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Teachers regularly participate in professional learning (PL) activities are able to articulate what makes a PL event of program valuable for them. Many teachers identify one-off PL events as the best that have experienced (Beswick, Fraser, & Crowley, 2017) and, from an audit of mathematics teacher PL offered in Australia, Reaburn, Kilpatrick, Fraser, Beswick and Muir (2016) reported that 36% of PL was described as one-off and 55% of programs were delivered over periods of no more than one half day. This is in spite of a research consensus that spaced PL is more effective (Watson, Beswick, & Brown, 2012). Based on interviews with three mathematics professional developers and deliverers we examine reasons for which one-off PL events might be valued by teachers. This paper addresses the research question: Why might one-off PL be prevalent? On the basis of our findings we propose a model for professional learning that builds upon that of Huberman (1995) for understanding how PL, including one-off events, can be viewed as part of the long term career development activity of teachers that goes beyond formal learning opportunities. The model has implications for PL providers and researchers.

Item Type:	Refereed Conference Paper
Keywords:	professional learning, mathematics
Research Division:	Education
Research Group:	Curriculum and pedagogy
Research Field:	Mathematics and numeracy curriculum and pedagogy
Objective Division:	Education and Training
Objective Group:	Teaching and curriculum
Objective Field:	Teacher and instructor development
UTAS Author:	Beswick, K (Professor Kim Beswick)
UTAS Author:	Fraser, S (Professor Sharon Fraser)
ID Code:	126455
Year Published:	2018
Deposited By:	Education
Deposited On:	2018-06-13
Last Modified:	2019-02-14
Downloads:	3 View Download Statistics