Conference Agenda

Practitioner inquiry is an approach to improving teaching that puts teachers in the agentic position to determine the process of their professional learning by addressing their problems of practice (Dana et al., 2025). While practitioner inquiry holds promise, its potential for transforming practice depends on teachers having competencies for progressing through the inquiry cycle and other professional learning activities in ways that are evidence informed and values driven, and that lead to changes in their practice. In this paper, we examine the sense-making journeys of four educators who took part in professional development experiences designed to develop teacher competencies for addressing problems of practice through inquiry.

The research-based frame shifting approach (Kennedy & Murphy, 2024, described in more detail below) comprises two stages. The first stage helps teachers develop “habits of mind,” defined as skilled mindsets or efficacious dispositions. The second stage helps teachers examine their problem of practice using different domains of teaching as a lens. This study addresses the following research questions:

1. How do teachers make sense of the frame shifting approach?
a. Where and how do we see habits of mind emerging and developing? b. Where do we see the discussion shifting between the three domains of teaching? c. What is the nature of the interactions that precipitate teacher sense-making? 2. How does the frame shifting approach lead to the consideration of new teacher moves to address problems of practice? To what extent are these appropriate? 3. To what degree are teachers reaffirming existing beliefs vs questioning or adjusting current beliefs through their participation in the professional development activities?

Conceptual Framework

This study is focused on teacher learning of the frame shifting approach--which consists of two stages, developing habits of mind and shifting across the three domains of teaching--as supporting teacher inquiry (Kennedy & Murphy, 2024). Teacher sense-making of this approach, supported through coaching in the professional development activities, shapes their translation of the approach to their own problems of practice.

Habits of Mind

The first stage in the frame shifting approach addresses educators’ development of three habits of mind (Costa & Kallick, 2008):

1. Habit of Deliberate Interpretation: Separating observation from interpretation in order to view a situation more clearly.

1. Habit of Asset Identification: Combating deficit-thinking by identifying and focusing on students’ assets.

1. Habit of Personal Attribution: Engaging self-efficacy and personal responsibility for solving the teaching dilemma.

Frame Shifting and the Three Domains of Teaching

The second stage in this approach supports teachers in considering their dilemma by relating it to all three domains of teaching (Kennedy-Lewis, 2012):

1. Relationships: Sustained patterns of interaction among individuals in the class;

1. Classroom management: Rules, routines, and teacher behaviors that structure teaching and learning;

1. Curriculum and instruction: The content taught and activities used to support students’ learning.

Teacher Sense-Making

Sense-making allows teachers to progress from encountering new information and ideas to being able to act upon these new ideas in practice (Datnow et al., 2023). We adopt Naumer, Fisher, and Dervin’s (2008) definition of sense-making moments for this study. They stated:

The sense-making moment is the point in time-space when a person experiences a gap while moving through time-space...The person bridges this gap by experiencing questions and muddles that lead them to construct bridges consisting of ideas, thoughts, emotions, feelings, hunches, and memories. (p. 3)

 

Teacher sense-making in this study entails teachers encountering frame shifting concepts, processing these concepts based on their situated contexts of practice, and acting on this knowledge by identifying teacher moves that can better address their persistent dilemmas (Luttenberg et al., 2013).

This paper reports on findings from two pre‑validation workshops conducted as part of the PAIDEIA Project, a European initiative aimed at preparing teachers for the responsible and pedagogically meaningful integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education. The workshops brought together educational experts, primary school teachers, and secondary school teachers to review and provide feedback on the AI&ED Competence Framework and the accompanying Teacher Professional Development Program prior to large‑scale piloting. As international frameworks increasingly emphasise the need for AI literacy and ethical awareness among educators (European Commission. Joint Research Centre., 2017; UNESCO, 2021), the pre‑validation phase served as a critical step in ensuring that the PAIDEIA curriculum is usable, relevant, and aligned with teachers’ professional realities.

Participants explored the Five‑unit curriculum, which covers AI awareness, teaching with AI, guiding students in AI use, and ethical considerations. While the curriculum’s ambition and clarity were widely acknowledged, a consistent concern across both workshops was the overall course length. The proposed 36‑hour duration was viewed as unrealistic for typical teacher professional development contexts, echoing broader research on workload constraints in teacher learning (Creagh et al., 2025). Participants recommended reducing the duration or modularising the course into smaller, more manageable units to enhance engagement and feasibility.

