Professional Space Overview - The General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland (gtcni.org.uk)

Teaching in Northern Ireland is a graduate profession underpinned by the GTCNI professional competences.

The professional competence framework, Teaching: The reflective profession, provides a framework for the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes delivered by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Northern Ireland all of which are accredited by the GTCNI.

This section provides a range of resources and tools to help you think about and reflect on what it means to become a professional teacher and the lifelong commitment to professional development.

The Resource 365 section provides resources to help think about your own professional practice and includes articles, blogs, podcasts, recommended reading, research and examples of best practice – from a range of sources and by other teachers in Northern Ireland and from across the world.

Professional Development

Professional development provides teachers with formal and informal career progression and advancement opportunities to ensure they update their professional knowledge and experience to remain competent and credible throughout their career, beyond initial teacher training. 

GTCNI views the teacher competences as developmental and progressive. They were developed within a constructivist view of teaching and learning and, in many ways, the development of professional competence can be viewed as taking the form of a ‘spiral curriculum’ through which teachers both individually and collaboratively revisit the competences throughout their career.

The emergent approach to leadership at all levels in reflected in the Learning Leaders strategy and GTCNI’s work on Leadership competences.