A major strand of this project is our systematic literature review.
Through our systematic review of existing research, we’re exploring how the school environment and individual teachers’ readiness for change affect the success of CPD programmes.
What are we looking for?
There is already a strong evidence base on effective CPD, with many papers on the topic. But despite this, we still haven’t achieved the goal of all teachers being able to participate in high quality professional development throughout their careers.
For this to occur, we need to understand how change happens — and that means looking at the context in which CPD takes place.
While previous research and systematic reviews have focused on the nature and features of CPD programmes — looking at the duration, content and types of activities — the context is often missing.
In contrast, we are focusing on that context, and the mechanisms by which that context can help make change happen. We want to understand what conditions allow CPD to succeed.
The importance of change readiness
Because we know a school’s environment influences how a teacher responds to CPD, we are putting the concept of change readiness at the heart of our review.
Change readiness is a concept that has both psychological and structural dimensions (Weiner, 2009; Holt et al, 2010), and these concepts can apply at individual, group, and organisational levels (Vakola, 2013).
We define a teacher’s readiness for CPD as the extent to which they are prepared and willing to participate in CPD activities to improve the quality of their teaching and their students’ outcomes.
A school’s readiness for professional learning emerges out of the dynamic interaction between the school environment and its staff members.
It’s this interplay between school and teacher that determines whether CPD content is taken up by teachers and successfully takes hold in the school.
Our approach
As there hasn’t previously been a systematic review into this topic, the information we’re looking for may be buried in studies of CPD or organisational readiness that have a different focus but may still contain information about what makes CPD happen on the ground in schools.
So we’re casting our net wide. We’re searching through studies conducted in education and outside it. These studies may not have looked at schools’ and teachers’ readiness for CPD specifically, but they will include useful information that we can extract and place side by side with findings from other studies and with the other strands of this project.
It’s a slow process. We have different views on what’s relevant and what isn’t. But by discussing and coming to agreement between us, we are minimising our own biases and preconceptions from the process.
Our goal
Through this literature review we hope to piece together a picture of how context and systems affect CPD success. We want to understand how the school environment can be shaped so that CPD happens more naturally and can be sustained and meaningful for all teachers.
The findings of the literature review will add to the outcomes from the other strands of the project. Using these together, we will produce guidance for school leaders on how to embed successful professional training in their school, to benefit teachers and pupils.
It’s a trip into the unknown, and an exciting process. Watch this space for our findings!
References
Holt, D. T., Helfrich, C. D., Hall, C. G., & Weiner, B. J. (2010). Are You Ready? How Health Professionals Can Comprehensively Conceptualize Readiness for Change. Journal of General Internal Medicine : JGIM, 25(Suppl 1), 50–55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-009-1112-8.
Vakola, M. (2013). Multilevel Readiness to Organizational Change: A Conceptual Approach. Journal of Change Management, 13(1), 96–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2013.768436.
Weiner, B. J. (2009). A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation Science : IS, 4(1), 67–67. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-4-67.