Feedback also highlighted concerns regarding the overuse of AI‑generated content, particularly the recurring presence of “Teacher Tamara,” an AI‑generated persona embedded in several activities. Participants expressed a preference for authentic teacher testimonials and real‑world classroom case studies, arguing that these would enhance credibility, relatability, and pedagogical relevance. This aligns with existing literature emphasising the importance of authenticity and contextualisation in teacher professional development (Hamash et al., 2024; Holmes et al., 2023; Plust et al., 2021). Participants further stressed the need for differentiated content to address the distinct needs of novice teachers and experienced practitioners, who engage with AI tools in different ways.

Although the curriculum’s theoretical foundation was appreciated, participants called for a stronger balance between conceptual content and practical, classroom‑oriented examples. They emphasised the value of hands‑on activities, real teaching scenarios, and opportunities to experiment with AI tools, elements shown to support meaningful teacher learning (Boulhrir & Hamash, 2025; Holmes & Tuomi, 2022). The ethical focus in Unit 4 was particularly well received, with participants recognising the importance of equipping teachers to navigate issues such as bias, transparency, and data protection.

Feedback on platform usability was mixed. Some participants found the interface intuitive, especially when the left‑hand navigation menu remained visible. Others reported inconsistencies between click‑through modules and scrollable web pages, as well as technical issues in interactive exercises. Drag‑and‑drop activities did not function reliably across devices, text‑matching quizzes were overly restrictive, and self‑reflection questionnaires allowed users to bypass content by selecting “strongly agree.” Additional concerns included poor mobile responsiveness, readability issues caused by colour choices, and the need for clearer progress indicators, subtitles, and improved accessibility features.

Participants also emphasised the importance of transparency regarding the use of AI tools within the course itself, recommending clearer explanations of their purpose and limitations. Across both workshops, there was a strong preference for a more concise, streamlined format that balances theory with practice and supports teachers’ diverse levels of experience. Overall, the pre‑validation workshops provided essential insights into the usability, authenticity, and pedagogical alignment of the PAIDEIA curriculum. The feedback offers a clear roadmap for refinement prior to full‑scale piloting and contributes to broader discussions on how to design effective, ethically grounded AI professional development for educators.

Professional learning (PL) is widely positioned as a central mechanism for improving teaching quality, supporting curriculum reform, and sustaining professional growth across teachers’ careers. Across European and international education systems, teachers are increasingly framed as lifelong learners, expected to continuously adapt their practice in response to policy reform, accountability frameworks, and changing societal demands. Despite this emphasis, professional learning is frequently experienced by teachers as fragmented, compliance-driven, and disconnected from classroom realities and career-stage needs.

This paper argues that the structures designed to ensure coherence, accountability, and system-wide alignment in professional learning can unintentionally undermine professional learning as lifelong learning. While alignment with policy priorities and reform agendas is intended to strengthen teaching practice, it often produces professional passivity, cognitive overload, and selective engagement rather than sustained professional growth across the career continuum.

The study conceptualises professional learning as a multi-level phenomenon shaped by the interactions of policymakers, school leaders, and teachers. Rather than examining teachers’ experiences in isolation, the research investigates how professional learning is enacted at policy and leadership levels and how it is experienced and negotiated by teachers in practice. The study is guided by the following research questions:

• RQ1: How do policymakers and school leaders conceptualise, design, and enact professional learning within contemporary education systems?

• RQ2: What systemic, departmental, and school-level factors shape the design, delivery, and coherence of professional learning across policy and practice?

• RQ3: How do teachers experience and interpret professional learning, and how do these experiences support or constrain professional learning as lifelong learning across career stages?

Together, these questions enable examination of professional learning as both a structural system and a lived professional experience. A particular focus is placed on how teachers respond when professional learning initiatives conflict with their professional values, expertise, or classroom contexts, and how these responses shape professional identity and engagement over time.

The study is theoretically informed by Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Festinger, 1962). Cognitive dissonance refers to the psychological tension experienced when individuals encounter inconsistencies between beliefs, values, and actions. In this study, cognitive dissonance is reconceptualised not as resistance to professional learning, but as a mechanism through which teachers actively negotiate policy-driven professional learning. When professional learning expectations conflict with teachers’ professional judgement or contextual realities, teachers engage in processes such as selective uptake, internal reframing, and professional compliance to reconcile system demands with their professional identities.

