Overcoming barriers to teacher professional development: Linking personal and professional dimensions

MARIANNE TALBOT, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS, UK Introduction Early in 2022, I had a discussion with a colleague, Dr Michael Walker, about teachers finding it difficult to take part in personal development (PD), linked to factors including but not limited to: lack of finance disruption to teaching and learning difficulty of finding suitable supply cover lack of awareness of opportunities unsupportive leaders or colleagues (Krille, 2020).   We agreed that successful PD is likely to: embrace and encourage discussion and reflection link PD to practice permit teachers to try ideas out in the classroom or staffroom allow teachers to fail before succeeding.   This article reports the headline findings of the ensuing Research England-funded project that we led in summer 2022, and presents excerpts from the resulting case studies, focusing on how teachers engage with PD and how best to support them to overcome barriers to eng