“There’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back.”
How many times have we heard or said that after attending a PD session? And yes, some of those sessions may well have been truly awful for all kinds of reasons. But one of the things people sometimes grumble about is that there was nothing new:
“I know all this, I’ve been teaching for years”
“I didn’t take any new ideas from that”
“Nothing new but it was nice to hear that I’m doing everything right”
The last one is perhaps a little more positive but even that betrays a mindset that I think we need to challenge.
Professional development is both an entitlement and a responsibility – it’s literally written in the teacher standards. But improving your practice doesn’t necessarily mean learning new things and adding to your repertoire. In the past I’m sure I’ve been conscious of thinking too hard about the potential takeaways from any session I’ve delivered, sometimes wanting to show off the new thing I’ve read about / tried that I know most other people might not have heard of, and for people to leave with a new idea. Of course, this approach was mainly doomed to fail. Although it might receive favourable feedback at the time (“I loved that idea, never thought of that, going to try it”) we know that teachers are already overloaded with too many things to think about and another new thing is just going to fall by the wayside along with all the other initiatives we’ve endured in the past. That’s not to say presenting something new is always a bad idea, just that it doesn’t have to be the default.
I think we should consider a different tack. Be more upfront and unapologetic about presenting ‘nothing new’ (unless it’s a room full of novices!). Instead I think there are two things we should be thinking about and taking from CPD when it’s stuff I already know:
- Can I do it better? Is there room for refinement, nuance or flexibility in how I do this?
- I’m doing lots of retrieval practice, can I sharpen up my routines around this to get more from the students? Could I think more carefully about the questions I’m asking, how I check understanding or what to do with the feedback?
- I’m doing modelling, can I scaffold the handover from I to We to You better so I don’t leave some students behind? Could I narrate my thinking more clearly so they are exposed to all the decisions I’m making when I’m doing this?
- I’m using examples. Can I make my examples more varied so the students can discern deeper meaning and go beyond surface-level features. Could I include some non-examples to help students understand the boundary conditions of concepts more clearly?
- I give my students clear success criteria. Can I build in more checks for understanding to be more confident they know what those criteria actually mean? Could I develop routines to help students self-assess their work against those criteria and make improvements before submitting it for feedback?
- Can I do it more? Are there other places in my teaching practice where I could add this?
- I’m doing retrieval practice. Can I embed it more consistently so that it becomes more of an automated habit for my students? Could I add more retrieval throughout my lessons and not just for the starter?
- I’m using cold-call with my year 9s. Can I make it a norm with all of my classes, and my habitual mode of asking questions? Are there other ways I could increase participation ratio?
- I’m modelling how to plan an answer when I set up a task. Could I build this into my whole-class feedback process to help students see how to improve next time?
- I’m giving them success criteria for essays. Are there other tasks I set where these would be helpful too?
I think there are a few reasons why nothing new is a helpful approach worth considering:
Introducing a new idea means teachers might have to focus on the mechanics of it – what does it look like, how do you do it? This might leave little mental capacity to really think about the underlying principles – what is it for? This can lead to adoption of ineffective practice that superficially look like the new thing, but don’t necessarily achieve the same purpose.
Exploring the underpinning mechanisms of classroom practice can give us better insights into how to make what we do more effective. That might involve very small adjustments to our practice that have quite a significant impact. For example, you might be cold-calling but saying the name of the student before you ask the question. The very simple refinement of asking the question, pausing, and then naming the student could have a big impact on participation ratio.
Reviewing and reflecting on our existing practices might give us insight into a better way to explain what we’re doing and why to our students. For example you might already tell students not to look at their peers’ mini-whiteboards during a retrieval activity but frame this around ‘not cheating’. Dissecting this practice during CPD might make you decide instead to frame this more around the benefits of retrieval so that students see that copying someone else’s answer is depriving them of the opportunity to improve their own memories.
Regular review is vital to keep ideas fresh in our minds. We might have tried something two years ago that was new at the time but not returned to it. A regular cycle of ‘checking in’ on established practices and routines is important, and also helpful in dealing with the inevitable turnaround of staff coming and going. This might help us also build a shared language and understanding around effective teaching and learning.
Focusing on the stuff we are already doing is a way of acknowledging that everyone’s already doing a good job. If you know you are doing regular retrieval, modelling, scaffolding etc then chances are you’re already teach pretty well. It may be far more motivational to think about how you can get better at the things you’re already doing than being told there’s a whole bunch of new stuff you have to learn as well.
Final thoughts
I’m writing this from the perspective of someone delivering CPD but this applies to anyone in teaching. The premise of teaching is very simple, but the execution is hard. Acknowledging this means saying that it’s ok to admit that we could all do some things a little bit better. We should all be on board with that – I’m sure it’s the message we give to our students. Roger Federer wouldn’t expect his coach to suddenly give him a new stroke to learn, but he wouldn’t mind being given suggestions for how to improve his backhand. Experts in other fields have no reservations about being asked to fine-tune their practice and, if we want to be taken seriously as a profession, neither should we.
A Psychology Teacher writes 
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