Continuing professional development

#SLTchat is a source of endless blogging ideas.  The question – about the best ever Continuing Professional Development you had experienced and why it was so great – had a real life root to it.  Whilst I think the professional development we offer is very good we want and need it to be even better.  Thanks to @andyphilipday for choosing the question and to the twitterati for their response.  The ideas in the responses – all contained in the Storify below – will be used to help move us on.

When I tell people I work in Blackpool, they tend to put their head to one side and let out a sympathetic kind of noise and then tell me how brave I am or how they would never want to work there.  In fairness, the town doesn’t have the best educational record or reputation but it is where I was called to work and where I continue to choose to work.  Blackpool sits at the end of the M55 and has the sea on 180^o of its perimeter.  The Irish Sea isn’t that well populated and nor is it the best source of staff.  If we want to be the best school we can be for our students then we need to attract the best staff and then retain them.  Our CPD offer is a crucial part of this work.

We start with some real strengths, identified in our NTEN CPD Audit, including:

1. The timetable is strategically designed to maximise CPD opportunities.
2. All staff at all levels demonstrate a secure understanding of effective CPD.
3. All teaching staff are aware of the need to develop general pedagogy, specialist pedagogy and subject knowledge.

The first strength identified is possibly the most critical as time is the issue raised again and again as one of the key challenges of implementing an effective CPD programme.  From students finishing slightly early every Thursday to create a two hour CPD/meeting slot for teachers to the use of cover vouchers we strive to make time available – we commit this time as we recognise the importance of developing people.

It Made Me Think

Thanks to @Denbigh_TSA

One strand of the twitter responses linked to the level of challenge contained within CPD for staff.  Whilst it needs to start from where each member of staff is it also needs to challenge each member of staff.  In a teaching staff of 90+ then not everyone is in the same place so pitching CPD is a real issue.

This creates a challenge for us identified in our recent NTEN CPD Audit.  There is a wide variety of voluntary CPD courses available to staff but within our directed time CPD time choice is limited.

What would be the impact of a more differentiated and challenging CPD?  How could we achieve it?  What would we lose?  Would the benefits be greater than the costs?

It Met My Needs, It Met the School’s Needs

Thanks to @urban_teacher

This led neatly into another strand of tweets which encapsulates an ageless dilemma for those making decisions about the CPD offer in schools.  To what extent should it be differentiated, in fact, personalised –I’ll be more engaged in CPD which interests or excites me – versus the benefits of whole school CPD – we can be mutually supportive of each other in terms of planning, implementation and evaluation.

Thanks to @RachelOrr

There isn’t a good or a bad here just a tension to manage as there is only so much time available.  I covered some of this ground in a post, The Jerusalem & Babylon of Professional Development.  As a slight aside here, an interesting line of tweeting developed around the benefits of a school’s own staff delivering INSET, as part of their own professional development, to help up skill them.

Each year, during the Thursday afternoon slot, we have four or five sessions which tend to be one offs on a particular issue, for example, PSHE, ICT and a couple which teachers have in lieu of attending training from a variety of different sources – webinars, the Fylde Coast Teaching Schools’ CPD calendar or the voluntary training we offer on a Monday afternoon.

There is clearly the possibility to pull these sessions together and then utilise the time for staff to follow one particular strand in a more focussed way.  This would also have the advantages of the learning being spaced and revisited over time by a group of staff all with a similar focus.  There are also additional benefits here in terms of increased social capital.  People often comment on some of the best learning going on in the breaks, lunches between sessions or the bar if it is a residential course – learning has a social dimension.

What would be the impact of a more differentiated, challenging and focussed CPD?  How could we achieve it?  What would we lose?  Would the benefits be greater than the costs?

It Involved Other People, Other Schools

Thanks to @TeacherToolkit

The benefits of working with others within the same school and from other schools shouldn’t be under estimated.  Coaching, mentoring, #TeachMeets all featured in many people’s tweets as did learning from practice in and from other schools.

