It was great to get back into the habit of #EdCPDChat on a Wednesday evening last week and discussing independent CPD seemed apt, given that the current situation has many of us working more independently (due to remote learning).
I was also grateful for this particular topic, as I’d reflected on the impact (and lack of impact) of my own independent CPD last summer (which you can read about in this previous blog post).
Q1: Barriers to independent CPD
@EnserMark mirrored my own concerns from last year at the start of the discussion, stating how ‘reading lots of ideas’ doesn’t always lead to us changing our practice. In these cases, the extensive reading might not be seen as ‘genuine development’.
@Mr_N_Wood and Mark agreed that time is a barrier in bridging this gap between reading ideas and actual development, with Mark suggesting that reflection time is built into a school’s CPD provision and @DoctorPreece giving ideas of what this could look like (in the form of a coaching culture or reading groups).
Logistics was also seen as a potential barrier by @lcgeography, who has welcomed the growth in remote CPD, as it makes external opportunities more accessible (living and teaching in rural East Yorkshire, I can empathise with this). Certainly, I’ve found that it’s been useful to access recorded sessions for my own CPD over the past few months (with @researchEdhome and @MyattandCo useful sources for this, alongside the database of online CPD collated by @TeacherDevTrust ’s @KLMorgan_2 - available at this link). I’ve also found these resources very reasonable in terms of price (most are free); moreover, the quality is excellent- overcoming two additional barriers mentioned by @meredithfox22.
However, the vast amount of CPD available perhaps makes another barrier more problematic: where do we focus our efforts? @EnserMark pointed out that we often ‘don’t know what we don’t know’ and @m_chiles also suggested that knowing where to focus our CPD efforts is a barrier (with both suggesting the value of feedback in finding these out, through external expertise or in-school coaching processes).
Q2: Does remote learning support independent CPD?
@DanHudson84 responded to Q1 with the idea of using recorded online lessons as a self-evaluation tool to help us identify a focus for independent CPD, something that would not be as easy to do in ‘normal’ circumstances.
However, others argued that the current situation makes independent CPD more difficult, as there’s not as much time for this self-evaluation (with @EnserMark arguing that the current remote learning training for staff is likely to be more ‘procedural’ than ‘developmental’).
@dnleslie also pointed out that we need to bear in mind that CPD after-school will be coming at the end of a long day (certainly more screen time will not be conducive to staff concentration at that point) and @greeborunner highlighted how collaboration over virtual platforms won’t be as ‘natural’, making this crucial element of successful CPD more challenging too.
From my perspective, I also think that whether or not teachers have the ‘head space’ to work on their independent CPD will depend on their personal circumstances. A teacher who is simultaneously teaching full-time and managing the home learning of their own children might not have the same capacity to reflect on their practice as someone who does not have young children to support. Leaders need to be mindful of this with any CPD being delivered at the moment (especially given that it can be trickier to support staff wellbeing when many of us are working from home).
Q3: Leading and supporting independent CPD
I thought that @lcgeography ’s point about independent CPD not needing to be done in isolation was important here, as he highlighted that it’s more about staff having ‘agency and choice’. This chimed with my own experiences, as my team have benefited more from sessions where they have structured reflection discussions on a chosen focus area than earlier sessions where I just collapsed an entire meeting as ‘independent CPD time’.
In my opinion, though, the best summary of what leaders can do to support independent CPD came from @greeborunner , as she stated that they need to ‘value it, invest in it, model it, recognise it and value it some more.’ @EnserMark followed that excellent advice up with the suggesting that the ‘value’ element is likely to be best supported by leaders having conversations about independent CPD with staff and ‘being human’. In this sense, we can also get informal feedback on where staff’s interests lie which - in turn - will help us develop a more personalised CPD offer overall.
If you are interested in hosting an #EdCPDChat session, or have any ideas for topics, then please use the link on the @EdCPDChat pinned tweet to submit your ideas.
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