Characteristics and Dimensions of Professional Development Frameworks: How emerging fields of expert knowledge identify and advance the competencies of professionals in those fields. A review and comparison of Professional Learning Frameworks

This purpose of this review was to identify characteristics common across professional development frameworks within emerging professions (i.e. fields that are not regulated or licensed) and to identify practices and heuristics from those fields that could inform our work. The review began with; 1) creating a protocol for searching for frameworks; 2) identifying criteria for selection of representative frameworks; and 3) developing strategies for recording and sharing content with the research team. From the initial inventory of frameworks, we articulated a set of criteria for selecting a handful of professional frameworks to review. Five frameworks were selected for systematic review.