8 Evidence-Based Ideas for Getting the Most from CPD
David Weston, chief executive at the Teacher Development Trust, discusses the key elements to on Continuing Professional Development…
- by David Weston
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When you were teaching, how aware were you of the importance of CPD, and what it might look like?
To be honest, I didn’t really think about it that much. I went on the occasional course and had a few bits of in-house training but there was nothing systematic and I kept finding that I didn’t have time to put most of the ideas into practice. It wasn’t until I joined Twitter in 2010 that I became aware of the huge knowledge base in pedagogy and teacher development.
What has been the most surprising thing you’ve learnt in your time with the Teacher Development Trust?
The most wonderful thing has been discovering leaders and schools where brilliant professional development is baked into everything that they do. The surprising thing is how few people know about these people and places – it’s our mission to ‘fan the flames of excellence’ wherever we can and make sure more people find out about it.
Who do you think has the ultimate responsibility for teachers’ CPD: schools, leaders, local authorities, the DfE… or teachers themselves?
Let’s rephrase that as ‘who is responsible for good teaching?’ The answer must be: everyone. Teachers need to constantly seek to improve their practice and the way they learn. School leaders need to prioritise making the time, space and resource available for this to happen, removing obstacles and unnecessary distractions. System leaders need to support and resource this, ensuring that accountability systems and funding are aligned with the mission to make improving teaching the primary aim of the system.
Do you think that ‘quality of CPD’ needs to be more explicitly addressed as part of our accountability system for schools?
Yes, but only if by ‘CPD’ we mean everything that we do to help teachers improve. If we only look at the formal or external courses and training then we’re missing most of the important stuff. We need much better quality collaboration time, including phase and subject meetings, better appraisal and performance management, better curriculum support materials, better INSET, better leadership, better access to evidence and expertise, better networks of practice, better coaching and mentoring… and much more.
How big a role should research have to play in teacher training, in your opinion?
Every teacher should be supported to stand on the shoulders of giants so that they can take the quickest route to achieve the best for the pupils they teach. That means empowering teachers with accessible knowledge from research. Harder than that though, it means becoming a profession that takes pride in doing the very hard work to stop doing enjoyable and good practice in order to make space for even better practice that might initially feel uncomfortable. All of that notwithstanding, we also need to acknowledge how much we simply don’t know, where the research base is thin. In those areas we don’t just need more innovation, we need disciplined innovation with ingenuity and quality evaluation so that we’re building bonfires that last, not fireworks that fizzle.
Given the power, what kind of training experience would you put into Room 101, and why?
I’d definitely ditch ‘we’re doing teacher yoga for our INSET’, or anything similar. Let’s use staff learning time for actual learning and find other ways to make the work enjoyable, rather than mandating sticking plasters which don’t address the reasons for stress.
And finally, what do you think is the single most important thing that any teacher could do today, to become a better teacher tomorrow?
For all but the most experienced teachers, a very high quality set of curriculum materials, teacher guides and pupil resources is the cornerstone of improvement. It’s like giving a chef a cupboard full of the best ingredients, a great recipe book and some pre-made mixes – it doesn’t stop you experimenting or innovating but it makes being better, easier, even on a difficult day.
