Continuing Professional Development

A Practical Guide for Teachers and Schools

Anna Craft

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134558148
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

First Published in 2004. This text will enable teachers to analyze their own experience of in-service work. It offers tools for evaluating a focused aspect of work, and will help teachers to: explore models of in-service provision; develop understandings of professional and institutional development; develop understanding of the principles of appraisal and review; review and describe their own in-service work; develop and apply criteria for evaluating the quality and value of in-service work; and identify appropriate areas for future in-service work. The book will be particularly useful to teachers and heads, and will be of interest to all those responsible for managing professional development at school.

Part I
Theories of teacher and school development

Introduction

Some of the main themes of Part I are:

• the nature of continuing professional development set in the context of teaching as a profession as well as policy positions from government on it,
• factors contributing to effective classrooms, departments and schools and the engagement between the study of effectiveness and the study of improvement,
• factors making for effective individual and school development, and
• the nature of appraisal (sometimes referred to as review, in Scotland) in relation to professional and institutional development.

These themes will be explored in greater depth in Parts II and III. These later parts will also provide detailed guidance on the methods and approaches outlined in Part I.

This part of the book is intended to help you review and describe your own professional development needs and articulate your expectations of professional development and in-service training. It is organised as follows:

Chapter 1 This chapter deals with cultural and policy shifts in professional development. It looks at definitions of professional development and in-service training. It notes the variety of purposes of professional development and draws attention to the way these can conflict. For example, attention is drawn to tensions between school and individual needs for in-service training and between pressures for in-service training to meet national priorities and those arising within particular schools and for particular individuals. It explores some of the connections between professional development and pupil attainment. Chapter 1 also looks at models of professional development and INSET provision; we consider professional development in terms of purposes, location, length, methods and levels of impact and develop points made in the Introduction. It is designed to help you locate your own experience and reflect on how this corresponds to the models described.

Chapter 2 This chapter looks at principles of appraisal. It outlines the differences between contrasting approaches to appraisal. It then explores the relationship between appraisal and professional development, arguing that appraisal can assist in identifying professional development needs, reconciling school and individual pressures for professional development and evaluating professional development. The aim is to help you relate your own experience of appraisal to your professional development.

Even if your experience of appraisal is very limited we take the view that having a personal position on its potential for professional development is important. You should be able to develop a personal position on the role and potential of appraisal even with little experience so far.

Note: Some Education Authorities in Scotland carry out teacher review rather than teacher appraisal. This model, Staff Development and Review, has the approval of the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED).

Chapter 3 This chapter looks at principles of professional and institutional development and reviews a range of factors frequently seen as important in promoting individual and school development. It discusses practitioner reflection and professional knowledge and acknowledges the role of the biographical in the process of clarifying your thinking about your own professional development needs. It discusses principles of effective schools and of school improvement, making connections between the two approaches to institutional development and introducing the level of classroom effectiveness, which will be explored further in Chapter 4. The chapter is aimed to support you in identifying your own professional development needs in the context of the school’s development plan. It looks at ways in which appraisal may support professional and institutional development.

Chapter 4 This chapter looks at the pupil perspective on teacher and school development in the context of the increasing marketisation of education and of a steady increase in emphasis on lifelong learning. It goes on to explore various findings on effective classrooms, departments and schools. We introduce the notions of the evolutionary school and classroom and of the intelligent school. The chapter examines one of the interventionist strategies for professional development originally developed by the Department of Employment, and now being used by many schools: Investors in People, in the light of research on effective classrooms, departments and schools. It also explores further the links between effectiveness and school improvement, introduced in Chapter 3, highlighting the role of middle managers in school improvement and exploring the place and approaches of methodology for investigating and documenting each.

Chapter 5 Here we look at the principles behind evaluating specific CPD, to enable you both to ‘frame’ and ‘re-frame’ your practice. The discussion includes consideration of stakeholders in the evaluation of CPD and exploration of the evaluation of both processes and outcomes. The chapter aims to help you in selecting some professional development which you wish to evaluate.

Summary of outcomes

At the end of Part I you should have:

• developed your understanding of the purposes and nature of professional development and in-service training in the wider context of policy on CPD;
• explored a range of models of professional development and related these to yourself;
• gained an awareness of key principles of institutional and individual development;
• explored some of the interconnections between classroom, departmental and school effectiveness and improvement;
• explored the links between appraisal and professional development;
• explored the ways in which pupil and teacher learning intermesh, and the potential for developing your contribution to your school’s effectiveness, development and improvement;
• explored the relationship between evaluation and professional development.

Chapter 1
Models of professional development and provision

THE CONTEXT: CULTURAL SHIFTS

Professional development has attracted increasing attention in recent years. Faced with rapid change, demands for high standards and calls for improving quality, teachers have a need, as never before, to update and improve their skills through professional development. Formerly known as in-service education and training, or INSET, a phrase now in much wider currency to describe in-service training, is Continuing Professional Development (CPD). Until the mid-1990s, CPD was often taken up as a matter of voluntary commitment or just as something for those with career ambitions. The present climate in education means that this attitude is no longer appropriate. Greater clarity is now needed on what continuing professional development and in-service training are, and what effect they can reasonably be expected to have as more and more teachers become involved.

