The Importance of Subject-Specific CPD

Imagine walking into a hall of around 100 students, with some who have just started school and others who are near the end of their academic journey.  Perhaps you plan to read out the content of a PowerPoint.  Or maybe you will engage them all with a game of table tennis with students?

Either way, how confident are you that you would be able to deliver a lesson that would effectively meet the learning needs of such a wide range of ages and abilities?  I certainly wouldn’t be, and the same would go for delivering a whole-staff training session that would effectively meet the needs of staff who are at different points in their career and approach their teaching in different ways.

This is one reason why I feel CPD on a whole-school level is problematic.  Every single teacher should be able to leave one of these sessions feeling that they have had time to think and reflect in order to improve the learning of their students.  Instead, many leave with a list of strategies that they’ve already tried (and perhaps didn’t work) or aren’t relevant to their classroom.

It is sensible that schools are leaving behind the ‘whole-school CPD’ model, in favour of subject-specific development.  This is vital as the time spent working on specific subjects allows teachers to develop their subject knowledge, support their workload through team-planning and focus on pedagogy/research that is specific to their discipline.  Furthermore, the fact that the training is led by a head of department means that they know their teams and can plan sessions to support the needs of each member of staff in their department.

This being said, it is crucial to train middle leaders if this is to be effective, or we run the risk of department meetings that consist of a list of notices rather than time to enhance the development of our staff.  CPD time should be primarily based in departments, with middle leaders trained in the best ways to train and develop staff.  Part of this also means planning out the focus for a department; we often consider the sequencing and revisiting of knowledge for our students, but the same is true for

our staff.  Activities could involve engaging with research and considering the impact on teaching, reflecting on recent peer observations, reading around a specific text/area of study to develop subject knowledge or even time to read books on teaching and learning.  You could even use videos of teachers in your department to discuss together what effective teaching is for you.

Overall, the main things that could improve CPD for teachers? Smaller class sizes.

Thanks to @teacherthunks , @trudygroskop , @meshishk and @bossymisst for the feedback on twitter!