The study treated teachers as active agents who self-direct their learning. Examined teachers' preferred learning in relation to their years of experience. Early-and late-career teachers showed greater preference to learn about classroom management compared to mid-career. Negative linear trend was found for experience with learning activity 'experimenting'. Teachers had autonomous reasons to learn about self-selected learning domains.

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This study focuses on the effects of teachers’ attitudes towards teaching about science and technology on student attitudes towards science and technology. A one-year longitudinal study involving 91 teachers and 1822 students from the higher years of Dutch primary schools showed that students develop less positive attitudes towards science and technology during their primary school years and that girls showed less positive attitudes than boys. Female teachers showed less positive attitudes towards teaching about science and technology than male teachers. Girls appeared to be susceptible of their teacher’s attitudes and especially developed less positive attitudes when their female teacher showed less enthusiasm for teaching science and technology. Implications for teacher education and teacher recruitment are discussed.

Schools' structural workplace conditions (e.g. learning resources and professional development policies) and cultural workplace conditions (e.g. school leadership, teachers' collaborative culture) have been found to affect the way teachers learn. It is not so much the objective conditions that support or impede professional learning but the way teachers perceive those workplace conditions that influence teachers' learning. Not much is known, however, about how teachers' perceptions relate to the way they direct their own learning. Using a sense-making approach, we explored how four teachers' perceptions of cultural and structural workplace conditions were related with how they direct their own learning. The four cases were selected from a sample of 31 teachers from two secondary schools, and differed in the extent to which the teachers perceived their workplace as enabling or constraining their learning. We found that the content of teachers' learning goals is related to their perception of shared vision and professional dialogue in their schools, and driven by individual classroombased concerns. Furthermore, teachers' perceptions of cultural workplace conditions and supportive leadership practices seem to be more important influences for teachers' self-directed learning than their perception of structural conditions.

In this study, we explored the relationships between teachers' selfarticulated professional learning goals and their teaching experience. Although those relationships seem self-evident, in programmes for teachers' professional development years of teaching experience are hardly taken into account. Sixteen teachers with varying years of experience and subjects were interviewed. The results show different learning goals, related to communication and organisation, curriculum and instruction, innovation, responsibilities, and themselves as professional. Various relationships between learning goals and teaching experience emerged, which clearly reflect the development from early-to mid-and late-career teachers. Issues related to curriculum and instruction appeared to be learning goals for early-and mid-career teachers. This implies that regardless of increasing teaching expertise, curriculum and instruction remain central to teachers' continuous learning. Late-career teachers were interested in learning about extra-curricular tasks and innovations. Models of professional life phases have been used to interpret these results.