The Importance of

Continuous Professional
Development For
Educators
“Every teacher needs to improve not because they are not good enough, but
because they can do even better” – Dylan William

Topic 3: What is Continuous

Professional Development?
Continuous Professional Development [CPD] is a process of recording and
reflecting on learning and development; the action of tracking and documenting
the skills, knowledge, and experience that teachers gain both formally and
informally as they teach, beyond any initial training. It's a record of what they
experience, learn, and then apply.

According to the standards for teachers’ professional development, teacher CPD

needs to be:

1. Focused on improving and evaluating pupil outcomes

2. Underpinned by robust evidence and expertise
3. Include collaboration and expert challenge
4. Sustained over time
5. Prioritized by leadership

In addition, by reviewing decades of research, Joyce and Showers (2002) found that
CPD must provide teachers with the theory underlying the new instructional
strategies they’re learning, demonstrations, and opportunities to practice the
strategies in their own classrooms.
Topic 4: Why is it important?
Continuous Professional Development [CPD] helps teachers to manage their own
development on an ongoing basis. It's not just a record of the training they have
completed, but a whole lot more. Here’s what CPD helps teachers to do:

  Ensures they keep pace with the current standards of others working in
education.
 Keeps their knowledge and skills current so they can deliver high-quality
teaching and impact positively on pupil outcomes.
 Makes sure that they become more effective in the workplace. This helps
them to advance in their career and move into new positions where they can
lead, manage, influence, coach, and mentor others.
 Opens them up to new possibilities, new knowledge, and new skills.
 Leads to increased confidence in themselves, others, and the profession as a
whole.

Teacher CPD is also very useful at:

 Reminding them of their achievements and how far they’ve progressed.

 Directs their career and helps them keep an eye on their goals.
 Uncovers gaps in their skills and capabilities.
 Opens up further development needs.

Topic 5: The Problem with

Continuous Professional
Development
Continuous Professional Development programs are being offered to teachers in
the form of webinars. Though webinars are good for general basic information,
they are generally uni-directional and do not really provide any hands-on
interaction with the material, and also may not have too many opportunities for a
good two-way discussion between speaker and participants. Moreover, it is fairly
difficult for department heads and administrators to measure the efficacy of these
webinars. 

The other option available to teachers has always been workshops. Traditionally,
these have been organized by the school and the teachers don’t really have too
much of a say in which programs they would like to attend and which they would
prefer to skip. Though workshops tend to be more interactive than webinars and
allow for quality interactions between the attendees and the facilitator, they tend
to be expensive and run on a fixed schedule. Meaning, if you are not available on
that day or time, you can’t attend the workshop. Finally, once the workshop ends,
there is no real cost-effective way to seek the advice of the facilitator again.

Topic 6: A conceptual

framework for planning
Continuous Professional
Development
The Continuous Professional Development model needs improvement. As such, we
would like to introduce a conceptual framework that can be used by teachers to
plan out their PD learning. School administrators can use this as a compass to plan
out their annual PD learning activities on campus. This framework features five
pillars for professional learning built on a foundation of trust and reaching toward
teacher impact.
Establishing trust with teachers is the most important first step. Trust the teachers
and give them the freedom to choose the problems of practice they wanted to
explore. Teachers need to be provided with continuous, nonevaluative feedback.
This will result in teachers feeling more comfortable taking risks and being
innovative. 
Teachers need to be consistent with the learning goals and need to be guided in
framing their problems of practice. For example, these could be to:

1. Design robust projects that challenge students to create high-quality work.

2. Develop structures for the teaching and learning of literacy across the
curriculum.
3. Plan lessons and assessments that establish highly successful thinking
routines.

These goals can drive community building, teacher reflections, coaching

models, and professional development plans. 
Adult learning theory asserts that, in an ecosystem of trust, teachers are "willing to
expose their challenges, mistakes, and questions—as well as their hopes,
strengths, and successes—and be comfortable discussing all of these with their
colleagues" (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2016). This should be encouraged
amongst teachers. 
Teachers should designate time for professional learning each week and should
structure a purposeful collaboration between colleagues around shared areas of
challenge. Ultimately, professional development should be intrinsically
motivating. 
"When people are operating in conditions of high-trust, collaboration, and
effective leadership, they are more willing to innovate and take risks" (Fullan &
Quinn, 2016, p. 26). Though teachers might feel that failing is counterintuitive to
their profession; still, it is important to encourage our teachers to take
instructional risks. Teachers need to be given the time and liberty to experiment,
analyze results, regroup, and try again. The goal should be to balance autonomy
with support, thus encouraging teachers to expand beyond their comfort zone. 
Ultimately, professional development should not happen to teachers as an
audience; rather, it should be driven by their interests and expertise as
professionals. In addition, staff development should not be "accomplished" within
a short time period; rather, it should become a sustained effort toward progress in
becoming more versatile and well-equipped to handle instructional dilemmas.
Professional learning should be transformed into a shared culture that unfolds
daily throughout a year-long process, personalized according to interest, pursued
in the company of peers, and supported by the administration.

Lesson 2: Virtual Event

You can view the recording of the virtual event “Teachers Over
Technology: The Importance of Continuous Professional Development For
Educators” here. This is available to you for a year.

Topic 1: Teachers Over

Technology: The Importance
of Continuous Profesional
Development For Educators
https://youtu.be/xxT1xdvBYHo