PPD Guidance Notes

Introduction by Cliff Jones

All but one of the documents in these resources carries the logo of the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET). Some were written more than ten years ago and a lot has happened since then. Nevertheless, some are still in use for the postgraduate professional development (PPD) programme in England and you might find them useful or at least interesting.

The UCET documents were mostly written while I was chair of its CPD Committee and, as the rules of that time were that you could serve for a maximum of three years but had to be re-elected every year, it took me a while to gain the confidence to design and push materials forward for consideration and acceptance. In case you think that this is a self-indulgent admission I want to say that, in my experience, it is far too easy to underestimate the power of factors such as self-belief and self-confidence or lack of same. Excessive self-belief and over confidence can also be factors; and sometimes the same person may veer from too much to too little of both. Watching my successors creating collaborative working groups that enabled committee members to develop and express themselves was simply thrilling for me. I wish I had done more of that…