The National Teacher Research Panel was set up about 15 years ago by CUREE supported by a group of national education agencies most of which no longer exist. It had three main goals:
- To ensure that all research in education takes account of the teacher perspective
- To ensure a higher profile for research and evidence informed practice in government, academic and practitioner communities
- To increase the number of teachers engaged in and with the full spectrum of research activity.
Over the several years of its existence, the Panel, supported by its expert advisers in CUREE, has helped and encouraged dozens of teachers and school leaders to do high quality but practical research. The Panel also helped them report their findings succinctly, in plain English and focused on relevance to other practitioners. This is one such example of that work.
CPD is high on the school improvement agenda. It's also a vital ingredient in the development of teachers' careers and an important aspect of school leadership. Our TLA research summary in February 2004 explored the evidence from a systematic review about effective professional development for teachers - at the time national interest in CPD was growing fast. For this summary we have summarised and synthesised the findings of two further systematic reviews concernedwith CPD conducted by the same review group, which were published online by the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information (EPPI) and Co-ordinating centre in summer 2005 . The General Teaching Council for England supported each of the reviews. One review compared the nature and impact of individual and collaborative CPD. The other compared studies of collaborative CPD that focused only on teachers with studies that explored the effects of CPD on pupils. The aim was to explore similarities and differences between the two and how far evidence about pupils can be inferred from evidence about teachers' responses to CPD. Evidence from the studies included in the reviews showed the importance of teachers working together tosupport and sustain the development of their own and their colleagues' practice. The vast majority of the collaborative CPD studies reviewed offered evidence of improvement in pupil learning, often accompanied by positive changes in either pupil behaviour, or their attitudes, or both. The reviewers concluded that positive teacher, pupil and school outcomes are likely when schools and CPD leaders structure CPD so that it integrates in-school learning with specialist expertise, develops through peer support and provides teachers with opportunities to interpret externally mandated CPD collaboratively in their own contexts. Practitioners and policy-makers at a number of levels have been using the findings from the first CPD review for some time. Knowing what works best in CPD has been influential in informing the policies underpinning a number of national initiatives in recent years. Because a large number of studies were included in the two reviews, in each section we've tried to use those examples that best illustrate the main patterns.
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