Three steps for creating a successful professional development plan

Hello and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining. Just a quick sound check. Can everyone hear me okay? Testing, testing, one, two, three. Hello, good morning, good afternoon. Yes, you can hear me. Fantastic. Excellent. So, welcome. Welcome to this expo session. I think some of you may have already attended one or two so welcome to this one. And this one is around, specifically around professional development. So, just to introduce myself, my name is Eric Baber. I'm the director of professional learning and development here at Cambridge University Press. And I'm joined by my two colleagues, Karen Mumber and Heidi Burrows. And we'll be talking you through this session. Karen, could you move to this next slide, please? Go. It's coming. It's coming. Okay. Just, well, while we're waiting for that to happen. So, have you been having a good experience so far, all of you in the audience? Have you been enjoying the sessions? Yes, you've been enjoying them. Okay. We've got a few questions coming in around certificates. Unfortunately, for these expo sessions, there are no certificates. So, you can sit back and relax and enjoy and also maybe think of some questions. So, we'll definitely have time at the end for questions around this one. Okay. Greetings from Oman, from India. Don't worry. Excellent. Good. Okay. There we go. So, Karen, Heidi and myself will be talking to you for about 15 minutes or thereabouts on three steps for creating successful development. So, all of you are obviously interested in professional development, which is why you're here. So, that's great to see. So, over the next 15 minutes, we'll be giving you some tips and techniques on how to structure your professional development. We recommend to maybe to take an annual view. So, we suggest that these tips and techniques you do maybe for the next 12 months, then at the end of the 12-month period, review it and then do it again. Because teaching is a lifetime career and it's a great idea to keep refreshing yourself and rethink your goals and that sort of thing, professional development goals every year. So, very importantly, first of all, the very first step that we recommend is to identify your development needs. Just like in a lesson, you would first identify the learning objectives. If you're going to embark on a 12-month or longer professional development cycle, first of all, give some thought as to your developmental needs. So, let's look at some criteria to think about there. Firstly, your personal experience and context. So, your experience. How long have you been teaching? How many different situations have you taught in? Have you always taught in the same school in the same country? Or have you maybe moved around, taught at different schools, taught at different levels, primary, secondary, adult? Or are you right now embarking on a change of career direction? So, maybe you're changing, you're turning yourself from a primary to a secondary level teacher. That can give you an idea based on your past experience of where you now need to go. The situational needs are ones to think about as well. So, that's kind of related to what I was just saying. But also, look at your specific context. So, it could be driven by your particular institution. Maybe the institution that you are working for or that you're just about to join has a different approach in some way. Maybe they are particularly digitally heavy. So, that might give you an idea of where you need to develop your skills. Perhaps your institution or you personally are moving to a CLIL approach, or in English, as a medium of instruction approach. And that might be your area of greatest need. So, once you've thought about your past experience, your current context, your situational needs, where you want to go, you'll probably want to prioritise your needs. Something that can help you do that are teacher frameworks. There's a number out there. We'll show you one in a moment. And you'll probably also want to research your own teaching, and what that means we'll come to in a minute. So, if we take a look at teaching frameworks, the one that we obviously recommend is the Cambridge English Teaching Framework. And here's a very high-level view of it. So, as I say, this is the Cambridge English Teaching Framework. We often shorten that to the CETF. This is available on the Cambridge Assessment website, but if you do a Google search for Cambridge English Teaching Framework, you'll find it. So, if we just take a look at it a little bit, along the top, you'll see there's an arrow pointing to your right, and it's broken up into four columns. Foundation, developing, proficient, and expert. So, that's to describe where you currently are on your teaching expertise. So, if you're a foundation-level teacher, you've probably just started, or you might be in your first few years of teaching. Developing, you've already engaged in professional development, your teaching skills are developing, and so on, all the way through to expert. On the left, we've got five categories of teaching knowledge and skills, and each category describes the key competencies for effective teaching at each relevant skill, at foundation, developing, proficient, and expert. So, the five categories that we've got there are learning and learner, teaching, learning, and assessment, language ability, so how good your own English level is, language knowledge and awareness, and professional development and values. So, let's dig into one of those a little bit more. So, if we take a look at the teaching, learning, and assessment category, that is further broken down, down the left-hand side. For example, there's one subcategory called using digital resources, and then there's a whole subcategory 2.3, managing language learning, that goes