Teaching outdoor and adventure activities: an investigation of a primary school physical education professional development p

Section Two 
Professional Development 
Professional development is known by many terms in the education literature 
including teacher development, in-service education, staff development, career 
development, continuing education and lifelong learning. These terms are explained 
differently by different people and also have overlapping meanings. Ward and Doutis, 

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(1999) noted that terms such as staff development, professional development and in-
service education are used interchangeably generally to suggest actions or activities 
aimed at improving teachers’ practices and beliefs associated with educational 
improvement. Day (1997) proposed the following definition taking into account the 
thoughts of Fullan (1995) and Hargreaves (1995): 
Professional development consists of all natural learning experiences and those 
conscious and planned activities which are intended to be of direct and indirect 
benefit to the individual, group or school and which contribute, through these, to 
the quality of education in the classroom. It is the process by which, alone and 
with others, teachers review, renew and extend their commitment as change 
agents to the moral purposes of teaching and by which they acquire and develop 
critically the knowledge, skills and emotional intelligence essential to good 
professional thinking, planning and practice with children, young people and 
colleagues through each phase of their teaching lives. (p. 4)
In a simpler definition, professional development can be described broadly as all 
formal and informal learning that enables people to improve their own practice (Earley 
& Bubb, 2004). In the case of teachers, professional development is ‘any activity which 
enhances their knowledge and skills and enables them to consider their attitudes and 
approaches to the education of children, with a view to improve the quality of teaching 
process’ (Bolam, 1994, p. 8). At the core of all types of professional development is the 
understanding that it is about teacher learning, transforming their knowledge into 
practice for the benefit of the children they teach.
A characteristic of many professions is to learn throughout one’s career.
Professional development starts with teachers’ initial teacher training and continues 
systematically to promote growth and development throughout a teacher’s career to 
retirement (Conway et al., 2009; Villegas- Reimers, 2003). It is recognized that there 
are two beneficiaries of this commitment to learning, the person undertaking the 
education (teacher) and the person receiving the benefits of this education (pupil) 
(Guskey, 2002b). There is growing evidence for, and recognition of, the importance of 
professional development in equipping educators to meet the challenges faced by 
today’s schools. Education is constantly changing and primary schools need well 
informed and highly motivated teachers (Corcoran, 1995; Darling-Hammond, 2000; 
Guskey, 2003; Raymond, 1998). Knight (2002) states that; 
continuing professional development is needed because initial teacher education 
cannot contain all of the prepositional knowledge that is needed and certainly 
not that procedural, “know to” knowledge which grows in practice. Normal 

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changes as when a syllabus is altered…demand development….teachers are now 
expected to embrace life-long learning. (p. 230)
It is important to note here, that the current interest in continuing professional 
development activities world-wide does not point to deficiencies in the teaching 
workforce but rather the vast changes that are occurring, that teachers have to contend 
with in their daily lives, for example advances in technology and economic conditions 
affecting resources (Villegas-Reimers, 2003). Provision of, as well as critically 
examining the effectiveness of, professional development practices are therefore 
important to ensure the success of our education system.