Learning Conversations

I'm really pleased to see what's happening amongst the teaching community in the UK and around the world.

Teachers are starting to take control of their own professional development.

This is a great step forward for a profession that has been systematically de-professionalised over the past 23 years. Successive government dictats and draconian inspection regimes have forced teachers into standardised practices that allow little room for flexibility and creativity. Thankfully, this now appears to be receding, but, like a wave leaving ripples on a beach, it's left a teaching profession not sure how to pick up the reins.

Gradually though, this is changing.

A few years ago, what started with a handful of teachers blogging about their work - reflecting on what went well and what didn't, has now become a powerful movement.

Closing down the local teacher centres and advisory services did put a stop to many of the face-to-face information sharing sessions that had been organised centrally. But, instead, teachers are now organising their own gatherings (known as TeachMeets), that are focussing on specific topics such as behaviour and cross-phase planning.

Teachers have become some of the most proficient users of social media, as shown by the recent report from Pearson Education: Tweeting for Teachers.

They are learning from each other, and being open about their own professional practice. And this learning is having an impact in the classroom.

For a long time, I've been hoping that the teacher training institutions would realise the importance of building sustainable professional development practices. It looks like that has started. Certainly it has at Plymouth University. The newly qualified teachers that leave Plymouth will have an existing professional network, and a really good idea of how to maintain those connections to get the best out of them.

Hopefully, as these teachers move through the system, we'll start to see the end of the expectation that CPD is someone reading bullet points to you for an hour!

Effective CPD is about conversations that challenge and support. Those who set themselves up as experts, though, need to realise that they are just one source of those conversations. If they don't play their part in the networks then they will quickly lose their role as a trusted source. People will just say "I don't know you".

More information

For more on the idea of self-directed learning, in the context of work, see Joitske Hulsebosch's post on "Serial Mastery and Social Media"