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    Perfect Teacher-Led CPD
    Perfect Teacher-Led CPD
    Perfect Teacher-Led CPD
    Ebook131 pages1 hour

    Perfect Teacher-Led CPD

    By Shaun Allison

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    About this ebook

    All successful schools have one thing in common - they are full of brilliant teachers. This doesn't happen by chance. If schools are to develop their teachers into first rate reflective and high performing practitioners, they need a varied and personalised CPD programme - based on collaboration and sharing best practice. This book looks at how schools can move away from the 'one size fits all' approach to CPD that still exists in a number of schools, to a CPD programme that will appeal to a range of teachers, unlocking the potential that exists within the staffroom. It's about excellence from within.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Thinking Press
    Release dateMay 30, 2014
    ISBN9781781351970
    Perfect Teacher-Led CPD
    Author

    Shaun Allison

    Shaun Allison leads on CPD in his school and is interested in supporting teachers to grow and develop their classroom practice. He is the author of the widely acclaimed Perfect Teacher-Led CPD and a popular speaker. Shaun's background is in science teaching and he is currently deputy head teacher at Durrington High School.Andy Tharby, a practising English teacher, is a research lead with an interest in helping ordinary classroom teachers enhance their practice through engagement with a wider evidence base. His well-regarded blog, Reflecting English, covers a range of subjects from improving student writing to finding solutions to the problems and dilemmas faced by busy teachers.

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      Book preview

      Perfect Teacher-Led CPD - Shaun Allison

      Introduction

      Schools are enigmatic. They are complex communities that are both unique and similar. Mission statements will vary from school to school but ultimately they all have the same aim: to produce happy, confident and successful young people. So, the key question has to be, why are some schools better at doing this than others? School cohorts, local communities and buildings may differ, as may resources, the use of innovative technologies, class sizes and a whole range of other factors. However, the very best schools all have two things in common: great leadership and a large number of great teachers. The very best schools, then, have a relentless focus on making sure that even more of their teachers become great.

      [T]he main reason that most system-wide educational reforms have failed is that they have ignored (1) the importance of teacher quality for student progress; (2) the fact that it is highly variable; and (3) that teacher quality has differential impact on different students.

      Wiliam (2010: 1)

      There is much research evidence to back up this assertion, but anyone who has worked in schools for any length of time will know that there is a direct correlation between the success of a particular school and the number of talented teachers in the staffroom. What do these great teachers look like? Well, while preparing a leaving speech for a very well-respected colleague recently, I asked Andrew, a Year 8 student, what made my colleague such a great teacher. His response summed it up brilliantly:

      He likes us, makes it fun, but still makes us work really hard and expects us to do well. He’s much cleverer than some of the other science teachers, but still makes it easy to learn. He lets us know how we’re doing.

      I know the teacher that Andrew describes very well and this is spot on. His lessons are always a joy to observe and he consistently secures very strong outcomes for his students. We know that teachers like this make a positive difference to students and that the more teachers there are like this in a school, the better the school. Unfortunately, evidence suggests that after two or three years of teaching, most teachers start to plateau in terms of their classroom performance. Why? Well, being a new teacher is difficult and you have to sharpen your classroom skills very quickly if you are going to survive. Once you have mastered the basic skills to ‘get by’ in the classroom, the temptation is to sit back a bit. Alongside this, most new teachers have a mentor working with them, giving feedback on their performance and helping them to improve. In most schools, this support is not available beyond the first year of teaching. However, without feedback, performance is unlikely to improve.

      Teaching has become a very pressured and much-scrutinised profession. However, I still believe very strongly that it is one of the best jobs in the world. Nothing gives me greater professional satisfaction than a teacher coming to talk to me about a new teaching strategy they have tried out in their classroom that has gone well, and which they want to develop further and share with colleagues. To me, this is what the job of school leadership is about – creating a spark that lights little individual fires of great pedagogy around the school, which then gather momentum and become an inferno of excellence! In order to do this, the continuing professional development (CPD) leader needs to:

      Get teachers excited about teaching.

      Get teachers talking about teaching.

      Get teachers planning and evaluating their teaching together.

      Get teachers observing and learning from each other.

      Get teachers sharing what works with each other.

      I love a challenge, and there are few things better than celebrating others overcoming challenges.

      Richard Branson, @richardbranson (15 August 2013)

      In their book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (2011), Chip and Dan Heath describe what successful institutions do: they find what is working and do more of it. They refer to this as ‘finding the bright spots’. This simple but very important idea is the principle behind this book – find the bright spots in your school, that is the great teachers, and share what they are doing. Furthermore, find the bright spots from outside your school and bring them into your school.

      This book aims to give you some ideas about how a range of CPD opportunities can be set up within your school to light your own fires of great pedagogy.

      Chapter 1

      Why Teachers Matter – Why CPD Matters

      In his book, Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), Malcolm Gladwell suggests that it takes about 10,000 hours to become an ‘expert’ at a particular skill. For teachers, this amounts to about ten years of classroom practice. Now, the accuracy of the 10,000 hours as a definitive timeline for achieving expertise in teaching is open for discussion. However, very few of us would argue against the fact that the very best teachers refine their skills over a number of years, and certainly beyond the second or third year of their careers. However, as discussed in the Introduction, most will plateau at this point and just stick with ‘what they’ve always done’ in the classroom. This presents us with a problem. If most teachers stop getting better after two or three years, whereas in fact they should be developing their skills over ten years in order to reach an ‘expert’ level, what should we be doing as school leaders to address this ‘professional development deficit’?

      The answer to this problem is relatively straightforward. We need to give staff a range of CPD opportunities that will engage, enthuse and motivate them. By this, I don’t just mean the traditional model of courses and INSET days – sat in a hall and listening to an ‘expert’ who hasn’t stepped inside a school for years. I mean a rich and varied ongoing programme of activities that staff can engage with on a number of levels and which will support them to reflect upon and develop their own practice. Teachers are the most important asset in a school, so they should be professionally developed and nurtured in a way that interests and inspires them.

      As well as providing CPD opportunities, we also need to develop a culture within schools of ‘continuous improvement’. This means a school where teachers want to take risks (and feel safe in doing so), seek and try out new ideas and strategies, and discuss their work openly. It’s a school where teachers are happy and positively thrive on collaborating with and learning from each other. Providing CPD opportunities to facilitate this collaboration is the starting point. The best indicator that you’re on the right path is when it’s happening informally and frequently – at breaktime, in the corridors and by the kettle in the staffroom.

      School leaders need to think about how they will achieve this within their schools. A successful CPD model uses a layered approach in which three distinct strands of CPD are operating.

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