Paper Title
Competing Discourses of Professional Development: Implications for the Construction of Tesol Teachers Identity

Abstract
This paper aims to critically examine the term professional development (PD) in use in the literature. To do this, it first provides an overview of some of the competing understandings and evolving conceptualisations of what PD is and the support mechanisms informed by these understandings in language schools/institutions. It then considers how these accounts of PD can influence how teachers’ identity and therefore teachers’ professionalism is constructed. To do this, it examines two things: a view of teachers learning and support of PD on the one hand and on the other hand a view of who teachers are and what characterises them as professionals. it aims to offer how an understanding of PD as a social and situated practice has gradually come to occupy an increasingly central place in the literature on PD and what the pedagogical implications for those supporting teachers’ PD are considered to be. Keywords - Professional Development, Professionalism, Identity, Situated Practice, TESOL