into details of creating and maintaining a constructive learning environment, and so on. You obviously won't go into great detail here, but that's just to say that this framework is very rich, it's very detailed, and it can really help you identify your existing strengths and the areas where you feel you might need to develop. So, you might look at the framework and look at the individual descriptors and say, okay, do you know what, using digital resources, that's fine, I'm an expert on that, I've done it loads, I've taken some courses in that, I'm okay on that, but, for example, the bottom one, setting up and managing classroom activities, I find that a bit more challenging, that's where I need a bit more help on, and in that way, you can prioritise your own particular learning needs and development needs. Okay, if we go on to the next area, then, to think about, we call this research your teaching. So, what this basically means is that you take a look at yourself and evaluate and think about your own teaching as you do it now. Okay, so, you might want to do a video or an audio recording of your own lesson, and then look back on that yourself. Okay, it's a good thing to do, because while you're caught up in delivering a lesson, you probably don't really have the headspace and the time to think about each particular stage and step and how you're doing. So, videoing it, watching it back later on is a really good technique. You might want to go, or you might want to think about whether you're observing your own teaching from something very general, like, are you just observing from a high level, or are you looking at very specific teaching techniques? For example, are you looking at the pace of the lesson? Are you looking at how clearly you're giving your instructions? The types of teacher talking time, are you talking too much? Is your instruction okay, but then if you're describing vocabulary, is that too wordy? So, those might be specific areas that you want to look at for yourself. For that, we suggest putting together a checklist or a grid or a table, so that you might look at the same clip or the same recording multiple times, but each time you're looking for something different on your checklist. You might want to focus on feedback as well. For example, the feedback that you give to your learners and drill down, what techniques did I use? When did I give feedback? At what stage of the lesson? How did the learners respond to it? And so on. We can highly recommend the book, Jack C. Richard's book, 50 Tips for Teacher Development, where he gives a number of examples and suggestions for how to observe and monitor your own teaching, and it also includes some suggestions for setting up the whole process and questions that you might want to consider for yourself. Okay, so that's stage one, is looking at yourself, thinking about it, and defining your own developmental needs. Once you've done that, we suggest you go on to step two, and for that, I shall hand over to Heidi. Thank you, Meric. Okay, so once you've decided what your goals are, the next step is to really select the development activities that you want to take part in to try and help you to achieve those, and there are a number of things that you're going to be likely to consider when you're working out what the best activities will be. So, the first one is, what are your goals, and how likely are they that you share them with teachers in other contexts and other parts of the world? If it's a fairly usual area that you're wanting to look into, then there are probably a number of readily available activities that you can look at, whereas if it's something that's very specific to you or to your context, you might need to look at some more bespoke solutions. Other things that you're going to factor in when you're trying to think about what type of activities you want to take part in are your budgets. So, will you be funding these development activities yourself, or is the funding going to be coming from your institution? And either way, how much budget is available, because that will help to influence whether you go for a lower cost option such as a book or a conference, for example, which in normal times, you might need to factor in travel costs and accommodation and that kind of thing as well as the cost of attendance. There's also time, so will you be able to take time off to complete the training, or will you need to fit it around your classroom activities and other responsibilities? And finally, personal preferences. So, what type of activities do you enjoy the most, and do you feel that you get the most out of? Do you prefer self-study or something tutor-led? Do you prefer to study alone or with other people, or face-to-face or online? Do you need to consider all of those types of things? Do we have the next slide, please? Okay, so once you've worked out what your preferences are, there are some suggested activities here that you can consider. So, the options open to you are likely to include conferences and events, such as this one. Whether online or face-to-face, these can be really motivating and give you access to expert speakers you may not be able to have access to in other environments. There are many kind of options that you can consider there, so national events, international events, and there may be some that are on general topics, so that you get a wide overview of different subjects, and there might be specific conferences as well that focus on your individual areas that you want to focus on. So, those are things that you need to consider, and obviously, at the moment, a lot of events are taking place online rather than face-to-face, so you may be able to attend more than perhaps you would be able to in a physical environment. Reading groups are also a great way for you to consider your development. Books are