Conclusions and Implications
This paper focuses on the design of CPD programmes and highlights the need for
teacher reflection on their practices, beliefs and learning as an „on-going’ and vital
part of the CPD programme. It starts to unpack some of the complexities involved in
effective CPD programmes and focuses on how seeking and reporting on evidence of
practice helps teachers reflect on, and develop their practice. As such it will provide
messages that will be useful to CPD providers and those interested in teacher learning
as well as provide a tool kit of activities within each domain designed to promote
teacher learning and enhance practice.
The main findings were that the socio-cultural practice that was engaged in through
the CPD programmes played an essential part in aiding teacher learning. The teachers
needed to recognize good practice within a domain, make sense of its complexities
and understand the effects and synergies of various aspects of practice as they came to
find their own ways in establishing such practice. This approach was made possible
by the programme designs, which gave allowance for collaborative activity and
professional conversations, and the impetus derived from the collection, analysis and
reflection on evidence. Such ways of working took considerable more time than had
been envisaged at the start of the project as teachers needed to be involved in
planning, actioning and evidencing their own practice as well as analyzing and
reflecting on their practice and that of others. This has implications for CPD
providers since such programmes are costly in both time and funding, but also
because it signals strongly that teachers need strong support in the initial phases of an
evidence-based approach and this needs to be factored into any new programme.
Providing the opportunity to set up an iterative cycle of planning, trialling and
reflecting, where the essential features of scrutiny and guidance were effected in the
trusting environment of „like-minded’ colleagues enabled teachers to overcome their
own institutional hurdles to change. The processes involved in the evidence-based
approach helped teachers build a portfolio, and, more importantly, encouraged them
to undergo the change process from which their new practice evolved. The role of the
portfolio was to provide a process of evidence collection, discussion and reflection
that documented, supported and strengthened a teacher’s changing practice. It fostered
an agency of change which helped the teachers gradually transform their classroom
practice within a specific domain.
The researchers from all six domains were experienced in working with teachers on
CPD programmes prior to this research but their focus previously had been on
producing activities to engage the teachers in understanding the ideas of the domain.
The work on this project took the materials that researchers had already produced and
developed the processes that aided teacher reflection and professional learning. It
enabled the teachers to start to move from translating the ideas of the domain into
practice to transforming their practice. It was not simply trying out some new ideas
within their existing practice but a change in practice in which the new ideas drove
their classroom approach. While the degree to which each teacher achieved this
differed, it was clear that the CPD programmes had a marked affect on their practice
as witnessed in their portfolio pieces, on video clips and in classroom observations.
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