Research School Network: Developing a CPD Curriculum Debbie Tremble, Assistant Headteacher, John Taylor High School & ELE for Staffordshire Research School discusses effective CPD.

Developing a CPD Curriculum

The CPD Curriculum by Mark and Zoe Enser suggests that to deliver effective professional (PD) development the CPD programme should be developed and delivered in the same way we would design a curriculum. Mary Myatt, in recognising the need to move from ​‘gallimaufry to coherence’ in curriculum, says: ​“The focus, until recently, has largely been on how content has been delivered, as opposed to the purpose, quality and impact of that content.” The same is true of professional development. For many colleagues, their experience of professional development has been incidental, ​‘one-off’ and delivered with little consideration of how we, like the students we teach, learn effectively. In my as Assistant Headteacher for Teaching and Learning, I set about to ensure the professional development offer at my school is coherent, meets the needs of all staff (from novice to expert) and is context specific. I applied the recommendations from Mark and Zoe Enser’s book to create a CPD curriculum built around intent, implementation and impact.

In our school, leaders had identified ​‘key priority amenable to change’ (EEF’s guidance report Effective Professional Development). This key priority was to improve the quality of teaching and learning through the development of modelling and metacognition. This key priority was identified by the leadership team after spending a great deal of time at the ​‘explore’ phase of implementation (EFF’s Implementation Guidance Report). During this exploration phase it was imperative to start by checking what teachers already knew and what they were already doing. This came from a triangulation of evidence and it became clear that there were areas in the school where modelling was being used, and successfully. However, we also felt that we needed to create expertise, where practice becomes automatic and more responsive. Therefore, we designed a number of active ingredients which allowed for specificity on what was critical in our PD curriculum to ensure expertise in modelling across our school. We adhered to the recommendations by consulting the EEF’s guidance report on metacognition to ensure we made evidence-informed decisions on what aspects to implement and examined its fit and feasibility in our school. We then aligned this to our CPD curriculum intent:


The CPD curriculum is made up of three main strands:

Individual
Departmental
Whole School

It balances the need of the school and its context, the needs of departments and individuals.

The CPD curriculum is matched to the whole school priorities with the purpose of creating what our ideal school looks like.

The CPD curriculum is designed to tackle our persistent problems and is structured to overcome them.

We endeavour to apply evidence-based research in planning and approaching professional development.

Our CPD curriculum is designed to meet the needs of teaching and support staff – to be both challenging of our expert teachers and supportive of novices. We aim to develop a culture of effective professional learning.

In implementation, it is fundamental to design PD around the fact that adults learn in the same as way as children; therefore, we applied the evidence-based research on memory and learning to curriculum design. Here, the mechanisms of managing cognitive load and revisiting prior knowledge were considered.

The CPD Curriculum outlines the study conducted by Opfer and Pedder on the principles for designing high quality professional development:

Teachers are less likely to change behaviours following CPD based on watching presentations and being asked to memorise new knowledge on pedagogy and practice.

-Teachers learn more effectively when they have to engage with materials which are linked directly to their practice.
-They learn better when CPD is integrated into their daily work.
-Teachers are more likely to learn when the pedagogy of the PD matches the pedagogy they use in the classroom.

From this, it was evident that we needed to consider how best to ensure habit and behaviour change of teachers in our implementation. This included ensuring any whole staff sessions built on prior knowledge, skills and understanding of our teachers and that all PD that year will be based on this whole school priority to ensure the ​‘main thing’ remained the ​‘main thing’ and that expertise was built on throughout the academic year. However, we wanted to ensure that PD was domain specific and so introduced Subject Planning and Development Sessions (Durrington Research School) building in, David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle (ELC) to:

-ensure whole-school input followed by individual planning and reflection
-allow subjects to plan collaboratively for the adoption of the new strategy and then reflect on its impact.

It is key to keep ​‘returning to the vision’ so when we get staff together (at the start of a new term for example or at the beginning of a twilight session), we return to the big picture and identify progress steps already made. We use this as an opportunity to address misconceptions, explain there are things that could or must be refined and activate prior learning as part of this. This is crucial in applying Mechanism 5: Providing affirmation and reinforcement after progress (EEF Effective Professional Development).

We did not want impact to be measured by examination results or summative assessments. Here, The CPDCurriculum is incredibly sensible in assessing impact, stating that it is very difficult to know if outcomes have improved, or failed to improve, because of the PD we have put in place. They ask ​‘would they have improved anyway? They book suggests: ​‘progress means progress through the curriculum.’ Therefore, impact becomes an evaluation of our implementation – can teachers do more as a result of the PD curriculum? As recommended by the book, we use David Didau’s guide:

- Awareness – teachers are more aware of the issues or principles involved.
- Attitudes, beliefs and confidence – the teachers are not only more aware of the issues but have changed their view of them.
- Systems – there are now systems in place to enable the change you wanted to see.
- Staff practice – the changing awareness, attitudes and systems are leading to a change in what people are doing.
- Pupil outcomes – the ultimate goal. There is a change in pupils – whatever that desirable change may be.

In evaluating impact, time and time again, we return to the EEF’s recommendations of ensuring balanced PD design and as such, continue to assess the ​“purpose, quality and impact of that content.”

This evaluation is completed across the year so that modifications can be made, be that modifying learning content or offering more opportunities for collaboration and planning.

The impact in our school is already becoming more evident. From casual conversations with staff to pupil voice, there is a greater awareness and confidence is growing. Systems are in place for collaboration, active experimentation, reflection and feedback. We will continue to use this model of building a PD curriculum, refining as we go, as a way to ensure we have careful implementation and training focused on deep staff learning.

To read the full Professional Development Guidance report click here.

To read the effective implementation guidance report click here.