Professional Learning as an Act of Compliance

In this chapter, Larsen and Allen consider the ways in which some beginning teachers come to engage with professional learning primarily for the purpose of complying with externally driven teacher accountabilities. These teachers are prone to assuming that, where challenges are encountered in their teaching, others are most likely to blame. Their diminished sense of responsibility can position them so that they remain confident about their own teaching capabilities, while in many ways compromising their motivation, or sense of agency, to do anything to improve the situation. At the same time, these teachers may consider their successes to be the result of their own professional strengths and capabilities, thus leading them to believe that professional learning is unnecessary and/or irrelevant to them and their professional growth. In this chapter, Larsen and Allen explore how teachers who display these types of characteristics are potentially at risk of developing a narrow conception of the role of professional learning in their work lives.