Acknowledgement @informed_edu

The opportunities to engage in Professional Development have never been greater and social media – twitter, blogging, Facebook, webinars – has added greatly to these opportunities.  Maybe moving forward the blend of CPD each member of staff engages in will become more and more varied – blended – as each person takes on a greater control of her/his professional development allowing for even greater personalisation.

What would be the impact of this more personalised, challenging, focussed and blended CPD offer?  How could this be achieved?  What would we lose?  Would the benefits be greater than the costs?

It Was a Process Not an Event

Thanks to @jillberry102

Should the continuing part of CPD take on a greater priority in terms of continuing with a particular element of practice that interests a colleague, in a way that gives her/him time to really practice and hone the application of the new learning?  There is a real danger within our current frenetic education system that we do not give teachers time to develop a new practice before moving on to the next new thing.  I know I’ve been guilty of this too often.

I wonder whether the issues at the heart of this is the failure to evaluate the impact of the CPD teachers undertake?  This was one of the big areas for development, for us, following the NTEN CPD Audit last year.  In fact as we were completing the audit this gap in our practice just screamed at us.  This evaluation of impact would help us discern whether it is timely to move on or whether more time and work is required to embed a practice.  Obviously it would also help us identify what doesn’t work and we should stop spending time on.

It Had an Impact

Thanks to @jillberry102

This is the crunch moment and question, What Impact? 

Thanks to @compareschoolse

Professional development needs to have a positive impact.  The use of lesson study has started to have an impact on how we look at professional development and in particular how we seek to measure its impact.  There is still more work to be done on developing a simple, not overly bureaucratic system to follow up on the impact of the various in-house programmes and external courses staff take part in.  The new development plan puts this work, with an idea for a Professional Development Department, at the core of a Multi Academy Trust we intend to form from the 1^st September 2014.

In trying to set up the Best CPD Ever would the following be a basis for the success criteria against which the professional development would be evaluated?

CPD should … make me think … meets my needs and the needs of the school … be part of a process … involving other people and if appropriate other schools … that has an impact on me, my team and ultimately my students.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the #SLTchat debate on the 18th May 2014 – sadly, far too many to quote and include everyone in a single post.  Twitter, the Best CPD Ever?

It Needs a Balance

I sent the tweet out at some point during the #SLTchat session and it seemed to keep getting retweeted.  If you are interested it comes from

Campfires in Cyberspace: Primordial Metaphors for Learning in the 21st Century  by David D. Thornburg, Ph.D.

which I have quoted from below:

The campfire… For thousands of years, storytelling was a mechanism for teaching. While it was not the onlymechanism, it was (and is) an important one. Through storytelling, the wisdom of elders waspassed to the next generation.

The watering hole… Just as campfires resonate deeply across space and time, watering holes have an equal statusin the pantheon of learning places. Virtually every hominid on the planet has, at one time inits historical existence, needed to gather at a central source for water. During these trips to thewatering hole, people shared information with their neighbors  … The watering hole became a place where we learned from our peers

The cave… The learning community of the campfire brought us in contact with experts, and that of thewatering hole brought us in contact with peers. There is another primordial learningenvironment of great importance: the cave — where we came in contact with ourselves.

The final critical space is the Life Space which is where we apply our new learning.

If you want far more detailed look at CPD why not try out Perfect CPD by @shaun_allison (now on my reading list)

Related posts:

If you are interested in reading more about the changing face of professional development this is a post based on my presentation to NTEN ResearchEd, at Huntington School, York, in May 2014:

The Jerusalem and Babylon of Professional Development

If you are responsible for organising a professional development day or event then the #5MinCPD Plan I co-authored with @TeacherToolkit:

#5MinCPDPlan by @LeadingLearner and @TeacherToolkit

If you want to think about the impact your work is having in the class room the following may prove a useful starting point:

#5MinResearchPlan by @LeadingLearner and @TeacherToolkit