Developing Departmental CPD

Over the summer, I’ve also spent a lot of time reflecting on the CPD I plan and deliver in order to consider how I can maximise the impact of the CPD for colleagues next year.  A large part of this has involved looking at the CPD for my department, developing on ideas I’ve written about in a previous blog on departmental CPD and in an article for Impact journal.

There can’t be any doubt about the importance of good subject-specific CPD in terms of its impact on a teacher’s practice (as it can be more context-specific) but I also feel it’s important to highlight the potential impact it can have on teacher wellbeing (and, therefore, retention) with the latest TALIS report highlighting ‘a strong focus on providing meaningful and impactful opportunities for professional learning’ as being one of five predictors for teachers’ job satisfaction (Schleicher, 2020).  For this reason, I constantly evaluate my approach to CPD to ensure that my team get the best deal possible.

Developing Retrieval Practice

As with student learning, retrieval practice in teacher CPD can help to embed new pedagogical knowledge into the long-term memory, so it becomes part of their practice.  I’ve been working on developing this over the past couple of years by identifying key threads that we return to across different sessions as well as some brief quizzes in both departmental and whole-school CPD sessions.

However, whilst the ‘key threads’ approach has helped make the programme of CPD more cohesive, I worry that I haven’t focused enough on staff actively retrieving knowledge from prior sessions so (with busy teachers) sometimes important knowledge gets lost.  To better support the impact of retrieval, this year I’m planning the retrieval more specifically (see below) to both assess which knowledge we need to go over and activate the prior knowledge before we develop it further.

Developing Links to Whole-School CPD

Reinforcing the links with whole-school CPD has also been something that I wanted to work on in the coming year, especially given that I co-ordinate the regular CPD briefings for staff.  Next year, our head has suggested moving these from the weekly morning slot to a video briefing at the start of department meetings, therefore allowing departments to discuss ideas from the briefing and apply it to their own context.

Again, reviewing the way I plan these will be important to maximising the impact so, in addition to planning them across a term so that ‘key threads’ run through the sessions, this year I’m getting more feedback from other subject leaders on the proposed sessions, as well as adding in ideas for what to discuss in each department meeting to enable other subject leaders to make the links between the whole-school sessions and their subject-specific CPD.

Developing Staff Ownership

Lastly, I wanted to improve the ownership my staff felt over their own CPD so that I can promote the sense of autonomy that is key to professionalism (Booth, Perry and Boylan, 2019).  Last year, I introduced a regular CPD audit for staff (via a simple online form) to help with this and it was a really useful way of looking at what staff wanted to look at in department time and where they wanted resources to research something independently.  However, I wanted to provide more structured opportunities (and time) for staff to pursue their own development.

I decided on a form of peer coaching to do this, especially as coaching and mentoring were identified as valuable for professional learning across the different evidence reviewed by Weston and Hindley (2019).  For this, I’ve paired the team up to work on their choice of strategies from ‘Teaching Walkthrus’ with a process based on the book’s ‘ADAPT’ model (Caviglioli and Sherrington, 2020).

Whilst I’m aware that the process I’m following may not follow a set coaching model, I’m hoping that using it to introduce CPD on the principles of coaching may give me a foundation to formalise a supportive coaching process at a late stage.

Evaluating the Process

I’m hoping these developments will help to improve the provision for my team, both in terms of giving them more autonomy when it comes to their professional development and continuing the drive for excellent teaching for the children at our school.  However, it will be crucial to consider the impact throughout the year through conversations and opportunities for feedback.  That being said, I’m most looking forward to visiting the classrooms to see my team do what they do best: teach.

References

Booth J, Perry E and Boylan M (2019) Understanding Teaching as a Profession. Teacher CPD: International trends, opportunities and challenges. P35-41. Available at: https://chartered.college/download-international-teacher-cpd-report/

Caviglioli O and Sherrington T (2020) Teaching Walkthrus: Five-step guides for instructional coaching. Woodbridge: John Catt Educational Ltd.

Schleicher, A (2020) TALIS 2018: Insights and Reflections. Available at: http://www.oecd.org/education/talis/TALIS2018_insights_and_interpretations.pdf

Weston, D and Hindley, B (2019) Professional Development: Evidence of What Works. Teacher CPD: International trends, opportunities and challenges. P60-67. Available at: https://chartered.college/download-international-teacher-cpd-report/