Whole-school CPD: Building accountability and maximising long-term change across your school

Before we start:

• This article advocates a form of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) that is in-person, school-driven, team-based, and that capitalises on teachers' expertise.
• However, the key addition of an interactive, self-paced online component to build accountability and create permanent records of teachers' best strategies is also advocated, thereby maximising the impact on teaching and future-proofing the CPD.
• (i.e. this is not about schools taking on (yet another) external PD.)

When contemplating CPD for your school, how seriously do you ask, 'What tangible long-term changes do we expect this whole-school CPD to deliver?'

I regularly have conversations with school leaders, and it seems clear that whole-school CPD often fails to deliver significant long-term change among all or most teachers.

In this article, I present reasons for this lack of CPD effectiveness and demonstrate an approach to solving these issues via four 30-second video snippets.

At the bottom of the article is a 4-minute video that is a reasonable substitute for this article if you prefer.

Reasons why whole-school Continuous Professional Development often fails to bring about long-term change in teachers

One of the challenges of whole-school CPD is maximising the chance that all teachers embrace the changes advocated by the CPD.

There are many reasons why whole-school CPD often fails to bring about long-term change for all teachers. Three reasons are:

ONE: The CPD is a top-down experience, with little opportunity to draw out the best from teachers.

TWO: The CPD lacks a concrete requirement for teachers to implement strategies with their students.

THREE: The CPD lacks relevance in teachers' eyes. This lack of relevance may be because:

• The CPD doesn't address the required awareness change for teachers to embrace the changes.
• There is a lack of self-reflection built into the CPD
• Or ... the CPD lacks relevance (!!)

But wait! Some CPDs are NOT plagued by the above issues yet fail to create long-term change!

So why do some CPDs - those that DO aim to draw out the best from teachers, require teachers to implement strategies AND are seen as relevant - still fail to bring about long-term change in all teachers?

A major reason is a lack of accountability!

My experience tells me the 100% live format is a major contributor to the lack of accountability of many potentially exceptional whole-school CPDs.

WAIT! Some will misinterpret the above statement as 'I suggest we should place less emphasis on the live format and advocate a shift to an online format'.

Not true.

In the approach I'm advocating, the live format is super-important. However, what I AM saying is that the live format - when used as the exclusive medium for CPD - has limitations.

Allow me to explain.

Most whole-school CPDs use ONLY a live format for information delivery, discussion and collaboration. There are two weaknesses with a live-only approach:

1. When a strategy is shared (only) verbally to colleagues in a meeting, it limits the chance of other teachers successfully adopting that strategy (teachers absent from or distracted in the meeting, impossible to remember the information weeks after the meeting, having to meet with the teacher 1-1 can be a barrier, new teachers in the future (obviously) cannot view the strategy!)
2. Teacher accountability is low. Many school leaders concur - a live-only CPD risks becoming a talk-fest, with teachers willingly contributing to discussions and sharing their best strategies. However, there is nothing to hold the ideas together, nothing for teachers to touch, feel and interact with. Because the information is delivered verbally and only verbally, it risks being forgotten.

The solution: A hybrid approach!

The obvious solution is to add a quality, interactive, reflective, self-paced online aspect to the live program so that the CPD becomes hybrid.

Again ... this is not to diminish the importance of the live meetings. This is about strengthening the impact of the live sessions through adding an asynchronous online component.

The video snippets below demonstrate the online backbone we co-created for Saint Dominic's International School, Portugal (SDIS). The awesome Primary Years Program (PYP) leaders Fiona Kemp and Ed Burt collaborated extensively on this project.

Note that the 30 SDIS PYP teachers were already working in four professional learning communities.

The three keys to this hybrid CPD initiative are:

1. Teachers are empowered to find successful strategies according to their research criteria, trial them with their students and create online tutorials based on these strategies for other teachers to follow.?
2. Teachers implement strategies from other teachers' tutorials and observe each other teach.?
3. Teachers reflect on their implementation experiences.?

We have called the online aspect 'The Agency Space' because raising teacher and student agency is the over-arching focus of the CPD.

Note that the teachers had only been accessing the online space for a couple of weeks at the time of the video recording.

The Four Professional Learning Communities (PLC) groups (30-second Video)

The Lesson Demonstration and Observation Calendar

It's one thing to suggest that teachers observe each other demonstrating new strategies. But creating a centralised system that drives accountability and makes it all happen is quite another.

Check out the Lesson Demonstration and Observation Calendar we created for SDIS.

The Lesson Demonstration and Observation Calendar (25-second Video)

Strategy Implementation Reflections

There is little point in teachers implementing strategies from the online Agency Space unless they reflect on their implementation experiences. But how do you organise teachers' reflections so that all reflections from any given teacher can be viewed in one place? After all, using a standard comment thread would be extremely messy and inefficient for leaders to monitor.

Check out the online system we use for implementation reflections ...

The personalised Implementation Reflections feature (25-second Video)

? ?

Meaningful long-term change requires an awareness shift. Awareness shifts require self-reflection.

We have teachers reflect deeply on topics, including student agency, teacher agency, the process of change, and resistance to change.

Unlike most online systems, we are not limited to one comment thread per page. Some of our reflection pages have five or more comment threads on one page.

Creating self-reflection (30-second Video)

The online aspect requires a special kind of platform

Note that if you want to create an online space, as demonstrated here, you will need an online platform designed for interaction 'from the ground up'.

Fun Fact: My 10,000-ish hours of experience tell me that most online learning platforms are not designed for interaction but for information delivery. The difference is, as the saying goes, like chalk and cheese.

The August 2024 update

In mid-August, at the commencement of the new school year, I met with Fiona and Ed, the PYP leaders, to review the program and consider ways to improve it. We recorded the meeting as it seemed likely they would volunteer insights worth sharing. Here are 12-minutes of time-stamped snippets from that meeting.

The non-acronym summary

Saint Dominic's International School already had a continuous professional development program running, and their primary teachers were arranged into four professional learning communities.

In collaboration with the leaders, we added a quality online aspect that now underpins the whole program. We guide teachers in creating online tutorials of their best practices (as researched in their PLCs). All teachers implement ideas from the library of teacher-created tutorials. Teachers each have an online space where they reflect on their implementations.

In the leaders' words, adding the unique, interactive, reflective online space has significantly increased engagement and accountability and maximises the change to teaching practice.

Note that having PLC groups is not required, nor is the focus on agency - schools choose their focus. However, we strongly advocate a group structure.

I'm happy to chat with any leader open to exploring a collaboration to create a bespoke, hybrid CPD inspired by what you've seen here. Such a collaboration could happen soon, in six to nine months, or at any time in the future.

Thanks for reading and watching.

Further reading:

Schools: Revolutionising Professional Development through Collaborative CPD

Corporate: The Live Training Dilemma: Common Challenges Faced by Coaches and Trainers

Subject Matter Experts: A Walkthrough of Two Quality Online Communities

The full 4-minute video

Your turn

What are your takeaways? Do you have questions? Do you have anything new to add? Would you like to challenge some assertions in the article?

Please share your thoughts ...

More info on the website!

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