What are the key characteristics of CPD?

IPDA England plans to host a debate exploring the UCET CPD discussion paper focusing on what the key characteristics of CPD are. The event takes place on the 17 April 2021 in collaboration with the University of Wolverhampton. Linda Devlin will host and support the event. Paul Vare, Chair of the UCET CPD forum and Lizana Oberholzer, Vice Chair of the UCET CPD forum/ and member of IPDA England, will join the debate and many others. In preparation for the debate, the blog post aims to outline the discussion points outlined in the paper:

You can listen to a podcast with Liana and Paul below or find the link to your podcast service here.  

Continuing Professional Development: What are the key characteristics that will enhance CPD to ensure that it has a powerful and lasting impact?

Lizana Oberholzer and Paul Vare 

The Early Careers Framework (ECF) and the reforms of the National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) will become a reality across England, from September 2021. In some parts of England, the ECF is already being piloted. These are significant and transformative changes, that will impact widely in the education sector, the UCET CPD stimulus paper asks: How do these changes reflect the characteristics necessary to ensure that CPD has a powerful and lasting impact as outlined by members of the UCET CPD forum. We aim to explore the key themes further in future IPDA England conversations, exploring effective CPD, and we aim to provide a flavour of what we are hoping to reflect on in this blogpost.

According to the recent UCET CPD discussion paper (Vare et al 2021), all CPD should seek to develop teachers as: 

• Competent and confident professionals 
• Epistemic agents 
• Critical and reflective practitioners 
• Responsible professionals

The paper also suggests that CPD should aim to:

• Adhere to broad principles such as research-informed practice while ensuring that it is context-specific 
• Avoid being too narrowly focused on student attainment in organisations
• Develop teacher agency 
• Be subject to robust quality assurance mechanisms
• Individualised/ personalised
• Provide a continuum from ITE through to senior leadership and/ or through to increased confidence and professionalism over a teacher’s career. 

The paper outlines the history of CPD development across England, highlighting how, with varying degrees of success, this investment in teacher development has impacted positively on learner outcomes. The paper also emphasises the way in which funded MA programmes helped teachers to develop their sense of agency and how these enabling approaches resulted in school improvement (Durrant, 2019).

As reforms and changes are made to the current CPD provision for schools, it is vital to raise the importance of reflective practice and research as well as mentoring and coaching (Lofthouse 2021 as cited in Hargreaves and Rolls, 2021). CPD can often become a professionally narrowing experience for teachers and the paper highlights some of the wonderful opportunities that exist to help teachers grow and develop professionally. It is often the case that CPD is embedded fairly well for teachers at the start of their career; however, it is felt strongly that it needs to be contextualised, individualised, and fully mapped to support teachers throughout their careers to enable them to harness their passion to contribute to the learning of others and to be part of a co-constructed learning community. 

Reference List: 

• Department for Education (DfE), (2019) Early Careers Framework. DfE. 
• Door, V. (2015) Developing creative and critical educational practitioners. Critical Publishing. 
• Durrant, J. (2019), Teacher agency, professional development and school improvement. Routledge. 
• Hargreaves, E. and Rolls, L. (2021), Unlocking Research: Reimagining Professional Development in Schools. Routledge. 
• Vare, P., Dillon, J., Oberholzer, L. and Butler, C. (2021), UCET Discussion Paper: Continued Professional Development, UCET Working Group, January 2021, UCET. 
• West Midlands CPD Partnership and CUREE.(2020) National Teachers CPD Standard – Pathway http://www.curee.co.uk/node/5016