There is a current debate concerning what constitutes evidence of impact on practice resulting from teachers' engagement in Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses. The authors present two case studies of teachers who have completed a Masters Degree in Education, offering their own perceptions and those of their colleagues on the impact that their studies have had on their work in school. The case studies are based on interviews undertaken shortly after completion of the course and 1 year later, and show different ways in which impact may be demonstrated. It is argued that this has implications for higher education course providers and schools: they need to be flexible in their interpretations of the relationship between professional development and impact. In particular, the authors advocate that they listen to individual stories of the experience of CPD.

This paper explores the complex processes involved in the self-construction of academic identity in a UK School of Education. Building on seminal literature in this field and drawing on the research of four academics, it begins by discussing teacher educators??? varying perceptions of the need to re-configure their identity to meet the expectations of a twenty-first-century higher education workforce. The article proposes the formation of this identity to be a dynamic, career-long process. Diverse scaffolds for the development process are proposed, including opportunities for new teacher educators to be apprenticed into an aca- demic role, the centrality of communities of practice and the importance of the 15 supported development of academic skills such as writing for publication

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