Project blog

Emerging findings — leadership is the key to good CPD

Over the course of our study, one thing has stood out as central to improving continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers: leadership. Now, as we share some more emerging findings from the project, let’s look at why leadership is so important.

Leadership of CPD in schools comes in many forms. Some schools have a CPD lead, a role whose importance in planning and delivering CPD has been demonstrated in other projects, as well as the survey from this study. School leaders also play a vital role in deciding on resources and planning, and designing and delivering CPD. How they both carry out their roles, and the systems and processes that support them, make a huge difference to the success or otherwise of CPD.

Let’s look at the importance of leadership in the two of our three project strands that focus on professional development within schools.  

Strand 1 — systematic review of literature

So far, from our review of the literature, we have identified three key elements of leadership that can help create the right environment for CPD.

The first of these is building trust in school. We found openness and honesty to be key here. This includes installing a collaborative culture, encouraging vulnerability, admitting to shortcomings, taking risks and experimenting, and being willing to learn from mistakes.

The second is engaging staff. This involves shared vision, responsibility and decision-making in schools, with leaders and teachers working together as peers. Leaders can model the moves towards changing language, behaviour and mindset.

Our third key element is something we’ve called learning leadership. This ensures that CPD is leader-initiated and teacher-driven, with teachers deciding what they need in a collaborative environment. This is backed up by a belief that professional learning is not just the teacher’s responsibility, but the leadership’s too.

Strand 3 — school case studies 

Through case studies and a survey, we’ve collected data in schools which highlights the importance of leadership to successful CPD.

In our survey of CPD leads in schools, we found that most schools have a CPD plan, and around two thirds maintain records of CPD, although fewer keep records of CPD evaluation. Most CPD leads say that funding and time for CPD are prioritised and resources are available to enable access for teachers to CPD. However, CPD does not always continue in the face of other priorities such as impending Ofsted visits or changes to the curriculum. 

In our school case studies, we’ve found that where schools have sustained models of effective CPD, the school leaders:

  • establish and maintain a shared vision for professional learning
  • develop a safe and supportive school environment for learning
  • value collaboration and instil a sense of togetherness
  • encourage risk-taking
  • negotiate budgetary issues to prioritise professional learning
  • invest in staff through financial and time planning
  • establish clear communication processes to induce teacher buy-in
  • recognise a moral responsibility to support professional learning
  • model behaviours to demonstrate advocacy

In the next phases of our analysis we will be identifying examples from schools and literature to help school leaders, CPD leads in schools and other stakeholders develop their own approaches to improving CPD.

CPD Leads’ Survey outcomes

This survey formed part of Strand 3 of our study into teacher professional development. Here we summarise our findings from the survey. The document below provides detailed analysis. The survey was designed to be completed by staff in schools in England who hold a professional development leadership role. Our intention was to learn more about the structures and processes within the school environment which support professional development.

The findings demonstrate the importance of school leaders, particularly those with a formalised CPD leadership role, in planning, coordinating and delivering professional development in schools, and in building policies and practices within schools which support teachers’ engagement in professional development activities. They suggest that, even when schools have varying contexts and staff professional development needs, it is possible to build cultures of professional development through actions which support staff participation and changing practice. Numbers of participants were small and so, while we do not suggest that these findings are representative of the CPD system in English schools, they provide valuable insights into the leadership of professional development in the current system.


Emerging findings from our school case studies

Strand 3 of our study includes qualitative work using school case studies. We are interviewing headteachers, professional development leads and teachers to delve deeper into what makes professional development effective in their school from their different perspectives. At this stage of analysis, we are finding some interesting patterns emerging. 

Vision and strategic priorities

The case studies suggest that a ‘vision-led’ strategy, as opposed to a ‘reactive’ or ad-hoc response to professional learning, is important. Schools emphasise that they need to see the ‘relevance’ of professional development interventions and activities to their context, departments, teachers’ and pupils’ needs.

While all our cases show that schools do support isolated ‘one-off’ professional development on occasion, if requested and justified as part of teachers’ individual performance management targets, all schools also identify whole-school professional development to meet their strategic priorities. 

These priorities can be externally driven – for example, through engagement with research evidence, or anticipating/following an Ofsted inspection. They can also be internally driven – for example, through classroom observations of teacher quality, pupil progress data, and feedback from staff and pupil voice. In some schools, governors have input into professional development direction. In others, a Multi-Academy Trust offers significant professional development provision and support.

The importance of leadership

In schools, leadership emerges as a crucial factor in shaping the way priorities are transformed into professional development action.

