Introduction
Worrying about recruitment and retention? This blog reflects on some thought-provoking findings about CPD (and its contribution to retention), drawn from a project designed to explore how teachers’ professional identities intersect with Continuing Professional Development and Learning (CPDL) support for teachers, and their recruitment and retention. The research examines the similarities and differences between the ways that governments try to shape teachers’ professional identities in seven contrasting education systems. It highlights some surprising similarities between very different settings, some complicated relationships between things that at first glance look simple and, of course, the importance of context. So, the research offers much food for thought for those leading CPDL in and across schools. In particular it has revealed the three potential pitfalls for such leaders explored in this blog - together with some CUREE thoughts on how we might avoid them. We also invite readers to contribute to exploring the implications for their own contexts.
Three potential pitfalls
Whilst we know that the wider evidence about CPDL and school improvement highlights the importance of ongoing CPD for teachers and leaders at all levels, the research reveals the challenges of positioning CPDL so that it is seen as supportive rather than remedial. We also know that CPDL plays a crucial role in improving pupil outcomes, but the research highlights that simply increasing the quantity of available CPD on its own is not enough. Similarly, whilst the research shows that connecting teacher learning with pupil outcomes really matters, this on its own is not enough either; it needs to link with teachers’ professional values too - especially their commitment to helping their students become the best possible citizens they can be as well as their academic progress.
The important role of CPDL and the 3 pitfalls
The findings often reinforce current research about effective CPDL but sometimes reveal some surprising patterns and complexity. What is heartening for CPDL leaders is that the study suggests that CPDL plays a powerful role in contributing to increasing recruitment and retention of teachers. The evidence about ways of supporting the development of professional identities in high performing countries describes a virtuous circle; it suggests that when teachers and education are valued by society, enjoy good working conditions and have opportunities for progression, promotion and CPD, teacher supply is strong and so is the quality of teachers and teaching and pupil progress. Zooming in on the specific role of CPDL in contributing to that virtuous circle the research highlights the importance of:
- Positioning CPDL as support for professionals who want and need to learn on a continuous basis rather than remedial action for practitioners whose work needs to be corrected.
- Increasing access to CPDL whilst paying at least as much attention to how it is experienced by teachers on the ground and the conditions for enhancing its quality, its fitness for purpose and the time allocated to it as to quantity.
- Connecting teacher learning and pupil outcomes - alongside teacher leadership and their wider aspirations for young people.
Positioning CPDL as support for professionals who want and need to learn
The evidence highlights the role of international testing through PISA as an overriding influence on perceptions of system performance, with far-reaching consequences for educational policy and reform and for teachers’ professional identities. Many policy responses to PISA data involve highly specific interventions in teacher recruitment, practice and development. CPDL is a crucial factor here. But there is a knife-edge to negotiate in ensuring that such interventions are generative of, rather than inhibitors of, development. The difference between a successful journey and a downward spiral is how teachers are positioned as professional learners. The evidence also suggests that where system performance is not viewed as a deficit model, jurisdictions are able to consider reform more holistically and with a more long-term and CPD-orientated focus which seems to contribute to a virtuous circle of improvement.
Balancing CPDL quantity and quality
Although the size of the gap varied from system to system, a consistent picture was that teachers in the majority of education systems felt they would like to receive more continuous professional development than they were currently receiving (with the exception of Singapore where the entitlement is very much higher than elsewhere). There was a correlation between a high degree of central policy focus on CPD within a system and depth of teacher participation in it. The research suggests that systems which want to affect a significant increase in uptake of CPD by teachers should explore whether there is scope to introduce greater systematic focus on and support for teacher CPD side by side.
Connecting teacher learning and pupil outcomes is important but not enough
The research reveals many differences in how policy systems designed and prioritised CPD and the outcomes in relation to teacher identity, recruitment, retention and overall system performance. Nonetheless the policy priorities across the education systems involved in this study all emphasised both pedagogy and pupil progress at the heart. Interestingly, in Ontario, a system where there has been an established virtuous circle of CPDL, educational policy and support for teachers’ professional identity for some time, the role of supporting CPDL focused on pedagogy falls to middle leaders and system level support emphasises support for capacity development for middle leaders rather than direct contributions to pedagogy. The extent to which different systems with different historical backgrounds and cultures converge on seeing teacher professional learning as being connected to pupil outcomes is encouraging. But it also suggests that these foci are necessary, but not sufficient. The research suggests that systems looking to improve their educational success through CPD should be sure to look deeply at how they link professional learning, pedagogy and pupil progress and the contribution of teacher leadership to well-developed CPDL systems. It points to the importance of ensuring that other elements of the education system (such as teacher appraisal and other accountability approaches, and initial teacher education) are effectively reinforcing these priorities to build coherence rather than pulling in the opposite direction. Finally, it highlights the importance of contextualising this in teachers’ values and, especially their deep commitment to helping their students become the best citizens they can be.
Some implications for school and CPDL leaders
We are keen to engage with CPDL leaders at all levels to explore the implications of the research more fully. Some initial thoughts are that CPDL leaders may want to:
Explore whether CPDL is positioned as part of an on-going development cycle, or as a remedial intervention
- Do you, for example, reserve high impact CPDL processes such as coaching for those who are struggling or new, or do you model coaching as a key tool for leading teachers too?
- Reflecting on the positioning of individuals, schools and groups of schools at different stages of development and performance is key to understanding how CPD can be hemmed in accidentally by deficit-thinking arising from emergency intervention.
Explore teachers’ current perceptions of how CPDL quantity and quality are balanced
- Do they contribute to a virtuous circle of learning and development?
- Could increasing the training for middle leaders in facilitating CPDL and requiring all CPDL facilitators to make their own professional learning an explicit component of the support they offer contribute to a virtuous cycle of capacity building that also models life-long professional learning?
- How could these steps along with doing fewer things better and for more people contribute to recruitment and retention?
Reflect with leaders and teachers about the links between professional learning, pedagogy, pupil progress and their development as people
- How are these factors balanced against and or supported through performance management?
- In what ways are these complex factors, that are core to teachers’ professional values, recognised in CPDL and other school processes and systems?
- What role can supporting and focusing ongoing professional learning play in helping to develop coherence in the policies and systems of the school/group of schools?
We would love to have your answers to these questions and or your views about the research and the extent to which it aligns with your practice in and across schools, and any related research. We are also planning a short video interview with the researchers and would welcome your thoughts on the aspects of the study that you would want to explore more deeply.
The background research
The research was undertaken by CUREE and commissioned by Education International. The full report, published by EI is available for download from here.
A crucial point to remember from the research is that teachers’ professional identities are dynamic and vary across individuals and cultures. Key to this is the way teachers perceive themselves as individuals who carry out their role effectively and have the ability to influence the learning of students, other teachers and leaders. In this project, despite extensive social and cultural differences, CPDL consistently featured as core to such perceptions and thus to teachers’ professional identities. It emerges too as an important contributor to teacher recruitment, retention, perceived status and effectiveness.
We drew on evidence about government structures and the views of over 4,500 teachers and policy makers from Berlin, Chile, Kenya, Ontario, Scotland, Singapore and Sweden. We used interviews, surveys, international focus groups, illustrative case studies and extensive, locally validated documentary analysis to gain an overview of both what the policies said and teachers’ and leaders’ views ‘on the ground’.
Philippa Cordingley and Rebecca Raybould