In my viewIn my view
Margaret Alcorn, National CPD Coordinator
This is not just CPD . . . this is teacher-centred, pupil-focused, collaborative professional learning CPD.
Teachers engage in CPD for a variety of reasons, falling at various points along the 'CPD as entitlement or obligation' spectrum.
Whatever the reason for engagement, we might reasonably expect our involvement with CPD to have some sort of impact. It always helps to have an idea what this might be.
If we consider what the point of CPD is we can identify three main possible areas of impact:
- On yourself - an increase in your professional capacity
- On your pupils - an improvement in their learning experiences
- On others - an increase in the capacity of others within the system and a positive and enduring effect on the system as a whole.
The impact on personal capacity can be seen in terms of supporting you in your current or potential future roles. It enhances your current practice in terms of the 'why', 'what' and 'how' as exemplified by the Standards Framework. It extends your practice eg Professional Recognition or Chartered Teacher or Standard for Headship. It can also bring the benefit of motivating you and sustaining your career.
The impact on pupils will follow through the integration of your enhanced values, knowledge and skills into your professional actions. These will manifest in curricular innovation, improvements in pedagogy and in pupil learning and outcomes.
The impact on colleagues and the system is less obvious, but no less important. It is very much about colleagues learning from and with colleagues. And, of course, playing your part in the successful implementation of Curriculum for Excellence.
A synergistic learning scenario might be a collaborative professional enquiry where a group of teachers purposefully examine an issue of practice and collaboratively plan, implement and evaluate an intervention before integrating the improvements into practice and ultimately policy.
So, next time you are involved in some professional learning, whether it be formal or informal, planned or incidental, branded Curriculum for Excellence or not, why not see whether you can get three benefits for the price of one activity. Or even better, plan to go for the crème de la crème of CPD, teacher-centred, pupil-focused, collaborative professional learning.
Related websites
If you'd like to know more about CPD then visit www.ltscotland.org.uk/cpdscotland
You can also visit the CPD team's blog at http://ltsblogs.org.uk/cpdteam
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Latest comment...
would like to knowthe GTCS view on this scenario. I agree with Steve its a last option!
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