Context

Initial teacher training prepares teachers for the classroom, but sustaining a lifetime's professional practice needs more than just a job and a salary. There is growing awareness that teachers' confidence and morale can be improved by CPD that enhances their knowledge and skills. Some teachers seek CPD for professional advancement. Others rely on courses to keep them abreast of curriculum developments and new approaches to teaching.

Formal recognition that professional updating is part of a teacher's working life emerged a generation ago with the introduction, in some parts of the UK, of five statutory inservice training days. Ideally, teachers would spend some of this time on implementing new government initiatives, some on trying out new teaching methods, and some updating their own subject knowledge and subject-specific professionalism.

However, concerns have been expressed that the balance for these and other 'training' opportunities has tipped towards implementation of education policy at the expense of the teacher's own needs:

"…since the 1988 Education Act, Conservative and Labour Governments have developed policies that result in greater control of teachers' time and limits to their personal autonomy. Limited time for subject-based professional development means that many teachers are increasingly directed towards fairly instrumental, information-led training, such as briefings on examination syllabi. This training in turn feeds into a school development plan, which is informed by Government objectives and priorities. The training is, in effect, depersonalised”.

Leaton Gray S. An enquiry into Continuing Professional Development for Teachers. London: Esmee Fairburn Foundation; 2005.

This is particularly of interest in relation to science teaching, where three major drivers of change are having a profound influence not just on what is being taught but on how it is being taught. The pace of scientific discovery continues to accelerate, developments in ICT open up new opportunities in learning environments, and social and ethical context is becoming an ever more significant aspect of science and science teaching.

A further issue relates to the nature of the science education that should be provided in our schools. On the one hand there is the need to train the next generation of scientists, which means equipping students with the basic scientific knowledge that will be essential in their chosen careers. On the other hand, there is also a necessity to provide a science education for the much larger number of students who will not be working in a scientific arena but will need skills to survive, participate and thrive in a technologically advanced society.

Fulfilling these needs is important if we are to achieve the desirable dual goals of both a healthy economy and a trusting, questioning electorate. And it was this horizon-scanning of the future of science and science education that prompted the Wellcome Trust to implement its shared vision with the Government in developing and funding the £51 million Science Learning Centres initiative. The Wellcome Trust sees this unique programme as symbolising career-long learning that moves beyond the day-to-day needs of the school and helps to enhance teachers' professional self-image and aspiration.

In England, the environment for CPD will be set by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA), under its newly acquired remit.