Teacher Learning: Towards a Professional Academy

In this paper we outline how the Institute of Education's new Master of Teaching degree for teachers in their early professional development applies the concept of scholarship of teaching, developed originally in the context of higher education teaching, to the education and development of teachers at primary, secondary and post-compulsory level in order to foster intellectual dimensions of teaching. We delineate how we are working towards new approaches to pedagogy around computer-mediated communication drawing on social interactionist perspectives on learning and the notion of knowledge construction. We argue that unless such novel ways to teacher development are conceived and unless higher education teacher education is prepared to re-conceptualize its role, purpose and nature, lifelong teacher learning is in danger of remaining mere rhetoric.