Teacher professional learning and development in the context of educational innovations in higher education

Higher education (HE) is engaged in a variety of educational innovations, as well as professional development initiatives (PDIs) to support teachers in attaining the required expertise. To improve teacher professional learning and development (PLD) and innovation processes, it is important to understand whether, how and why different PLD practices work for different innovations, contexts and populations. However, research is characterized by descriptive, single case studies and lacks a common framework to relate research findings. To address this shortcoming, this study collected and compared a wide variety of cases to develop a typology of practices. The results showed that educational innovations and teacher PLD were typically configured in three ways: (1) the focus is on implementing a new form of education and teacher learning is used as a means to this end, (2) the focus is on teachers’ professional learning and the educational innovations are spin-offs, and (3) the focus is on stimulating innovations and teacher learning is a side-effect. These types of configurations differed regarding the educational innovation, required teacher expertise, professional development initiatives, teacher learning, and outcome measures. The typology serves as a framework that may help to reflect on practices, bridge disciplines, and formulate hypotheses for future research.