Crossing the Past Political Boundary: Teacher Professional Learning in a South African Reform Context

A promising shift in the interventions that help promote teachers ’ knowledge and skills in the South African current reform era is highly evident. Yet, a large part of research suggests that effective teacher change in knowledge and learning remains an elusive target for some teachers in this context. This paper reviews and analyses how teacher professional learning and knowledge have been conceptualised and studied since the inception of educational reforms in post-apartheid South Africa. Using the integrative synthesis, this paper demonstrates that the scholarship in this field recognise that it is not just the existence of the professional learning activities that affect teachers ’ practices but the “what ” and “how ” of these professional learning activities. This paper argues that further complex conceptualisation of teacher professional learning that focus on how teachers learn from their working environments and the conditions that support and promote learning in these environments carries implications for the design of the professional learning opportunities that promise effective change in teacher learning