Building Professional Learning and Leadership, Maintaining and sustaining teacher quality in the middle years: The place and shape of professional learning for new times

In profiling the student as the most important constituent in the contexts of middle schooling, the significance of sustaining teacher quality is often overlooked. There is extensive empirical data that highlights the transience of excellent teachers in and out of the profession due largely to burn-out in their early years of engagement with young people. New and innovative professional learning opportunities are required if we are serious about maintaining and sustaining high quality teacher engagement in the middle years. It is incumbent on school and sector leaders to advocate new models of professional learning if professional "life-long" learning is to become a reality in new times. This paper offers a number of principles on which to base procedures for moving forward