Delivering effective professional development

Learn that…

1. Professional development is likely to be more effective when design and delivery involves specialist expertise from a range of sources. This may include internal or external expertise.
2. Teacher developers should choose activities that suit the aims and context of their professional development programme. Successful models have included regular, expert-led conversations about classroom practice, teacher development groups and structured interventions. However, these activities do not work in all circumstances and the model should fit the educational aims, content and context of the programme.
3. All schools with early career teachers undertaking statutory induction must adhere to the regulations and relevant statutory guidance.
4. School staff with disabilities may require reasonable adjustments; working closely with these staff to understand barriers and identify effective approaches is essential.

Learn how to…

Deliver effective professional development by:

• Providing clarity on where content fits into school improvement priorities and, where appropriate, a wider curriculum for professional development.
• Choosing appropriate development approaches including modelling, explanations and scaffolds, acknowledging that novices need more structure, support and exemplification.
• Narrating thought processes and debriefing experiences to build teachers’ metacognition (e.g. narrating what the expert teacher is seeing, thinking and doing when they are planning or observing teaching).
• Ensuring that time is protected for teachers to plan, test and implement new, evidence-informed ideas.
• Developing and leading a team of colleagues who can facilitate a range of professional development approaches.
• Ensuring that colleagues are able to continually develop specialist subject, phase and domain expertise.
• Making reasonable adjustments that are well-matched to teacher needs (e.g. to content, resources and venue).

Plan, conduct, and support colleagues to conduct, regular, expert-led conversations (which could be referred to as mentoring or coaching) about classroom practice by:

• Building a relationship of trust and mutual respect between the individuals involved.
• Tailoring the conversation to the expertise and needs of the individual (e.g. adapting conversations to be more or less facilitative, dialogic or directive).
• Using approaches including observation of teaching or a related artefact (e.g. videos, assessment materials, research, lesson plans), listening, facilitating reflection and discussion by asking clear and intentional questions, and actionable feedback with opportunities to test ideas and practise implementation of new approaches.
• Where appropriate, creating opportunities to co-observe a lesson segment, exploring and modelling what a teacher with a particular area of expertise sees and thinks.

Play a formal role for trainee and early career teachers by:

• Applying, where relevant, an understanding of the Early Career Framework, the ITT Core Content Framework, the Teachers’ Standards and the Standard for Teachers’ Professional Development to the school’s training and induction offer.
• Understanding the roles and responsibilities within the induction process and ensuring early career teachers access their statutory entitlements.
• Contributing to a programme of professional development for mentors, trainee and early career teachers that satisfies the statutory requirements and aligns effectively with other programmes of professional development activity within the school.

The text above is taken from the NPQ – Leading Teacher Development Framework. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.