Professional learning curriculum grid

last updated:March 2009

The accompanying grid was used in the sessions on Personalising CPD in Leicester and Chorley in Autumn 2007 and some CPD leaders found it a useful tool.

You may want to trial it with some of your staff. It is a way of ordering thoughts and prioritising areas where more development is needed.

How to use the grid

• With a team of teachers (this could be same phase/department or mixed) agree some guiding questions which could help a colleague think about their professional development needs.
• Share these as a group and record them.
• Each person considers the questions in relation to their needs, ready for a discussion in a support and supervision meeting or performance management review.
• The grid could be used by the senior leadership team to think about the supply of CPD, defined as ‘the combination of learning and development opportunities available to any teacher from whichever source – school, local or national agency, university or other provider’ (from GTC’s advice to the Secretary of State for Education on effective, relevant and sustained CPD for teachers on ‘A personalised Approach to CPD’).
  

It is the view of the GTC that supply must be effective, relevant and sustained through to practice.

The CPD Curriculum

To ensure relevance, policy at national, local and school level should promote supply that addresses a CPD ‘curriculum’ comprised of five broad areas: context, specialism, leadership, pedagogy and professionalism.

These five areas can be explained as:

• context: in order to meet local challenges and conditions, characterised by the particular profile of children and young people within the school or educational setting including their socio-economic status, ability, language capabilities, ethnicity and cultural background;
• specialism: to develop phase appropriate expertise, for example, Foundation stage, Key stages 1-5, and/or by age group, for example, 14-19 or subject and other specialisations, particularly Special Educational Needs (SENs);
• leadership: to lead learning within and beyond classrooms, schools and other educational settings; and contribute in local, regional and national contexts;
• pedagogy: to develop flexible, innovative, differentiated and appropriate learning opportunities for all children and young people based on up to date knowledge of learning and development, curriculum and assessment;
• professionalism: to work inter- and intra-professionally, with parents and other adults within the school and wider community.