Educational Administration Quarterly Scribner / PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Professional Development: Untangling the Influence of Work Context on Teacher Learning

Professional development has become the panacea of 1990s reform efforts. However, our understanding of the breadth, depth, and nature of teacher learning experiences remains limited. Using an embedded case study design, this article examines the factors that motivate teachers to engage in development activities, the ways they experience pro-fessional learning, and most important, how work context influences their learning expe-riences. The author suggests that a complex nesting of work contexts limits the types of learning activities, and hence knowledge, available to teachers. Finally, steps that school leaders and education policy makers can take to broaden and enhance profes-sional learning opportunities are discussed. In 1993, Little stated that professional development “is where the tension between institutional imperatives and individual prerogatives exists, between the conditions necessary to attempt systemic change and the condi-tions that engage individual teachers in their work ” (p. 141). Her remarks underscore the burgeoning importance of professional development as a vehicle for educational reform evidenced in recent national studies (Corco