There is an international body of knowledge about teacher development in general as well as the potential problems with commercial actors in the CPD-field. Less is known about the CPD-content and the impact it has on teachers’ professionalism.  

The aim of this paper is to investigate what types of teacher professionalism that a CPD-field dominated by commercial actors shape in Sweden. The starting point is an analysis of 679 invoices and the content (knowledge) offered on the CPD-market, and purchased under two years. The result is part of an ongoing research project funded by the Swedish Research Council (2020-2023).

679 invoices from 73 schools were collected. The coding built on the extraction of information from the total set of invoices and on entering data into a statistic program file (SPSS) consisting of a multitude of variables – both deductively and inductively set. 

A practice-ecological ontology, the theory of practice architectures (TPA) is adopted, to explore how CPD-practices shape teacher practices and teacher professionalism. CPD concerns changing peoples’ sayings-doings-relatings i.e. practices (like teaching). To analyse how the CPD-content shape Swedish teachers, teacher professionalism is here conceptualized as three constituent components: behavioural, attitudinal, and intellectual. These components are previously described as overlapping but analytically seperable. 

 The behavioural change, dominate. Teachers are supposed to develop various teaching skills related to for example computer-programs, to diagnose students and to meet students' reading-, mathematics- or communication- difficulties.  This CPD is part of a world-wide edu-tech-business.  

The attitudinal component, where teachers’ attitudes are (to be) modified, is indeed visible in the data. Costs concern kick- off/summing-up-the-year activities, including conference-facilities, food, etc. The principal, teachers or the school health group are engaged in the content delivered. Teacher-collaboration, student-motivation or school-development etc. is focussed. Another CPD-content, overlapping attidunal and behavioural changes. Teachers are supposed to change their behaviour in relation to “problematic student behaviour” and diagnoses like ADHD. The intellectual component is not as frequent. Subject-specific CPD in Mathematics or Second Language Teaching is , however, purschased.  

Next step in the project is teacher- and principal-interviews to investigate the experiences of and motives for the CPD purchased and, to get hold of the CPD that take place without generating any fees. and to trace the arangments that enable and/or constrain CPD-practices. The study is limited to three (of 278) municipalities in Sweden, both national and international studies would benefit the knowledge development