Why is one-off professional learning prevalent in Australia?

Teachers regularly participate in professional learning (PL) activities are able to articulate what makes a PL event of program valuable for them. Many teachers identify one-off PL events as the best that have experienced (Beswick, Fraser, & Crowley, 2017) and, from an audit of mathematics teacher PL offered in Australia, Reaburn, Kilpatrick, Fraser, Beswick and Muir (2016) reported that 36% of PL was described as one-off and 55% of programs were delivered over periods of no more than one half day. This is in spite of a research consensus that spaced PL is more effective (Watson, Beswick, & Brown, 2012). Based on interviews with three mathematics professional developers and deliverers we examine reasons for which one-off PL events might be valued by teachers. This paper addresses the research question: Why might one-off PL be prevalent? On the basis of our findings we propose a model for professional learning that builds upon that of Huberman (1995) for understanding how PL, including one-off events, can be viewed as part of the long term career development activity of teachers that goes beyond formal learning opportunities. The model has implications for PL providers and researchers.