The emergence of a distinctive European scholarship of professional development: Challenging mainstream conceptualisations, consensus and causality claims

This article’s central focus is the distinction between mainstream North American–particularly US–scholarship and critical European scholarship, in relation to teacher professional learning and development. The era of accountability pervading the US policy landscape, it is noted, has spawned a dominant mainstream scholarship centred around causal chains and a ‘consensus’ about the features of ‘effective’ professional development that generates students’ learning gains. Critical scholarship, in contrast, recognises the complexity of professional development, challenges linear-based, causality assumptive conceptualisations, and, with a focus on their well-being, perceives teachers as primary developees, rather than merely conduits for policy implementation. Drawing on theoretical perspectives on employee-centrism and the epistemic development of scholarship fields, it is argued that mainstream North American scholarship, having been found wanting, must now be declared yesterday’s scholarship, and a distinctively European-led critical scholarship must now take forward an epistemic-development-focused agenda to augment our understanding of teacher professional development.