However, the approaches of head teachers, Multi-Academy Trust leaders and school-level professional development leads vary considerably. We are exploring different kinds of professional leadership orientation with regard to professional development. Aligned with the literature, we’re finding in particular that an ‘enabling leadership’ approach tends to foster a supportive and collaborative environment that values and encourages professional development. 

In most of our case studies, distributed leadership also seems to be an important aspect of effective professional development — where staff are empowered to engage actively with the ‘big picture’ of whole-school professional development programmes, as well as their own professional development targets.

It appears to be important to have one or two senior leaders taking overall strategic and operational responsibility for professional development in school. Working alongside the head and other SLT, these professional development leads are instrumental in mobilising schools’ use of research evidence, by: 

  • choosing which interventions and approaches best meet school priorities
  • communicating a rationale to staff
  • coordinating professional development delivery and staff collaboration
  • ensuring that changes to practice are embedded and sustained through monitoring and evaluation.

Distributed leadership is emerging as another aspect of effective professional development structures. In other words, middle leaders and other staff are encouraged to contribute to professional development decisions and to take on particular responsibilities in professional development roll-out to ensure sustained change in classroom practice.

Communities

Another theme emerging from our findings is that coaching groups, teaching and learning communities and professional learning communities are important ways to trial, deliver and embed new practices. 

These communities, together with an enabling leadership approach, help to develop a culture of trust between staff. This in turn enables effective collaboration, peer support, and constructive risk-taking when trying new things, without fear of failure.

Getting ‘buy in’

An interesting recurring theme coming out of our data is staff ‘buy-in’. All the participants we interviewed mentioned how critical it is to get staff on board with the overall professional development vision and approach, as well as the identified professional development priorities. If staff can’t see the relevance of the priorities or interventions and/or they feel isolated from the strategic decision-making processes, it’s much harder for professional development leads to inspire commitment and motivation. 

School leaders recognise the importance of this and have put in play a variety of strategies to tackle the issue. Leaders will often emphasise the research evidence – as well as internal data – in order to justify a new initiative and gain traction with staff. In the words of one head, ‘We try not to use “I think”. It’s “the evidence shows…”.’ Other strategies are grounded in the empowering staff and letting them know they are valued and supported.

We are continuing our analysis and will follow up with further insights as we progress.

Filling the knowledge gap on CPD in schools: embarking on our literature review

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.

Defining our terms: a dialogue

In this dialogue between members of the team, we consider how to define three important concepts and terms in the project: continuing professional development, implementation and mechanisms.

How do we define continuing professional development (CPD)?

Mike: 

CPD can be seen as the activities and processes that are designed to aim to lead to teacher professional learning. 

So this can include formal training programmes, mentoring and coaching, reading groups, and self-study. It may be face to face, remote, or online. It might be individual or involve groups. It can have multiple aims, typically, but not always, aimed at affecting teachers’ practices to lead to pupils’ learning. 

CPD aims then to lead to professional learning; CPD is not the learning itself.

Emily: 

In projects like these it’s important that we have a definition which puts some boundaries around what is — and isn’t — professional development. The way you’ve described it, Mike, feels workable for that purpose. 

I had a question though: I notice how you’re hedging slightly around the potential outcomes of the professional development — CPD ‘can be seen as’, and it’s ‘designed to aim to lead to…’ — and I wondered if this was deliberate.

Mike: 

I didn’t really mean to hedge. When I said CPD ‘can be seen as’ I meant ‘one way of defining CPD that could fit this project is’. 

When I said ‘designed to aim to lead to professional learning’ I meant this precisely — CPD is designed; this design has an aim; and that aim is to lead to professional learning. 

Dee:

I think the issue of whether CPD includes both the activities or processes and the outcomes is an important one for our project to consider. I think Mike’s reflection that CPD is designed is helpful in this discussion. 

How do we define ‘implementation’ of CPD?

Emily: 

We’re looking at the implementation of professional development: what can be done in schools and multi-academy trusts and at policy level to support CPD being embedded in the system so that it becomes a reliable part of teachers’ professional lives throughout their careers. That could include policies or practices which ‘wrap around’ the CPD, which support participation in CPD, or which enable the implementation of change which follows as a result of CPD. 

But not all CPD is ‘good’ (or, perhaps, not all implementation of CPD is good), so it might also include policies or practices which support the implementation of ‘better’ CPD in the first place, such as alignment of individual and school development needs.

Mike: 

What is a good or bad outcome we might expect to see, in relation to implementation of CPD? 

