Towards a Better Future

Chapter Ten: Professional Development in Teaching
The Teaching Council’s Strategic Plan for 2015-17 included the establishment of a national framework
for professional development as one of its four main goals. In March 2016, the Council launched
Cosán: Framework for Teachers’ Learning. The Foreword to the Cosán document states:
Cosán recognises that teachers are already committed to their professional learning.
It acknowledges the many ways in which teachers have told us that they learn. It
thus provides a clear and accessible framework for that ongoing professional learning
to be recognised, in the context of teachers’ status as registered professionals. It also
provides a clear context for new conversations to happen about teaching and
learning, between teachers, parents, students, and all stakeholders.
(Foreword)
An important statement of the values underlying professional development for teachers is contained
in Cosán. Among the values that are elucidated are: teachers as autonomous professionals; flexibility
as a feature of the framework; facilitation of teachers in identifying and pursuing relevant professional
learning opportunities; allowing for innovative approaches to quality assurance; opportunities to
acknowledge and recognise teachers’ learning; and facilitating teachers in prioritising learning that
benefits themselves and their pupils.
In addition to the affirmation of educational values like these, the Cosán document recognises that
teachers’ learning is not merely an up-skilling or functional matter; that it is a formative process
involving a number of intermingling dimensions. These dimensions it identifies as: formal and
informal, professional and personal, collaborative and individual, school-based and external. The
document also stresses the importance of critical reflection in teachers’ professional learning and
gives attention in short, numbered sections to each of the following: planning for learning and
reflecting on its impact; standards to guide learning and reflection; and quality assurance processes.
The final chapter envisages a development phase from 2016 to 2019, to be followed by an
implementation phase commencing in 2020.
LOOKING AHEAD
The Cosán document provides a valuable context – in fact the key regulatory context – in which
to consider the development of CPD policy and practice for teachers in Ireland. Its rationale marks
a welcome contrast to the kinds of assumptions underlying more traditional approaches to ‘inservice’,
such as the four identified in the opening paragraphs above. Despite its extended title,
however, Cosán is less a framework than a first outline of the elements of an envisaged framework.
It is important to recognise this; otherwise, some key matters that Cosán does not mention, or touches
on only lightly, might be seen as structural gaps in the framework. In making provision for a three-
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