Teach Middle East Magazine Jan - Mar 2020 Issue 2 Volume 7 | Page 35

Sharing Good Practice
chance to feedback and reflect on
the events they've attended. Make
departmental and whole-school
meetings real opportunities for
teachers to come together to learn,
share successes, collaborate and
reflect. Using meeting time to work
through a tick-list of 'to-dos' will not
have a meaningful impact on pupils
and staff.
5 5 Use
'champions'
and
more
experienced teachers to train
novice staff – be sure to equip staff
in such posts with the necessary
skills, expertise and updated subject
pedagogical knowledge.
5 5 When considering a particular CPD
activity, make sure you've thought
about what you are really hoping
to achieve and how you intend to
measure impact.
5 5 CPD should always be seen as a
way of 'improving' our professional
portfolios and less about proving our
capabilities.
5 5 Keep School Improvement Plans
(SIPs) realistic and achievable. Senior
leaders should map out the school's
priorities over time, and plan CPD
around only this. If your focus for the
term is 'curriculum', 'assessment' or
' stretch and challenge' then make
sure the professional development
activities centre only on this. Trying
to do everything at once will lead
to superficial gains and teachers
will soon feel lost, deflated and not
know what to do.
specific information across the
school. These are all ways to boost
morale, build supportive professional
networks and enable collaborative
relationships amongst staff, where
novice teachers can work alongside
more experienced teachers.
5 5 Create a whole-school climate of
reflective practice that supports
teacher review and thinking about
mastering a particular skill.
5 5 Move away from mock inspection
lesson observations. These give little
meaningful feedback and are often
judgmental. Enable staff to learn
from one another by introducing
initiatives
where
teachers
of
different subjects can open up their
classrooms, say for a week, and show
their colleagues their best teaching
techniques in a non-judgemental
way.
5 5 Introduce robust CPD evaluation.
Knowing what works and what
doesn't is vital for ensuring our
teachers have access to the right
tools and latest thinking (Earley et al.
2013).
Whether you are a school leader,
teacher or CPD provider, we all have
a responsibility to ensure professional
development is ongoing, focused on
improving pupil learning, builds and
enhances teachers' knowledge and
expertise, is evidence informed and
includes reflection and evaluation of
what's working.
References:
Craft, A. (2000). "Continuing Professional
Development: A practical guide for teachers
and schools". London: Routledge
Cordingley, P. et al (2015) 'Developing Great
Teaching Lessons from the international reviews
into effective professional development'.
Teacher Development Trust.
Falmer. Edmonds, S. and Lee, B. (2001). "Teacher
Feelings
About
Continuing
Professional
Development". Education Journal, 61, 28–29.
Guskey, T.R. (2000). "Evaluating Professional
Development". Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Corwin
Press.
Hargreaves, A. (1994). "Changing Teachers:
Changing Times". Toronto: OISE Press.
Hawley, W., & Valli, L. (1999). The essentials of
effective professional development: A new
consensus. In L. Darling-Hammond, & G. Sykes
(Eds.), Teaching as the learning profession:
Handbook of policy and practice (pp. 127-150).
San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass.
Earley, P, & Porritt, V (2013) 'Evaluating the
impact of professional development: the need
for a student-focused approach' Pages 112-129
| Published online: 09 Jun 2013. Professional
Development in Education. Volume 40, 2014-
Issue 1.
5 5 Give teachers the time and resources
they need to implement and embed
new knowledge, learning and
skills. As my colleague, Lisa Ashes
points out in her recently published
book 'Teacher In The Cupboard
Self-Reflective,
Solution-Focused
Teaching And Learning'- we need
to be asking questions that provide
solutions to a problem.
5 5 Ensure
that
professional
development is informed by high-
quality educational research. If
we want to grow great teachers
who become expert classroom
practitioners, we must ensure that
what they do is also informed by the
latest research.
5 5 Bring your staff rooms, libraries and
offices to life by having display boards
or areas dedicated to professional
development. Staff should have
access to books, blogs, education
magazines, subject resources and
literature. Build a team of research
champions whose responsibility it is,
to share snippets of useful subject-
Costa is Veema Education’s driving force and has many years of experience both
within the classroom and at the leadership level. He understands first-hand the
needs and priorities of schools today and has led national and international keynotes
and workshops on improving teaching and learning, leadership in schools and
implementing and managing effective change. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.
com/in/costa-constantinou-a2074254/
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Term 2 Jan - Mar 2020
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