In demystifying the calls for 21st-century skills, it is opportune that we understand that the said skills and competences are not new, just newly important. They have gained more prominence in these last decades due to the pace of change of the economy and the corresponding required workforce.

It seems we have entered Industry 4.0, which began in 2011 as a strategic initiative of the German government. This fourth industrial revolution is driving towards decentralisation and networking and based on the World Wide Web, thus defined as ‘Cyber-Physical Systems’, ‘Internet of Things’ or simply ‘Networking’. The strategy called for the creation of “smart industry”, in which people, devices, objects and systems combine to form dynamic, self-organising networks of production.

Literature often stresses that the purpose of teachers’ professional learning and development primarily revolves around optimising students’ learning and development. It is argued that educators’ professional learning and development goals need to be projected towards developing pedagogies that help students thrive in complex futures made of uncertain and unexpected challenges, characterised by an intense pace of change as the denominator.

Moreover, today’s learners are already no longer the individuals that educational systems were originally designed to teach, let alone those of tomorrow. Pedagogy 2.0, for instance, is a reaction to this phenomenon and moves away from the didactic approach of information transmission since the reality is that information today is readily available; conversely, it encourages students’ agency and control of learning through participation, communication and the creation of knowledge. It is also characterised by personalised methods of learning and idiosyncratic teacher support.

Pedagogy 2.0 is supported by the 4Cs (creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration) which are skills identified as fundamental for the 21st-century workforce. Learners do not gain these competencies and skills if they are not explicitly taught. However, it would be more in line with 21st-century demands if these skills and competencies are learned through facilitated opportunities, rather than the dissonant transmission method which is still predominant in the global educational scenario. Industry 2.0 (assembly line, mass production, electrical energy) and Industry 3.0 (automation, computers and electronics) cultures are still the predominant influence in our school systems.

Consequently, the centrality of teachers’ role and their development is a recurrent theme in educational literature regarding change and improvement. There is need for teachers of this century to reconceptualise their roles from being that of a passive and indispensable knowledge resource, to coaches and facilitators for acquiring knowledge. Teachers need to be high-level knowledge workers who have agency towards their professional growth as well as that of their profession. Teachers need to be innovative agents as innovation is critical for developing sources of growth through enhanced efficiency and effectiveness.

Teachers need to be innovative agents as innovation is critical for developing sources of growth through enhanced efficiency and effectiveness

Agency towards professional growth was the subject of my PhD research which started in 2016 with the Institute of Education at the University College London. In particular, the thesis considered notions of teacher agency for professional learning and development from a self-determined perspective. As a senior leader at a school these issues are critical because the quality of learning is relative to teachers’ openness to growth and self-efficacy. Research was carried out through an exploratory case-study of teachers in a school in Malta who were given the opportunity to plan their professional learning and development process over a year. Through collective reflections, projected goals have been implemented, evaluated and adapted in their classrooms. Gathered data provided evidence of teachers’ response to self-determined professional learning and development with a particular focus on agency and self-efficacy.

The following seven findings emerged from the research:

1. Teachers value self-determined professional learning and development with supporting structures for collective reflection and action;
2. Teachers prefer learning through practical, hands-on experiences based on mastery experience;
3. Teachers benefit from collective reflection, self-observation and metacognition;
4. Teachers’ agentic ability depends on the depth of reflection;
5. School culture is critical for teachers’ self-efficacy and agentic growth;
6. Teachers’ collaborative cultures support collective and harmonic (individual/collective) agency; and
7. Teachers’ personal learning factors (such as learning styles and individual learning) are secondary to the purpose of learning (student learning) and collective needs.

The thesis contributes to knowledge by confirming previous theories of professional learning and development effectiveness while proposing a broader awareness of how teacher agency and efficacy can be understood, enacted and supported. It proposes a tier of teacher agency dependent on reflective capacity and some proactive initiatives that are conducive to personal and professional growth.

In conclusion, the enactment of a learner’s critical enquiry is paramount to resolve present and future complexities. This research has evidenced that under favourable circumstances, teachers who are learners as much as they are educators have advanced in growth. It has also taught us how and where to improve such an approach. Through a self-determined learning approach teachers have acted and gained self-efficacy to deal with phenomena that influence their students’ learning.

This is a research of hope for the learner, the teacher and the leader. It has evidenced that agency towards a professional learning and development process can be possible, enacted, determined, directed, and most of all, rewarding. Let us keep reflecting on Limbeck and Gage’s observation, inspired by Goethe, that “if [we] treat people as they are, they will become worse. If [we] treat them as they could be, they will become better”.

Mark Farrugia is a deputy head of school and a part-time lecturer at the University of Malta. His research work discussed in this article was funded through an Endeavour B Scholarship Scheme financed by national funds.