The Digest edition 2010/1 : Successful professional learning

This edition of The Digest is focused on research into teacher learning and professional development. Teacher learning includes not only activities such as conferences and workshops, but also includes participation in many formal and informal learning activities. Recent research has focussed, amongst other things, on characteristics of successful professional learning, and on the connections between teachers’ professional learning and improvements in student learning. This research has the potential to assist teachers and schools in selecting and planning for professional learning, so that it will maximise the benefits for participants. The first section of this digest presents some research findings on effective professional learning. The next section draws on studies of content-specific professional learning programs. The third section reports some of the research on the impact of professional learning. The digest draws on searches of a number of databases and bibliographic resources, including the Australian Education Index, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Education Research Complete, British Education Index and Scopus. A selection of relevant websites is listed, and a full reference list is provided. Links to those references for which full-text online access is freely available are also included.