Here are some things to consider. Are only some staff able to access CPD? Are the ways in which they can access CPD limited to particular forms or focuses (this isn’t necessarily a bad thing! Access to poor CPD isn’t positive and could be negative). Are they restricted in the kinds of ways they can implement learning? What else?

Bernie:

I’m interested in that phrase ‘outcomes we might expect to see’ — indicating there may be outcomes or impacts that are observable. Do we mean change observable by others (staff/colleagues in the school, pupils, researchers)? Or, at the individual level, could this be change at a personal level (increased confidence, self-efficacy, enjoyment, fulfilment, job satisfaction etc.), which may not be observable to others unless the CPD participant is asked? 

Does this difference matter? From a theory of change perspective, these individual changes may be preconditions or the short-term outcomes for other externally observable changes in practice — or medium and longer term outcomes. 

Stuart:

Actually ‘seeing’ outcomes will be difficult unless we’re told about them or we witness a particular change in practice based on recent involvement in a CPD intervention. I’ll be interested in how those who implement change describe that change and qualify it in terms of practice or whole school outcomes. 

Emily:

And what we’re interested in is what can be done at school and policy level to support the implementation of sustained (high-quality) CPD for all teachers. 

It’s too simplistic to say we’re not interested in the CPD itself, because of course we are, but we don’t need to make a judgement about whether that CPD was ‘good’, or led to positive outcomes — we can trust participants to do that for us. 

Instead, we need to understand how it was implemented which led to it being sustained over time and the intended changes being embedded in school practices. And from this we can identify mechanisms which led to or supported that implementation. 

Stuart:

Yes, I agree. Surely it’s the participants’ judgement on whether it’s good or bad. As you say, we are interested in how it becomes sustained. If it is sustained then the school has made a judgement that it’s ‘good’.

How do we define CPD ‘mechanisms’?

Mike: 

Mechanisms are defined in numerous ways, but simply put they can be thought of as ‘processes that result in changes in the minds, the thinking and behaviours of individuals or groups of individuals’ as well as ‘social mechanisms that link to relations between individuals and groups of individuals’ (Coldwell and Maxwell, 2018).

Mechanisms are dynamic: a mechanism involves change. This is a useful move forward, I think, from just considering, for example, school conditions — we need to understand how these conditions work to create change (and how these conditions can be created). 

Emily: 

And how those mechanisms interact. We might argue for a funded entitlement to teacher professional development, but that would still be experienced in different ways by different teachers in different schools. 

I’m really looking forward to our case studies, where we will be able to trace the paths of these mechanisms through teachers’ real experiences of professional development.

Bernie: 

I’m seeing the different three-dimensional cogs connecting and turning in different ways, at different levels, in different schools. Some of them may be generic across contexts, others may be context-specific. Some cogs may be missing, or too ineffective, which means the mechanism for onward change and movement may be lost. 

I’m also looking forward to exploring the realities and intricacies of this in the case studies.

References

Coldwell, M. and Maxwell, B. (2018), Using evidence-informed logic models to bridge methods in educational evaluation. Rev Educ, 6: 267-300. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3151.

Teacher Professional Engagement

When we study teachers’ retention and professional development, we often focus on one attribute or behaviour, such as self-efficacy (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001), autonomy (Worth & Van den Brande, 2020) or job satisfaction (Toropova et al., 2021). These, and other similar measures, tells us something useful about teachers’ professional lives, offering insights into how likely it is that teachers stay in the profession or what we can do to better support them. For example, self-efficacy helps us understand how teachers feel about their teaching, including their ability to manage the classroom, use assessment effectively or motivate pupils.

But teachers’ lives and their professional identities are complex. These characteristics interact with each other (Canrinus et al., 2012; Yoon & Kim, 2022). Therefore, in our studies of teacher retention and professional development, we are exploring a new conceptualisation: teacher professional engagement which brings these characteristics together.  

Our initial theorisation of professional engagement includes factors such as:

  • participating in ongoing professional development
  • sharing practice with and supporting colleagues
  • career orientations and ambitions
  • commitment to the profession
  • personal and professional values

We already know that these factors are likely to influence teachers’ feelings about their roles: their self-efficacy and their job satisfaction. Bringing them together enables us to look at teachers’ experiences as a whole, considering how different aspects of their professional lives interact and how they influence their overall engagement in teaching as a profession.

In this conceptualisation, professional engagement is not static: it will change over time, as teachers gain experience and develop in their careers. Professional engagement will be different for teachers of different subjects, phases, genders and ages. Importantly, professional engagement will also be influenced by the school environment in which teachers work and by the choices made by school leaders and policy makers.

