Analyzing tensions within a professional learning and development initiative for teachers

Governments often go to considerable lengths to support the introduction of policy initiatives with carefully designed programs of professional learning and development for the teachers who are expected to implement them. This article analyzes a program designed to encourage teachers of students with high needs to use narrative assessment to document their students' learning. The analysis uses third generation Cultural Historical Activity Theory because this framework enabled the examination of tensions that arose in and across several aspects of the program. Evaluation of the initiative revealed tensions around expected roles, rules and the division of labor, and both intended and unintended program consequences. The article concludes that negotiation of participation in such initiatives would be desirable, together with an acceptance by sponsors that their intended objects and outcomes from the learning may change as the activities unfold in practice.