Professional Development

Abstract The professional development of inservice educators is a major concern for many educational stakeholders. The importance of professional development has been highlighted through a national award that recognizes the quality and results of professional development activities (Killion, 1999). In addition to this public recognition of the impact of professional development, a large body of research and scholarship in the general education literature has explored the nature of educators’ knowledge, the ways in which educators learn to understand and maneuver their way through educational settings, and the support that different contexts offer for learning and changing educational practice. While the volume of this research has generated several literature reviews, researchers have only begun to explore some of the issues related to the professional learning of inservice music educators. This review highlights what researchers can tell us now about the professional development of inservice music educators, the nature of the issues they faced or uncovered, and the questions that they have left for others to answer. Since the questions we ask and the ways in which we attempt to answer them are influenced by how we conceptualize professional development, this chapter begins by presenting alternate definitions of professional development, reviewing some of the factors that influence the development and use of teachers’ professional knowledge, and exploring the assumptions that underlie alternative definitions of professional growth.