Personalised CPD

Yvert de Souza of BMY Education conducted a poster presentation on 'Personalised CPD' at the Future of English Language Teaching Conference on 17 October, 2020.

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) has been around for some time now and has been used in many different fields. However, despite its long existence within the field of education, CPD in this context has not had the same impact as it has had in other professions.

Teachers can be quite resistant when it comes to attending CPD events as they are often perceived as a waste of time. Why is this? And, why in a field where our goal is to help develop and improve the lives of others are we so reluctant to develop and improve our own skills?

Experience shows that teachers sometimes find CPD adds little to their existing knowledge base or has little relevance to their particular teaching context. However, this poster contends that although this may be true in some cases, there are other reasons for CPD being ineffective at times. Firstly, it is not just the acquisition of professional knowledge that is of importance as Eraut (1994) points out, but also the context in which the knowledge is acquired. And secondly, CPD should not be used solely for transmissive purposes but it needs transitional and transformative aims in order to promote greater professional autonomy.

Kennedy (2005) identifies nine models and categorises them based on their purpose. This poster explores how some of these models are not being exploited effectively, examines ways we can identify teachers’ specific CPD needs and advocates a more targeted approach to professional development.

This poster highlights ways in which schools can adopt these models to create an environment that promotes awareness raising, supports teachers to hone their teaching skills, and more importantly, encourage teachers to measure and value the impact of the changes made to their practice.