obviously, and reading books individually is obviously a classic development activity, but a reading group can add an extra element to it. So, for example, making it more collaborative, so you could work with colleagues to perhaps identify a book or an interesting article every now and then, so you could meet monthly or once a term, and really discuss and work out which ideas in the books might help to develop your teaching. So, this is something that you could consider, and here are just a small selection of our teacher development books, but these are all available, and you can find links to them on our website, and there'll be a link at the end of the presentation which gives you that. Okay, so other things that you can consider, of course, is in workshops, and there are different types depending on, again, your preferences and your needs. So, they offer structured development, and they can provide input and opportunities for you to discuss, demonstrate your understanding, and really reflect on what you've learned in the way that you're embedding it in your classroom. A few options, so online self-study courses. If you need to fit your development around a busy teaching schedule, then online courses can be a really useful option, because they can provide you with the opportunity to study at your own pace, and in a timely location that works for you. At Cambridge University Press, we have over 70 online teacher development courses, so you should be able to find something on a subject that's of interest and that you need to help with development, and they're also available in a range of different lengths, so the two-hour courses, for example, provide an introduction, whereas 20-hour courses provide a more in-depth study of future hits. If you find that you need the convenience and flexibility of an online course, but you also prefer a tutor-led approach with more support, then you could consider some tutor-led online training. We offer a range of online teacher development programs, which combine some of the two-hour online courses, so you get the flexibility of the self-study, but then there's also a tutor-led element as well, so you can access webinars and videos and discussions to get a little bit more support as you work through that training. If that's something that you need, then that's an option available for you from us. Okay. The other couple of options around courses and workshops that you might want to consider, online workshops. So, if you like the convenience of learning online, but you want something a little bit more interactive than tutor-led programs can provide or online courses can provide, then an online workshop gives you the opportunity to gain input, but then also to go into breakout rooms and have discussions with other teachers so that you can share your experiences, successes and areas where you want to develop and learn from each other. We are just about to launch a new series of online workshops, The Best Practice for Blended and Online English Teaching, which draws on learnings that have come from online teaching during the coronavirus crisis. So, if that's an area of interest to you, I'd suggest that you keep an eye on our website and our social media in the next few weeks to find out more. And finally, if you really find that face-to-face training works best for you, you like the environment, you like being in the room with the teacher and having those face-to-face conversations with other teachers, then obviously face-to-face training is something that you can consider and that may be for, you know, courses away from the classroom, courses or training workshops within your own institution. Unfortunately, at the moment, you know, it's not as much of an option as it usually would be, but there are certainly a number of trainers that we have available for you that you can consider and you can put together the packages for you. And I will now hand over to Karen. That was step two of the planning process. Thanks, Heidi. So, we've looked at identifying needs and selecting activities. And the next step is another technical hitch. I seem to want to move when I'm speaking. Strange, as it was happy to do so just now. If I'm mute, let me just check. While Karen's doing that, I've posted a few links in the chat window. So, Heidi referenced a number of materials, online courses and workshops. I've put the links to that in the chat window. Similarly to the teaching framework, I've put that there as well. Well, somebody asked a really interesting question in relation to my segment there. Somebody asked about the tracker and whether that was still available. So, we used to have a tool on the website called the teacher tracker that allowed you as a teacher to answer a series of questions. And it would then give you, it would then plot basically the results for you and tell you where you were on the different categories and so on. The question was, do you have to pay for that now? The answer is no, you don't have to pay for it, but we are in the process of updating it. And we were hoping for the new version of the tracker to go live in time for today. Haven't quite managed that, but we're hoping that it'll go live before the end of this calendar year. And we've expanded it, so it still asks you a range of questions. It plots for you where you are on the framework, but it then also makes recommendations for you for your professional development. Okay. So, watch the space. Hopefully by the end of this calendar year, that'll be up and running. And back to Karen. Thanks, Eric. Technology is really not my friend today, but let's hope it's going again now. So, on to the third stage. The next step in successful development is applying your learning to your classroom. It's what you do with what you've learned that's critical. You need to know how things work in your classroom