: Designing and selecting effective professional development: Strategy Guidance for School Leaders By Sarah-Louise Johnston, Director of Essex Research School

Priya, a PD lead at a secondary school, faces the challenge of creating professional development that makes a real impact. Limited time and resources, along with a crowded agenda of new strategies and mandates, make it difficult to design PD that fosters meaningful change in teaching. Despite her efforts, Priya often sees little lasting improvement from PD sessions, with teachers feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from the content.

Priya’s dilemma highlights the EEF’s first recommendation in its Effective Professional Development Guidance Report: focus on specific mechanisms that promote behaviour change, rather than just on content. The EEF advocates that mechanisms are the active components that drive change, helping teachers build knowledge, motivation, develop teaching techniques, and embed practices.

For leaders like Priya, the EEF’s guidance suggests PD should target these mechanisms to support sustained improvements, making PD an essential part of the school’s journey toward better student outcomes.

Example Action Plan for School Leaders:
The additional steps and reflection questions offered below are designed to provide leaders with a more concrete roadmap for implementing each mechanism. Leaders can use these as part of a structured plan to ensure professional development leads to sustained improvement in teaching and learning.

1. Building Knowledge: Start with Focused Content
Action: Prioritise PD topics based on the most pressing instructional needs in your school. For example, if improving literacy is a key goal, structure PD around evidence-based reading strategies.

Step: Break down complex ideas into smaller, digestible sessions. Avoid trying to cover too much at once. You might start with foundational concepts in one session, followed by application and reflection in subsequent sessions.

Reflection Questions for Leaders: 
• What specific knowledge gaps exist among teachers?
• How can PD help teachers link new content to what they already know?
• How will I ensure teachers leave the session understanding why the content matters?

2. Motivating Teachers: Create Buy-In

Priya often finds that while teachers are open to learning new things, they are sometimes resistant to change due to workload pressures or scepticism about the relevance of PD to their day-to-day challenges. This is where the second set of mechanisms — those that increase motivation — come into play.

Action: Incorporate teacher voice when designing PD. Survey staff to identify their professional interests and challenges. Use this input to tailor PD topics and emphasise the direct benefits for teachers’ classrooms.

Step: Build collaborative spaces. Use PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) or peer mentoring to create opportunities for teachers to learn together, discuss challenges, and share successes.

Reflection Questions for Leaders:
• How can I engage teachers in shaping the PD agenda?
• What peer collaboration opportunities can I create to motivate teachers to adopt new strategies?
• How will I set clear, achievable goals for PD that teachers can personally relate to?

3. Develop Teaching Techniques: Provide Practical Tools

Teachers, like students, need time to practise and refine new skills. One-off PD sessions, no matter how well-designed, are unlikely to have a lasting impact unless there is follow-up and support for embedding the learning into classroom practice.
This means designing PD that is sustained over time, with regular opportunities for teachers to revisit and refine what they’ve learned. Techniques such as coaching, mentoring, or even the use of instructional walkthroughs can help ensure that the new practices become ingrained.

Action: Ensure that PD provides not only theory (and is evidence informed) but also practical strategies that teachers can implement right away. Use lesson demonstrations, model lessons, or case studies to make the content relevant to daily practice.

Step: Follow up with real-world applications. After introducing a new strategy, give teachers time to try it out and gather feedback on how it worked in their classroom. Provide a space for reflection, whether through staff meetings, feedback surveys, or instructional rounds.

Reflection Questions for Leaders:
• How can I ensure PD content includes actionable strategies that teachers can use immediately?
• What support will be provided for teachers trying out these new techniques?
• How can we create opportunities for teachers to reflect on and refine their practice?

Embed Practice: Support Sustained Implementation

Action: Plan for ongoing, sustained PD. One-off workshops are rarely effective in promoting lasting change. Instead, use coaching, mentoring, or peer observation cycles to provide teachers with continued support as they work on embedding new practices.

Steps:
a) Provide opportunities for feedback and refinement. For example, instructional coaching sessions can offer targeted feedback on how teachers are implementing new strategies. This can be coupled with walkthroughs where leaders observe classroom practice and offer actionable insights.
b) Encourage teachers to self-monitor and record their own performance. For instance, using reflective journals.

Reflection Questions for Leaders:
• What structures are in place to provide follow-up and support after the initial PD session?
• How can I facilitate regular opportunities for teachers to refine their practice?
• What methods will I use to ensure teachers are embedding new strategies into their routines?

What’s Next?

The EEF’s guidance highlights 14 specific mechanisms, and over this series of, we’ll dive deeper into each category of these mechanisms. The next post will explore how school leaders can effectively build knowledge through PD, offering practical insights into designing PD that strengthens teacher understanding and skills.