There are sources of tension in this situation. On the one hand, there are pressures at national and school levels. These arise from demands for increased quality and the need to implement the National Curriculum in England and Wales and, in Scotland advice from the Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum (SCCC which is currently being reformed), as well as the impact of public reporting and inspection in education. In addition, at national level there are demands for certain sectors of the teaching population to undertake specific courses of development, some of which are, or will become, statutory. Examples of these are:

• The introduction by the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) of a plan for the National Professional Qualification for Subject Leaders (NPQSL) and implementation of the National Professional Qualification for Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators (SENCO) as part of the National Standards for Teachers (TTA, 1998); in Scotland, the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) is also developing a standards framework around three ‘standards’ – the Fully Registered Teacher Standard (being revised by the teacher education institutions and the General Teaching Council for Scotland; the Expert Teacher Standard (in development) and the Standard for Headship in Scotland (which was developed in 1998) – together with a profiling system which will be put in place to enable teachers to organise and chart their progress towards achieving the standards.
• The implementation in 1996 of the National Professional Qualification for Head Teachers (NPQH) – which will become a prerequisite for head teachers in 2002 – and the introduction also of the Headship, Leadership and Management Programme (HEADLAMP) and the Leadership Programme for Serving Head Teachers (LPSH). It seems likely (Bland-ford, 2000) that the government plans that the National College for School Leadership, due to start operations in September 2000, will become a focus for improving the quality of school leadership. In Scotland, a close equivalent of these programmes has been the introduction in 1998 of the Scottish Qualification for Headship (SQH).

Funding is increasingly funnelled by policy bodies that also control funding, toward certain, identified national priorities for teacher development. These arise out of the establishment by the government in 1994 of the TTA in order to review and develop initial and in-service training of teachers. For example, following a MORI poll of teachers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of continuing professional development programmes, the TTA introduced a structure of national standards for teachers in a bid to improve provision and its effects. As Blandford has suggested, this particular national standards framework was created in order to:

• establish clear and explicit expectations of teachers;
• help set targets for professional development and career progression;
• help to focus and improve training and staff development at national, local and school levels;
• ensure that the focus at every point is on improving pupil achievement;
• recognise the expertise required of effective headteachers and teachers in schools. (Blandford, 2000 p.66)

At the time of writing (February 2000), the DfEE is consulting the profession on a range of different aspects of CPD (DfEE, 2000), including the introduction of a range of professional standards. These include the identification at policy level of a national performance threshold that will give successful teachers access to a new, upper pay spine and which would map out potential career progression including management and non-management routes into higher responsibility, status and pay. A range of methods for CPD are included in the proposals including teacher exchanges and business placements, sabbaticals from the classroom, peer networks, professional learning teams, mentoring and school cluster work. A part of this consultation is a set of proposals on what areas might need to be prioritised in the investigation of best practice.

The identification of specific priority areas and the identification of specific practice-related standards in each of these, means that providers of in-service learning are enabled in some areas whilst constrained in others. This in turn narrows what teachers may take up as professional learning opportunities. In addition, responsibility for providing the professional development opportunities has transferred from Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) and the Teacher Training Agency (TTA). At school level, governors and the management team of the school are responsible for ensuring that staff in the school have access to training and development opportunities which will help develop the individual as well as the team and the school. At national level, inspection of provision is carried out by the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED).

It is likely that the General Teaching Council (GTC), which at the time of writing is yet to be established, will have a role in fostering professional development, in relation to teaching standards. Part of its role will be to lay down a code of conduct, including professional development, and it will also be expected to advise government on a range of issues including professional development, in terms of individuals, teams, schools, subject disciplines, etc. It is expected to be in operation by late 2000.

In Scotland, the situation is similar. The development of the professional standards has been undertaken by SEED in collaboration with other bodies, as indicated above. CPD supporting the development of these is inspected by the Scottish Inspectorate and SHEFC (Scottish Higher Education Funding Council). However, in Scotland, although the General Teaching Council for Scotland has responsibility for the standards for full entry to the teaching profession, including a two-year period of probation, its role in CPD at the time of writing is not clear.

In contrast to what is laid down in policy requirements, there are the individual needs of teachers, who may see in-service learning in terms of job satisfaction and personal or professional growth. In effect, responding to external calls for greater accountability has to be reconciled with the developmental needs of individual teachers, who may wish to act as far as possible as autonomous professionals. At school level, there are tensions between the needs of the school as a whole as well as teams within it, for in-service learning and the needs of individual teachers.

The tension between individual, team, school and national priorities seems likely to increase in England and Wales (and t...