Mentor materials
Revisiting professional development
Learning intentions
Your ECT will learn that:
- Effective professional development is likely to be sustained over time, involve expert support or coaching and opportunities for collaboration.
- Engaging in high-quality professional development can help teachers improve.
Your ECT will learn how to:
Develop as a professional, by:
- 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.
Topic introduction
In the ECT training session at the beginning of this module, your mentee considered some important aspects of what it means to be (a) professional and approaches to managing their professional development over time. This has been expanded through subsequent sessions in the module. In this week’s self-directed study session, your mentee has the opportunity to revisit their thinking around professional development and opportunities to continue their development over time. In this ECT mentor meeting, you will further explore these opportunities with your mentee.
Meeting activities
Throughout the session, try to refer explicitly to the learning intentions, and encourage your mentee to record key points in their learning log. Tailor your use of the theory to practice activities below in response to the review and plan sections of this session.
Review: 5 mins
- Start this session by briefly following up on the actions the mentee set at the end of last week’s session. Ask your mentee to summarise
- what they did
- the impact of this on pupil learning (including how they are evaluating this)
- what they will do going forward to build on these actions
- Clarify the learning intentions for this session with your mentee.
Plan: 5 mins
At the start of this module, you looked at all of the learn how to statements for Standard 8 and conducted a module audit with your mentee. In some areas they will already be confident and skilled; in others they will want more practice and support from you and others. Look back at this audit now and use it to help decide how you and your mentee will make the most productive use of the suggested theory to practice activities below.
Theory to Practice: 35 mins
Sharing of practice
Spend some time talking to your mentee about how you manage your professional development as a teacher.
You could make reference to:
- in-school activities such as weekly teaching and learning updates, journal clubs or teacher learning communities
- external activities supported by your school, such as attendance at exam board training or local area networks
- activities you have undertaken in your own time, such as reading relevant literature, attending a weekend conference, participating in wider pedagogical or subject networks
- teachers in other settings about issues that affect all teachers
Collaborative planning
Work with your mentee to review the ‘menu’ of professional development activities that they drafted in their self-directed study session this week.
To further develop this resource, you could:
- help your mentee to review the details of each professional development opportunity, including:
- any costs associated with the opportunity (include time and monetary costs)
- how the opportunity meets the criteria for effective professional development
- how relevant the opportunity is for teachers in your mentee’s phase and specialism
- how easily accessible the opportunity is
- why this is good professional development – how is it expected to improve your mentee’s professional practice?
- add details of opportunities that your mentee has not included, drawing on your knowledge of teacher professional development opportunities
- check that the ‘menu’ includes in-school activities, out-of-school activities supported by the school and activities that can be undertaken in your mentee’s own time, if desired
Action planning
Work with your mentee to plan how they will engage with some of the professional development opportunities that they have captured on their professional development ‘menu’.
To make this effective, you could:
- prompt your mentee to set SMART targets around engaging with professional development (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound)
- help your mentee to complete any paperwork required in your school to engage with school-supported, external professional development
- ensure that your mentee’s actions are compatible with effective management of their workload and wellbeing
Next Steps: 5 mins
Note the date of your next mentor meeting. This will be the final ECT mentor meeting of this programme for Year 1. In this meeting you will review your ECT’s progress this year and look ahead to Year 2 of the programme.