focus on explanatory causality and the reciprocal influences of all three subsystems. K EYWORDS: teacher learning, teacher professional development, teacher change, learning orientation, complex systems. The importance of improving schools, increasing teacher quality, and improv- ing the quality of student learning has led to a concentrated concern with profes- sional development of teachers as one important way of achieving these goals. Despite this importance, much of the research on professional development has yielded disappointing results with teacher professional learning activities often  being char acterized as ine ffective (Ha nushek, 20 05; Sykes, 19 96). Borko (20 04), D. Clarke and Holli ngsworth (2002), and Timperley and Alton-Lee (2008) have all argued in previous reviews of this research that the problem stems, in part, from researchers employing simplistic conceptualiza tions of teacher professional learn- ing that fail to consider how learning is embedded in professional lives and work- ing conditions. 1  These previous reviews have demonstrated that the available literature fails to explain how teachers learn from professional development R413609RER10.3102/0034654311413609Opfer & PedderConceptualizing Teacher fessional Learning

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