Teach Secondary Issue 14.8

Get good at GETTING BETTER Mark Enser and Zoe Enser share their advice on how to develop CPD that will actually improve your colleagues’ teaching, rather than simply be a burden… P rofessional development is one of the most powerful levers we have for improving the quality of teaching, and with it, outcomes for pupils. And yet, many teachers will tell you that CPD sessions often feel like a distraction – generic, one-off events that do little to change what happens in classrooms. If we want CPD to truly enhance teaching, we should ditch the scattergun approaches in favour of a coherent professional learning curriculum. WhyCPDdisappoints This is one of the themes we explore in our book, HowDo They Do It? , which documents our visits to schools across the country that consistently deliver excellent outcomes. Again and again, we saw that for these schools, CPDwasn’t an afterthought, but a carefully sequenced, long-term project aligned with the schools’ vision for teaching. There are three common pitfalls that practitioners can fall into when devising CPD for teachers: 1. The one-off event – Too many schools treat CPD as an INSET day bolted on to the school calendar. A charismatic speaker might inspire staff for an afternoon, but without sufficient follow-up and planned practice, there will be few changes as a result. 2. The quick fix – Leaders under pressure can sometimes latch onto the latest trendy initiative and enthusiastically roll it out for all staff, without considering the school’s context. This can quickly overwhelm teachers and generate cynicism. 3. The bolt-on – Professional development is often disconnected frommatters of curriculum design, assessment and other school priorities. If CPD starts to feel like ‘something else to do’, rather than a route to doing the core job better, it risks being ignored. In our research, those schools that avoided these traps had one thing in common – they all treated their CPD activities as deliberately as the curriculum they designed for their pupils. CPDas a curriculum Just as we wouldn’t hand pupils a random set of worksheets and call that a curriculum, we can’t expect piecemeal training to effectively build teacher expertise. The best schools build a CPD curriculum that is, firstly, sequenced . Teachers will be introduced to ideas in a logical order, building on what they already know. This mirrors David Ausubel’s insight that the most important factor in learning is what the learner already knows. The same applies to adults. A school’s CPD curriculum should also be sustained . Development happens over months and years, not hours. Retrieval, revisiting and deliberate practice are just as important for teachers as they are for pupils. Finally, a good CPD curriculumhas to responsive . There will need to be a clear spine of core knowledge and skills at its foundation, but good CPD can also adapt to emerging needs, such as curriculum changes, safeguarding priorities or feedback from exams. As we discuss in HowDo They Do It? , we saw leaders who mapped out their professional learning in the same way that they mapped out their pupil curriculum. Their teacher colleagues knew not just what they were learning this term, but also how it connected to the school’s long-term goals. are four CPD principles that we consider to be worth foregrounding: 1. Focus on the core business of teaching The most effective CPD hones in on those aspects of teaching that make the biggest difference – subject knowledge, explanations, modelling, questioning, “CPDonlyworks if teachers can try things out,get feedbackand refine” Principles of effective CPD Drawing on both research evidence (notably the EEF’s Effective Professional Development guidance report – see tinyurl.com/ ts148-CPD1) and what we’ve observed in practice, there 84 teachwire.net/secondary