Training and professional development are very much on my mind at present, and very much on the mind of Scottish teachers, too. Two experiences have come together in my thinking.

One was my recent involvement with the “professional development and review” process in school, during which all of us had to undertake a chat with our line managers (dreadful term) to identify our training needs and match them to appropriate training opportunities.

I in my turn dutifully had the chat with my department and was told by one colleague - who is an excellent teacher - that the process was a waste of time and that he would rather just see a list of courses and be allowed to choose freely for himself.

The second experience was grappling with my most recent assignment for an Open University course on lifelong learning. I waded through turgid texts and jumped through the tedious academic hoops of referencing and over-analysing ideas. The ideas seemed abstract and generally developed by people who have become more a part of the academic community than the teaching community. The process gave me academic discipline but left me with few practical ideas.

Now do not let me appear to suggest that these academic ideas are not important, because they are. But applying them to practice is very difficult and sometimes impossible.

I habitually read the literature on learning and teaching, but find this forced reading of academic ideas a real turn-off. What effect then would forced academic learning have on overworked teachers who do not habitually explore this literature?

My previous colleague was exercising clear thinking and common sense when he suggested that he would drink more from a trough of his own choosing.

The challenge he highlighted is to provide a review process that gives teachers the central role in identifying development needs while allowing the school to track the growing skill-set of the teacher.

These two thoughts would only be linked tenuously if it were not for the post-McCrone climate in schools and the forthcoming chartered teacher scenario. Teachers are counting hours spent on activities like never before, and if the hours spent are more precious, then many will undertake the chartered teacher route in a desire to wring more reward from limited time.

This will be a good thing for many teachers, but it may prove to be very bad for others. The chartered teacher route looks from early indicators like a fairly academic route. Will it engender excitement or practical enthusiasm in classrooms, or will it just be some hoops through which exhausted teachers will have to perform professional acrobatics to gain their ticket?

Perhaps the dilemma we face is the all-too-common tension between needing to control teachers and wanting to set them free. On the one hand, most people would accept that happy teachers would transmit optimism and the joy of learning to their charges. Happy teachers, of course, are the product of many factors, one of which is a degree of professional freedom.

On the other hand, there will always be a few teachers for whom more freedom of choice will mean taking the easiest pathway and developing least. The fear of this situation is whatdrives the control agenda in the education system.

I think the fear is exaggerated, since the vast majority of teachers are driven by a need to create that magic that is the great lesson in their classrooms, and those who might look for the easy way out will be prompted daily and weekly by the challenges of real classroom situations to seek professional improvement.

The control agenda in effect says we fear the few so much that we will control (even at the risk of stifling) the whole profession to achieve the standards we crave.

A wonderful maverick lawyer I used to know was fond of reminding me that “You can’t legislate to make things happen or to stop things happening.”

Well, so it is here. The control agenda will not make excitement and learning happen, only a highly supportive and mutually respectful relationship between the system and its precious teachers can do that.

Why not accredit a wide variety of courses to meet the chartered teacher route? Perhaps some could take the academic route, supported by the universities as the course writers, while others could take courses provided by the local authorities and other training agencies with a clear focus on the practical application of ideas.

These courses would be characterised by an interest in the sources of great ideas, but with no necessity for teachers to show academic rigour in source assessment or critical comparison. They would place a huge emphasis instead on showing that teachers are using the ideas and best practice in classes.

This would be a recognition of the variety of learning styles that teachers possess that would mirror the variety of styles that teachers are supposed to take into account in their students.

The post-McCrone climate is one of locked-down measurement and control (from both management and unions) and the immediate pre-McCrone climate was one of measurement, fear and results.

This is not a good trend in a climate as emotionally critical as a classroom, and I for one would hate to see the professional development climate continue to follow this pattern.

A system of training which places the list of opportunities in the hands of the people who really know what will help to make classrooms buzz will assist in breaking this frightening pattern. If teachers choose to do courses on the direct development of their subjects or on the pedagogy associated with the year-group that they are teaching, then it is easy for managers to see the relevance and application. Most teachers will probably choose just such courses. Where a maths teacher, for example, chooses to do courses on school timetabling, the importance may be less obvious, but if the teacher wants to do that course, I would argue that we should welcome it. There are two distinct purposes to training, you see. One is to enhance the skills of a teacher, while the other is to make a teacher feel valued and worthwhile.

If a committed, professional teacher’s choice of course manages to achieve only one of these purposes, then that will still be a training budget extremely well spent, and students will reap the rewards more directly than the “controllers” can imagine.

Matthew Boyle taught in Glasgow until last summer and now works with Learning Unlimited, an independent educational training and consultancy agency