Self-Directed "Develop Yourself" CPD sessions

Post date: Mar 05, 2018 8:23:22 PM

This post is divided into three sections:

1. Background and Rationale

2.Structure of the INSET Day

3. Reflection

1. Background and Rationale

As many fellow members of SLT in charge of CPD will probably agree, one of the biggest challenges is how to provide a stimulating and relevant CPD programme for ALL your staff: no matter their role or level of experience. How do you galvanise your staff team towards whole school developmental priorities whilst still ensuring it is relevant for your greenest, keenest NQT; your wise-owl “we’ve seen this all before”; your army of TLAs; your admin team? This conundrum has been foregrounded (rightly) by a distinct shift in CPD thinking away from generic CPD on “pedagogy” – the HOW to teach – and a move towards subject specific CPD: the WHAT to teach.

The Teacher Development Trustpublished this report into great CPD in June 2015 and you can find a copy of the extremely accessible summary here.

I found their findings under: “Designing for Participants’ Needs” and “Creating a Shared Sense of Purpose” particularly interesting/challenging.

In the former section, the report states: “All reviews found that an essential element of successful professional development is generating buy-in: creating an overt relevance of the content to its participants - their day-to-day experiences with, and aspirations for, their pupils” (p15). Okay, so generic, universal CPD is out; subject-specific, opt-in model is in.

However the following section found this: “Whether teachers were conscripted or had volunteered to take part in an activity did not appear to be a highly significant factor” (p16) which is certainly counter-intuitive to me. This would suggest that the universal model is okay as long as you work hard enough to make sure it is overtly relevant to all – possible but challenging.

These thoughts percolated in my mind. They combined with one of my fundamental passions: developing a staff body who proactively own and seek out their CPD rather than seeing CPD as something that is “done” or “delivered to” you through the occasional conference day out of school.

The momentum was somewhat cemented by two factors:

1. Reading Carl Hendrick and Robin MacPherson’s provocation: “Wouldn’t it be great if, for an inset day, your head took you to a good library?” (p21) in their excellent book What does this Look Like in the Classroom.

2. Returning to school on the 2^nd of January…GRIM!

2. Structure of the INSET Day

So we planned something a bit different for our 2^nd of January INSET. This was the schedule for the day. The bowling was a fun, team-building idea from our fab Head @proudHT – some people may be a bit cynical about this, but we’re lucky enough to have the sort of culture where people embrace this!

I introduced the idea of the “Develop yourself” session by explaining to staff that explicitly wanted them to focus on “the important, not urgent”:

My colleague @apapa72 also briefly introduced staff to the idea of MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses. You can see a link to his Prezi here.

I gave staff a simple template to capture their learning – but there was no expectation that this was shared with anyone else.

The only “rule” was that staff needed to visit two of the four zones during the three hour slot:

Workshop Zone

There was actually only one major workshop being offered: A “Using Twitter for Professional Purposes” evangelical session by me!

Documentary Zone

I selected three autism related documentaries – we are a special school for pupils with EHCPs for autism.

Staff Library Zone

We’re lucky to have a pretty well-stocked staff library that I’ve grown over the last two years. For this day, I simply made the extra effort to take lots of the books off our shelves and “signpost” them with the areas they are particularly helpful for. This linked to the area’s flagged up by staff as of interest – I explain this more in the Online Zone.

4. Online Zone

All of our teacher and TLAs dedicate one of their PM targets to improving an area of L&T: they are free to choose which area. I reviewed all of these targets, grouped staff with similar targets and then signposted them to online resources or electronic self-directed courses (eg. Zen Learning or Active Questioning) that we have already purchased and have on the system. This was the most time-consuming part of preparation but I wanted provide that additional scaffolding to ensure this first foray into this form of CPD was a success.

3. Reflections

And was it a success?

From the staff perspective, it certainly was:

• • 100% of responses said that the session was "enjoyable," "contributed to my learning," and "will have an impact on my teaching."

  • 95% of respones said they thought the session was "useful" and "high quality."

Comments on the evaluation forms included WWWs of:

• • · “Possibility to organise own time and research topics of interest”

  • · “Online zone was individually tailored”

  • · “Being able to choose what CPD is important to us”

  • · “Loved this set up and style of CPD

The EBIs from staff centred around doing it more often - win – and a number of people did want a sort of “plenary”/ “wrap up” session:

• • · “There was a quick quiz to check what we achieved”

  • · “A discussion time after the documentary to raise issues”

  • · “Had to share what we had learnt with others at the end of sessions”

  • · “Plenary – speed dating what we learned & updating the “what will I do” display more”

It was also a success in relation to the goal of staff owning their CPD more/increasing the use of permanent resources:

• A number of staff have approached me to ask if we can pay for their Future Learn MOOC to be extended/certified. This is normally about £50, so I think pretty good value.

• There is an increase in borrowing from the staff library.

Lastly, it has the potential be a very sustainable model of CPD going forwards, the preparation I have already done can yield future sessions. So, yes, it is a model of CPD I would highly recommend for other schools!