Our initial reviews of the literature suggest that teachers whose professional engagement is aligned with that of their school may be more likely to have greater reserves of resilience, self-management and persistence and ultimately to stay in the profession (Ovenden-Hope et al., 2020; De Clercq et al., 2022).  The opposite might therefore be true: where teachers’ professional engagement is not aligned with that of their schools, they may feel more conflicted and challenged in their roles, and therefore less likely to remain in the profession.

Therefore, if we can understand more about teachers’ professional engagement, we might be better able to identify the policies and practices which increase it and thereby support more teachers to stay in the profession.

References

Canrinus, E.T., Helms-Lorenz, M., Beijaard, D. et al. (2012). Self-efficacy, job satisfaction, motivation and commitment: exploring the relationships between indicators of teachers’ professional identity. European Journal of Psychology of Education. 27, 115–132.

De Clercq, M., Watt, H. M., & Richardson, P. W. (2022). Profiles of teachers’ striving and wellbeing: Evolution and relations with context factors, retention, and professional engagement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(3), 637.

Ovenden-Hope, T., Blandford, S., Cain, T., and Maxwell, B. (2020). RETAIN: A research-informed model of continuing professional development for early career teacher retention. In Exploring Teacher Recruitment and Retention (pp. 59-72). Routledge.

Toropova, A., Myrberg, E,. & Johansson, S. (2021) Teacher job satisfaction: the importance of school working conditions and teacher characteristics. Educational Review, 73:1, 71-97, DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2019.1705247.

Tschannen-Moran, M., & Hoy, A. W. (2001). Teacher efficacy: Capturing an elusive construct. Teaching and teacher education, 17(7), 783-805.

Worth, J. & Van den Brande, J. (2020). Teacher autonomy: how does it relate to job satisfaction and retention? Slough: NFER.

Yoon, I. & Kim, M. (2022). Dynamic patterns of teachers’ professional development participation and their relations with socio-demographic characteristics, teacher self-efficacy, and job satisfaction, Teaching and Teacher Education, 109 (2022) 103565, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2021.103565.

When it comes to CPD, implementation matters

At Sheffield Institute of Education, we have spent many years improving professional development for teachers, changing policy and practice in England, and helping to create new frameworks for career-long training. So far, our work has helped over 10,000 teachers improve their knowledge, skills, and their motivation to keep teaching. 

We’ve shown the importance of continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers. Now, in this new project, we want to explore how CPD is implemented. Because if we don’t get that right, good CPD can be rendered ineffective.

This project is about articulating the implementation of CPD. There is plenty of research about what makes effective CPD, focusing on the mechanisms, qualities and features of CPD that lead to impactful development. But what’s missing is implementation. You can have the best CPD programmes in the world — but if you can’t implement them, nothing happens. Furthermore, the implementation process can actually change the mechanisms of the CPD — those active ingredients that make it work — so that they don’t work any more.

How can implementation affect CPD success?

There are many multi-layered ways in which CPD can be affected by its implementation. Recently we evaluated a project called the Multiplicative Reasoning Project, teaching proportional reasoning in mathematics at Key Stage 3. The CPD followed the recommended approaches, and the curriculum material was research-based. But there was an issue with the engagement and participation of teachers in schools. 

CPD isn’t about giving teachers a lecture — it’s about trying things out in school, experimenting, and changing practice in the classroom. So it needs engagement from the school and from the teacher. But the schools had different levels of money and staffing to manage. Some schools could engage with it and some couldn’t. 

And it’s not just resources. On another CPD project around maths computing in Years 5 and 6, we found the main barrier to engagement among teachers was the SATS. Exam and league table pressures on schools meant that, in these year groups, anything that wasn’t directly linked to improving SATS results fell by the wayside.

Another large factor in the success of CPD is school leadership. Are professional development leaders being supported by their schools? Are their working conditions allowing them to dedicate enough time to it? Do the school leaders buy into the importance of teacher development?

Our aims

With this project, we want to firstly identify the mechanisms — at policy level and in school environments — that influence the implementation of CPD.  And then we want to develop implementation guidance to support change for sustained, embedded improvement in teachers’ CPD in England.

We’re not looking for a one-size-fits-all solution. We want to develop tools for practitioners to make choices that are right for their own circumstances. And we want to understand how to change a school environment to make it more likely for CPD to happen. 

We’re building on previous research to determine what we need to do on a national and international level, to ensure that teachers participate in the professional development they deserve.