The school teacher: on teacher learning and transfer in schools

Philip Kohnstamm points out in his work the importance of learning of teachers and the dialogue within the school about new insights in learning and teaching. These two themes are still topical in education. New insights from research do not naturally find their way to school practice and new knowledge acquired during professionalisation activities do not always reach colleagues within the school. This can be regarded as a transfer issue. In this article we discuss how this transfer can be promoted. To answer the question, we examined recent studies from 2017 onwards on the learning of Dutch teachers in primary and secondary education, looking for guiding insights and tools that these studies offer for strengthening transfer. The transfer plays both at the individual level of the teacher who acquires new insights during professionalisation activities, and at the level of groups of teachers who are involved in professionalisation trajectories and wish to share their insights with others besides their own group. The studies discussed differences in focus and approach, but together they provide important guiding tools for teacher education, teachers and school management.