Changing Practice,Feeling Good: primary professional development explored

This article uses teachers’ accounts to explore two issues. The first is concerned with the extent to which key events impact on professional growth and practice enhancement. The second is concerned with how classrooms looked and felt to a sample of primary teachers when, in their view, there were optimum opportunities for learning to occur. Links between these two issues are considered. The research sample is too small for generalisations to be claimed. However, common ground across participating teachers is evident and interesting trends have emerged in relation to practice enhancement. Data reveals the teachers as prepared to take risks, indeed risks seemed inevitable if practice was to develop. How they calculated the risks and how they overcame associated uncertainties is revealed in their thoughts and actions and reported here