Promoting teachers' professional development

Because teacher quality has a great influence on pupil attainment, teachers’ professional development receives a lot of attention in educational policy. This dissertation contains five studies on how teachers’ professional development, in terms of learning at the workplace, can be explained and promoted. The central question of the first part is how Human Resources Management (HRM) can serve as a tool in professional development. It is examined what factors hinder and promote the implementation of HRM in schools and how the implementation can be fostered when different HRM roles (administrative expert, strategic partner, change agent, employee champion) are fulfilled within schools. Furthermore, the impact of consensus between management and HRM department about goals and features of HRM policy on the implementation process in examined. In the second part of the dissertation, the central question is what individual and organisational factors explain teachers’ professional development. First, we try to explain professional development, in terms of reflection and asking feedback, by perceived self-efficacy, learning goal orientation and transformational leadership. Second, we try to explain professional development in terms of innovative behaviour and knowledge sharing, by perceived task and goal interdependence within teams. Attention is paid to the strengths and weaknesses of the research and also practical implications are mentioned.