Extending cognitive dissonance theory across policy, leadership, and classroom levels enables analysis of how professional learning produces divergent outcomes, including surface-level compliance, disengagement, or deeper, sustained learning. This multi-level application reveals a central paradox in contemporary professional learning systems: initiatives designed to standardise and scale professional learning often diminish the agency, continuity, and reflexivity required for lifelong learning.

The European and international relevance of this study lies in its engagement with challenges shared across education systems, including curriculum reform, standardised professional learning frameworks, reform saturation, and increasing expectations of teacher lifelong learning. Although situated within a single education system, the tensions identified reflect patterns documented across European contexts, where policy coherence and accountability coexist with aspirations for teacher agency and professional growth. As such, the study contributes to broader international debates on how professional learning can be designed and enacted to support meaningful lifelong learning rather than episodic or compliance-oriented participation.

Educational systems around the world have been increasingly challenged by persistent and widening inequalities, particularly affecting students from disadvantaged backgrounds negatively (Ainscow, 2020; OECD, 2023a). Global and national dynamics related to poverty, migration, and displacement (UNESCO, 2018) and unprecedented levels of mobility within and across nations by diverse racial, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic groups (Banks, 2008) have intensified those challenges. Consequently, education systems have been under growing pressure to develop more adaptive, inclusive, and effective teaching practices capable of responding to diverse student needs (OECD, 2023b).

In education, disadvantaged groups refer to populations at risk of exclusion from educational opportunities (UNESCO, 2020). In the present study, disadvantage is conceptualized as a multidimensional and intersecting condition shaped by structural, educational, and individual factors. Commonly identified dimensions include socio economic disadvantages, gender inequalities, language, cultural diversity and ethnic background related challenges, lack of educational support, special educational needs or learning difficulties, migration or refugee background, rural or remote location, and health related barriers (European Commission, 2022; Sirin, 2005; UNESCO, 2020). Together, these dimensions constitute the contextual and personal background of disadvantage that informs both the analytical framework and the interpretation of findings.

In response to the complex nature of teaching across diverse contexts, teacher effectiveness, professional development and school leadership in disadvantaged educational settings take on particular importance. Teacher effectiveness is defined as the effect a teacher has on desired student outcomes (Opdenakker, 2023). Teaching effectiveness is thus defined as the effect a teacher’s teaching has on desired student outcomes. Effectiveness emerges through the interaction between individual teacher characteristics, leadership, professional learning, and organizational conditions in which teachers work (King & Newmann, 2001; Fullan, 2007). International comparative research illustrates how teaching practices and support structures are examined within specific national policy contexts, highlighting the importance of contextualized understandings of teacher effectiveness (Maulana et al., 2023). Policy oriented research further emphasizes the role of teacher professional development and school leadership in addressing educational disadvantages and promoting equity. International organizations such as the OECD and the European Commission consistently frame leadership capacity and teacher learning as key policy levers for supporting disadvantaged students at the system level (OECD, 2020; European Commission, 2022).

Building on this body of work, the current study is theoretically grounded in the School Capacity Building tradition (Fullan, 2007; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012; King & Newmann, 2001; Leithwood et al., 2020), which conceptualizes teacher effectiveness as an organizational outcome emerging from the interaction between teachers’ individual knowledge and skills and the leadership and professional learning structures within which they work. Complementing this organizational perspective, the study draws on the teacher effectiveness literature which emphasizes the contextual and culturally situated nature of teaching effectiveness (Maulana et al., 2023). These frameworks provide important reference points for understanding that teacher effectiveness does not rely solely on teacher knowledge and skills; teacher development and leadership are crucial inputs; context is decisive in educational implications; contextual profiling is essential, particularly in comparative research; and disadvantage could be addressed as a context.

From this perspective, the present paper focus on “How are teacher effectiveness, professional development, and school leadership framed in relation to disadvantage within recent policy and research documents in the Netherlands and Türkiye?”. The Netherlands and Türkiye represent contrasting governance models in education, particularly in terms of decentralization, school autonomy, and leadership structures. Both systems face increasing diversity due to migration, but they respond to it through very different policy and professional development arrangements.