While several of the articles deal with factors that affect the quality, possibilities and success of teacher professional learning, there are some that focus more closely on macro societal conditions and the micro-contexts provided by school cultures.

Included under this concept are the nature and operation of educational systems, policy environments and reforms, teacher working conditions as well as historic factors that determine what is accepted or not as suitable forms for professional development.

For example, a historical approach and a particular theoretical model for analysing policy implementation  is used to explain why an attempt to establish an ungraded primary school system in a particular  state education system was not sustainable over time and the effect on this failure of pressures from the community, politics and the media. With the exception of those who had better professional development, school support and whose beliefs were aligned with those of the reform, teachers reverted to old practices.  The willingness and commitment of partners on both sides, allowed for the successful development of a programme that combined contact education, distance education, school-based training and the systematic assessment of prior learning.

All of which made the teachers’ journey to greater professionalism a successful one. While policy reform environments may be supportive of teacher development as narrated in anothercase , and as evidenced in the learning interaction of teachers participating in , a more critical stance is taken about the effects on teacher development of standards-based reforms and accountability environments, high-stakes assessment, the narrowing of professional development “outcomes” to teacher test scores and the increased control and regulation over how professional development operates.

By: Mary Grace G. Canare | Teacher I | Mabatang Elementary School | Abucay, Bataan