Induction tutor materials
Training session - effective professional development
Duration: 30 minutes
Session objectives
Learn that:
- 8.1. Effective professional development is likely to be sustained over time, involve expert support or coaching and opportunities for collaboration.
- 8.7. Engaging in high-quality professional development can help teachers improve.
Learn how to:
Develop as a professional by:
- 8a. Engaging in professional development focused on developing an area of practice with clear intentions for impact on pupil outcomes, sustained over time with built-in opportunities for practice.
How to prepare for the session
Read: What makes great teaching: Review of the underpinning research by Robert Coe, Cesare Aloisi, Steve Higgins and Lee Elliot Major
Consider how you’ll exemplify effective models of good professional development throughout. This includes focusing ECTs on developing specific areas of practice, thinking about the impact on pupil outcomes, and providing opportunities for ECTs to work together and practise.
Prepare the following materials:
- a handout to help ECTs identify examples of professional development, and what’s made each effective for them
- an example of effective professional development, which could be a talking head video
Session structure:
What have been your experiences of effective professional development? (15 minutes)
Start the session by reminding ECTs of the importance of high-quality professional development in helping teachers to improve.
Ask ECTs to identify the characteristics of the most helpful professional development they’ve engaged with over the last year. This should be something that directly helped to improve outcomes for their pupils.
Ask ECTs to note 2 to 4 experiences or activities that have most helped them to improve their practice over the last year.
Examples include:
- self-directed study materials
- mentoring
- training programme sessions
- observing or being observed by colleagues
- journal clubs and reading research articles
- engaging with networks on social media
- whole-school professional development sessions
- subject, phase or department meetings
Ask, how did these activities focus on pupil outcomes?
Examples include:
- subject-specific, such as how to teach a tricky concept or address a misconception
- related to adaptive teaching, such as how to make use of formative assessment during lessons
- related to an individual pupil, such as SEN
- related to classroom management, such as how to manage behaviour effectively and promote a positive learning culture
- workload-related, such as how to plan and mark effectively and efficiently
What makes effective professional development? (10 minutes)
Professional development is more likely to be effective if it:
- is sustained over time
- involves expert support or coaching
- involves opportunities for collaboration
- has clear intentions for impact on pupil outcomes
- involves built-in opportunities for practice
Ask ECTs to consider whether the activities they identified match this evidence of what makes professional development more likely to be effective.
For example, did it include activities that:
- were focused on the pupils they teach
- included reflection on their practice
- were sustained over weeks or months
- provided ideas to try out in their classroom
- involved working with colleagues
- were built on evidence from research
- helped them to identify what they could improve
Share an example of professional development that has these characteristics.
This could be through a video of a teacher talking about an episode of professional development.
For example:
Following a departmental peer observation, the teacher identifies exposition as an area to develop further. Over the next half term, the teacher works with a more experienced colleague, who acts as an instructional coach.
Using a model for good exposition that they have sourced from their subject association website, the teacher develops and then practises with their mentor a specific sequence of narrative explanation once a week. The coach provides feedback during this practice.
Sometimes the sequence is filmed by the teacher in their lessons; sometimes the coach comes in to observe for a few minutes. Whenever they meet, the coach helps the teacher to reflect on what went well and what could be improved, based on the model of effective exposition that they are using.
At the end of the half term, the coach and the teacher discuss the extent to which this approach is secure in the teacher’s practice, and identify opportunities for further development.
Reflecting on learning (5 minutes)
Ask ECTs to:
Identify a pupil or group of pupils (maybe a class) you would like to improve outcomes for.
What specific outcomes would you like to improve?
Do you already know of a high-quality professional development opportunity that you can use to achieve this?
Opportunities might include:
- in-school or in-trust training session
- research or evidence
- a colleague with expertise in this area
- an external training programme
- wider network with events or resources
ECTs should share their plan with their mentor.