Reimagining teacher professional development through ecological, adaptive, and human-centred perspectives

Teacher professional development has been widely studied as a means of improving teaching and student outcomes. Decades of research have produced a well-established understanding that effective professional development is sustained over time, collaborative, and responsive to context. However, this understanding has focused mainly on how professional development can change teaching practice and student outcomes. Less attention has been paid to how professional development is experienced by teachers, whose knowledge is recognised, and what kinds of professional lives it supports. This paper brings ecological, adaptive, and human-centred perspectives to consider these questions. The ecological perspective understands teacher learning as constituted within institutional, relational, and sociotechnical systems. The adaptive perspective examines whose knowledge shapes professional development and how teachers’ situated knowledge might influence its content, priorities, and purposes. The human-centred perspective considers teacher identity, emotion, and well-being as constitutive of professional growth. These perspectives broaden the understanding of professional development by considering the systems in which it is embedded, the knowledge that shapes it, and the teachers it is intended to support. The paper concludes with implications for research, policy, and professional development design.