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The teaching profession in England is built on a glaring contradiction. We have pedagogy for teaching children and andragogy for teaching adults, yet when it comes to the teaching and learning of teachers we operate within a conceptual void. The ’s provocative proposal of didagogy as a distinct discipline for teaching teachers represents a fundamental challenge to how we conceptualise professional learning in education (Bean, 2025).

The uncomfortable truth about professional development

Current teacher professional development is failing teachers in England. Despite decades of investment, research consistently demonstrates that the impact on classroom practice remains disappointingly limited (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017). The reason lies in a fundamental misunderstanding: we tend to treat teachers as either passive recipients of generic adult education or as children who need to be told what to do.

‘We tend to treat teachers as either passive recipients of generic adult education or as children who need to be told what to do.’

Teachers occupy a unique professional space. They are simultaneously experts in learning and novices in new practices, practitioners and reflective professionals, autonomous decision-makers and accountable public servants (Groenewald & Arnold, 2024). This complexity demands recognition and that teaching teachers constitutes an entirely different discipline from both pedagogy and andragogy. In the Didagogy Report I state that the absence of disciplinary status for teacher education is ‘one of the greatest disservices to teaching as a profession’ (Ovenden-Hope in Bean, 2025, p. 26). We persist in treating the formation of teaching professionals as a secondary consideration rather than recognising it as the sophisticated, theory-informed discipline it should be.

Professional identity has been argued to be central to teacher effectiveness, development and retention (Beijaard et al., 2004). Unlike other professional development contexts, teachers have all been part of the education system since childhood. This creates a unique dynamic where personal learning histories intersect with professional development.

Teacher professional identity is characterised by continual revision, embeddedness within contexts, multiple sub-identities and individual agency (Beijaard et al., 2004). When professional development fails to acknowledge this complexity, it risks triggering ‘internal conflict between a teacher’s need for professional autonomy and the more passive roles imposed on them’ (Bean, 2025, p. 9).

The proposal for didagogy references the Comenius Oath taken by Finnish teachers, which mirrors the Hippocratic Oath in emphasising moral purpose and continuous professional growth (Bean, 2025). This comparison is deliberately uncomfortable for English education, where teacher development has become increasingly mechanistic. Critiquing accountability structures, didagogy suggests that effective teacher learning must be grounded in purpose that transcends performative measures.

The way forward: Embracing professional complexity

Engaging with didagogy requires intellectual honesty about the complexity of teacher learning. Rather than seeking simple solutions for teaching teachers, the messiness of their professional development needs navigating with ‘a more personalised approach’ (Bean, 2025, p. 42). Didagogy incorporates ‘teachers’ prior experiences, emotions and professional vulnerabilities’ (Bean, 2025, p. 42), building on teachers’ existing knowledge for effective professional development (Cordingley et al., 2015).

The implications are significant if we take didagogy seriously. We must invest in developing the facilitation expertise of those who teach teachers, create school cultures supporting reflective practice, and design professional learning connecting with teachers’ professional identities and intrinsic purposes. Most importantly, we must question whether current policy frameworks actually support or undermine sophisticated professional learning.

The Teacher Development Trust’s proposal for naming the discipline of teaching (Bean, 2025) represents a fundamental challenge to how we value and support teacher professional learning. The real worth of this thinking will be felt when those of us working in this area embrace the sophistication and complexity in teaching teachers, own that we are didagogues and advocate for effective didagogy.

References

Bean, A. (2025). What is didagogy? Exploring the discipline of teaching teachers. Teacher Development Trust.

Beijaard, D., Meijer, P. C., & Verloop, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(2), 107–128.

Cordingley, P., Higgins, S., Greany, T., Buckler, N., Coles-Jordan, D., Crisp, B., Saunders, L., & Coe, R. (2015). Developing great teaching: Lessons from the international reviews into effective professional development. Teacher Development Trust.

Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., & Gardner, M. (2017). Effective teacher professional development. Learning Policy Institute.

Groenewald, E., & Arnold, L. (2024). Teacher professional identity: Agentic actions of a novice teacher in a challenging school context. Teachers and Teaching, 31(3), 453–470.