As next year's budgets are known there is inevitably a question as to whether strategies and interventions planned are effective and if so are they value for money? Evaluating the impact of CPD is a particular challenge as so many factors influence whether the professional learning undertaken results in changes through to pupil level. Whilst many schools know the importance of evaluation, all to often it is not planned for from the beginning and when it does actually happen the process involves capturing briefly staff reactions and an immediate short term reflection on their learning. Thus evaluative judgements are made based on staff perception of their learning alone.
At CUREE we have been developing active evidence gathering tools which attempt to base evaluation on more than staff perceptions by providing useful and engaging cpd activities which generate evidence. This evidence, along with staff perceptions and other supporting documentation, can be used to evaluate impact more effectively. We have further enhanced the evaluation process by identifying 4 aspects of CPD which are challenging to evaluate using the public knowledge base and constructed some benchmarks which describe differing levels of practice for these areas:
How does the CPD improve outcomes for pupils?
How does the CPD encouage refelctive practice?
How effective is the CPD in encouraging collaboration?
How does the CPD take account of starting points?
Some reflective questions are provided to enable you to measure your CPD against the benchmarks and consider ways to enhance performance. Therefore the full active evalaution process consists of:
- An engaging CPD activity carried out by staff
- Evidence generated by this activity and;
- Reflections on this data in the light of benchmarks for effective CPD
CPD activity + Evidence + Benchmarks = truly enhanced knowledge about impact
Follow this link to explore one of our tools in more detail.
CUREE has developed a range of these types of tools including those which gather feedback from pupils on their learning experiences in ways which are active and developmental.
We can design the active evidence gathering tools for individual schools to help you to access the impact of your development programmes on both adult learners and pupils. For more information contact lisa.bradbury@curee.co.uk