A case study of teachers’ professional learning: Becoming a community of professional learning or not?

This paper describes a school’s participation in a project designed to support critical reflection of teachers’ beliefs about best practice in early childhood education, and how these beliefs and practices intersected with shifting policies and trends in the broader early childhood field. The “Professional Learning” Project (PL project), was conducted in collaboration with a local university. As the project unfolded, multiple influences were found to affect its ultimate outcomes, including the tensions associated with day-to-day classroom commitments and varying levels of willingness to engage in what were at times confronting and challenging discussions. As a result, engagement, collaboration and participation ebbed and flowed.