Dave Scott is a 6 times winning world Ironman triathlete who left nothing to chance. During peak training you could catch him cycling 75 miles, swimming a few 1000 metres and running up to 20 miles on a daily basis for weeks on end. In order to win six world championships he continued to reflect on his training and make tweaks to it in order to achieve optimal performance (much like the British cycling team under Sir David Brailsford – searching for a series of small marginal gains which would combine to produce a larger impact on performance). Dave Scott took it a step further and use to rinse his cottage cheese (not a euphemism) with water in order to reduce the amount of fat it contained upon consumption. He believed that this was one in series of other small steps which enabled him to reach peak performance. This got me thinking about teaching and how teachers develop their practice in the classroom.

As teachers we are in the business of changing lives. The best to do this is to get a better understanding of what works in the classroom (rinse our classrooms of wasteful practices and focus on what actually works). CPD is often fraught with difficulties – whole bodies of staff being forced to engage with CPD in one particular way which leads to minimal buy in. One off INSET days on a magical strategy to transform your teaching and the cult of outstanding can also end up leading to more lip service but even less action in the classroom. As David Weston (@informed_edu) points out we need to move our teacher development from awareness to transformative practice if we want teaching to improve. We need to take action.

From September I took up a leadership role in my school to lead CPD for teaching staff. I’m passionate about helping all students to succeed and understand that the best way for that to happen is to ensure they are exposed to great teaching. I want teachers to flourish and engage with CPD that personalised and enables them to take control, take action and subscribe to continual improvement in a way that works for them. In previous years CPD has consisted of a ‘one size fits all approach’ and so this year I wanted to do something a little different.

Based on the ideas of @Shaun_Allison and @Dan_Brinton I set out to offer a much more personalised CPD programme that focused on transformative activities. In the rest of this post I’ll attempt to outline the CPD programme I have planned for the year.

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CPD overview.

I adopted @Shaun_Allison ‘s layered approach to CPD.

Blanket activities relates to whole staff CPD activities in directed time which in my school equates to one 60 minute session every fortnight throughout the whole year.

Optional activities means exactly that – CPD activities like 15 minute forums, teach-meets, Edu-book club that teachers opt into if they want to. These activities are about getting the ‘right people on the bus.’ In order for them to be successful you need to create clusters of staff that want to be involved (and quite often lots do but just haven’t had an appropriate forum to get involved).

Directed activities relate to sessions for specific groups of staff like NQTs who may need additional support but also under-performing staff. Providing support for these groups are vital to ensuring that students get the best possible learning experiences.

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CPD Overview 2014 – 2015.

Here’s my plan – Download a PDF copy here.

Staff will spend blanket time in departments during terms 1 and 6. Department leaders put forward a plan as to what their CPD will look like in these sessions. It focuses on specific needs of each department.

Terms 2 – 5 is where the personalised CPD takes place. Staff will opt into one of four pathways. The staff leading each pathway have opted to lead and take part in their pathway so will not miss out on CPD. During term 5 staff will be given directed time to create a piece of work to explain what they have investigated and then present it in a market-place style event at the end of term 5. I’ll blog about each pathway in more detail later in the year.

Outside of the blanket sessions there are a number of optional CPD activities aimed at building a culture of continual improvement. So far take up has been overwhelmingly strong for the optional activities.

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Teaching is difficult but rewarding. We fail at it a lot which provides us with opportunities to learn more about what works and what doesn’t. Engaging with research is an accelerator that can challenge the way we think about teaching and in turn move our practice forward. So lets strip away the novelty gestures, rinse our cottage cheese and get better at understanding what works.

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Further reading:

The Perfect CPD guide by Shaun Allison

Shaun Allison’s blog.

Dan Brinton’s blog.

Teach like a champion by Doug Lemov.

David Didau’s blog.

Alex Quigley’s blog.

ResearchED – Working out what works.

Teacher Development Trust

Lesson study.

DIY Teaching CPD by Stephen Tierney.