Nowadays the problem of teachers’ professional development has become very actual and significant because the need to improve the quality of education and the challenges faced by it, require high professional skills and competences of teaching personnel, their readiness for continuous development and improvement of their qualifications within the framework of the implementation of the Lifelong Learning (LLL) Concept, including pedagogical education. The aim of the article is to identify issues that will allow teachers to enhance their professional skills and achieve professional mastery in the process of teachers’ professional development (TPD), which can serve as a resource and mechanism for innovations in the Russian system of higher education. More specifically, the determining factor in the teachers’ professional development should become significant changes in the system of teachers’ upskilling and retraining, caused by digitalization and resulted in a fundamental transformation of human’s development. The methodology of the research includes comprehensive comparative analysis of the phenomenon “teacher’s professional development”, theoretical analysis of Russian and international literature on the research problem. In the article, the following methods were used: comparative and analytical method, system method, and benchmarking technology of teachers’ professional development. The authors made an attempt to reveal the conceptual design of teachers’ professional development in some European universities, using the technology of benchmarking of the successful practice of this system abroad, and share characteristics of the European system of the teachers’ professional development of (TPD) in the context of Bologna Process. The authors also illustrate the additional factor for enhancing teachers’ professional development – analysis of teachers’ cognitive styles, which defines choice for appropriate vector and tools for teachers’ professional development. The authors recommend the implementation of a benchmarking technology as a method of analyzing good practices and comparing the experience of similar organizations for the purpose of improving the performance of Russian system of teachers’ professional development.

conceptual framework, teachers’ professional development, cognitive style, design, benchmarking, university