characteristics of cpd « Montrose42's Blog

CONTINUOUS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT-WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?

CONTINUOUS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT-WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?

CPD is seen as key to improving teacher quality

Comment

Everyone now seems to agree that improving the quality of teachers and teaching in the classroom lies at the heart of school improvement. Evidence from around the world illustrates that the quality of teachers is the most important factor in determining the effectiveness of a school system. It is also accepted that teachers development and training doesn’t stop after their initial teacher training, wherever they might receive that. Becoming a good teacher should be viewed as a journey, with ITT the start point. All teachers require good continuing professional development throughout their careers. So what exactly is CPD? Curee, a centre of expertise in professional development and learning for education professionals, helps us a bit here. It identifies the Key characteristics of effective professional development and learning linked with significant benefits to staff and pupils –these range through:

• drawing down targeted, usually external, specialist expertise

• giving and receiving structured peer support

• professional dialogue rooted directly in evidence from trying out new things,

• focusing on why things do and don’t work as well as how they work ie defining professional reflection as building theory and practice together

• sustained enquiry oriented learning over (usually) two terms or more;

• learning to learn from observing the practice of others

• ambitious goals set in the context of aspirations for pupils

• the use of tools and protocols to help secure coherence, sustain learning, secure depth and make evidence collection and analysis manageable and useful.

Research also shows that the best professional development is not solely about attending courses, but involves high levels of observation and feedback and sharing the practice of the best teachers.

In short, its about ensuring that the school gets the best out of its staff and the staff get the best out of their school. If you get this right, the pupils benefit as much as the staff .

http://www.curee-paccts.com/cpd-providers

August 8, 2012 Posted by montrose42 | quality assurance, teachers and teaching | characteristics of cpd | Leave a Comment

About

Patrick Watson provides policy intelligence and analysis, with a range of other public affairs support services, to clients in the education, skills, training and guidance sectors.

He is Managing Director of Montrose Public Affairs Consultants Ltd.

He believes that the best education systems, worldwide, give autonomy to schools, rooted in their local communities, to run their own affairs. Centrally driven interventions should be kept to a minimum, and then only in inverse proportion to success. Interventions driven by short-term political agendas can, too often, be immensely damaging to learners’ interests, imposing additional costs and bureaucracy on Heads, governors and teachers, while failing to add value or to measurably improve outcomes. Sound evidence should inform both policy and practice and the system should be accountable and transparent, driven by learners interests.

Education should not be a state monopoly and there should be mixed service provision, offering a diverse range of service providers from state, profit and not for profit sectors, demand rather than supply driven. The current system too often allows producers perceived interests to prevail.

Good teachers and good teaching are at the core of the best education systems. So, recruit the best, give them throughout their careers the best training and reward their success. If teachers fail to meet the highest standards , help them to improve, or assist their exit from the profession. We owe this to our children.

The Government’s role should be limited to maintaining an enabling environment, to allow autonomous schools to thrive, to ensure proper regulation and accountability for both standards and the use of public funds, while safeguarding the interests of the most disadvantaged, including, particularly, those most at risk of exclusion.

The big question for us ,in the UK , which we have yet to resolve, is why we are so unpleasant to each other and so adversarial and polarised when it comes to educating our children ,when the truth is we share the same aspirations for them.

The views and opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of our clients.

This site includes selected Montrose comment pieces for clients (about fifteen per cent of our comment output) extracted from different weekly reports. Our bespoke client reports, apart from the policy analysis element , include monitoring of the media, the web and blogosphere ( Web sites,blogs and Tweets), Westminster, Whitehall, the Think Tanks, Research and Non Departmental Public Bodies and international developments in education. Our reports are designed to suit individual clients’ interests and to support senior managers in making informed decisions. We also undertake commissioned research on education policy issues, domestic and international.

Apart from all this, I have a wonderful wife and family, sing, play the blues harp, tenor sax and ‘penny whistle’.

For further information:

e-mail: montrosepw@ntlworld.com

Tel: 0207 207 1435

Twitter @pwatsonmontrose

Views since 2010- over 138,000

Most popular articles:

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES AND THEIR EFFECTS ON EDUCATION

Over 4,600 visits

http://montrose42.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/multiple-intelligences-and-their-impact-on-education/

ICT AND SCHOOLS

Over 3,700 visits