with your learners. In the Cambridge paper, Effective Professional Development Principles and Best Practice, which you can download free from our website, the authors Silvana Richardson and have synthesised recent research around professional development. And they identify seven elements for real improvement. And one of these is in-practice experimentation. Trying things out in your classroom with your learners. But it doesn't work by itself. It really needs to be part of a cycle of experimentation and reflection. Now, the courses Heidi mentioned earlier, two-hour courses, five-hour and 20-hour courses, they all contain this in-practice element with a task to try out and questions to reflect on. But not all development activity does. And it's something you can think about adding to other development activity. I'm sorry, my screen has stuck again. So, let's just look at the development process again. So, you've identified an area for development. As Eric pointed out, this could be in response to your institution or to your learner needs, or you might use the teacher framework or classroom research. You then get some input to help you address the area of development. So, you research possible solutions. As Heidi said, it might be attending a talk or a workshop, reading about the topic or taking a course. So, for example, I might decide that I want to develop my learner's confidence in speaking and I want to learn some techniques to do so. Course around the topic, read around it and come up with a few ideas I could try out. So, it could be around planning, repetition, rehearsal. So, the next step is to experiment in class. So, say for example, I decide, okay, repetition sounds good. I'm going to do a speaking activity, then get the learners to repeat it. I have the learners doing a task in pairs for two minutes, then they change, another partner for a minute, and change again for 30 seconds. And the article I read tells me that that should have a real impact on fluency. At the end of the class, I think about it. You know what it didn't? They hardly spoke. I think, ah, they didn't have much to say. Maybe I kind of didn't really attend to the planning side of things. So, okay, I'm going to try again. This time, I'm going to build on a bit of scaffolding and a bit more planning. And again, same task. And you know what, when I think about it afterwards, it was actually quite successful. I know that in the future, and what I'm going to embed in my practice is to really allow time for that planning before I think I'm going to increase fluency through repetition. I need to stage the whole. So, reflection on progress is really a critical part of development, whatever the development activity you engage with. And it can be quite tricky to think actually quite deeply about what you're doing in your classroom. So, I'm going to share a few questions with you that you might find useful that you can apply in a number of situations. These are key because, I mean, sometimes we teach through the coursebook, and we don't really think about what is it that learners can do when they leave my classroom that they couldn't do when they came in? How do I know that? And what was my role in helping them get there? So, these can be really powerful questions to think about both teaching and learning. And it's really helpful if you can write these down because it helps you see what you're learning and perhaps where your gaps are. And keeping a record of your learning is a great idea too. You can do this in a journal, which is a written account of your teaching experiences and a record of what happened in your lessons. So, you can include actions, insights and perhaps critical incidents. A critical incident is when something happens in your class that's unexpected and it provides an opportunity to further learn. So, you write what happened and you can answer questions such as, how did I react when that happened? What assumptions about my teaching does it raise? I mean, it could be something, for example, that you're setting up some group work and pair work because you think this is really valuable. And a number of your students say, this is just a waste of time. We don't want to talk to other students in English. We want to talk to you. So, that's kind of interesting to think, how is that going to impact on what you do? A portfolio is another way of keeping a record of your learning. It's a record of your work and development. And it's different from a journal in that it contains an array of materials. So, you might include lesson plans, examples of student work and development activity that you've done. And all of this, this cycle of reflection, experimentation and keeping a record of your learning is really important because it helps you see your progress, but it also puts you in a much better position to plan your next cycle of development activity. As Eric said, it's great if you can plan for a sustained period of time because then your development has the best chance of impacting and embedding in your classroom practice. I'm going to leave you now with a final thought before we move on to any questions. Thank you very much, Karen. And thank you very much, Heidi and everybody in the audience. I'm afraid we have run out of time. We'll need to wrap up. But in the chat window, I did post the link to our website where you can find all of the courses, materials and so on that we referred to. I've tried to answer as many questions as I could in the Q&A box. So, thank you very much. I'm afraid we're out of time. The next presenter is waiting in the virtual wings. So, we're going to have to say thank you and goodbye. Thank you from myself and from Heidi and Karen as well, I'm sure. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Nice to see you here. Hope you found that useful and enjoy the rest of the live experience.