Page 18: Continued professional development

 Page 18 - Continued professional development

Continued professional development (CPD) is an integral role in every teachers development. Just finishing my most recent university assignment which focused on CPD stemming from curriculum, subject and pedagogical capabilities, upon this reflection it has allowed me to piece together todays blog. I believe this passage from my work, introduces this theme perfectly:

"Children are at the heart of education and learning; however, it is the teacher and how they apply their knowledge and resources which set the foundations for learning to take place. There are numerous priorities in education with the majority stemming from curriculum demands that influence both the subject and pedagogical knowledge of the practitioner. Furthermore, effective continual professional development is crucial; providing a positive impact on curriculum and pedagogy allowing teaching to provide learning opportunities through a variety of different approaches to allow pupils learning to develop." (The last sentence, I have taken reference from Lindsay and Muijs (2008),  article which I highly recommend when further reading around CPD). 

Consolidating my learning and reflecting on my CPD from conducting my assignment allowed me to deeply analyse where I am now and where I would like to be by the end of the course. I concluded how:

"I need to continually work towards the synergy between professional and academic sources and draw from these to aid my development."

I split my self investigation of my progress and practice up into subject, curriculum and pedagogical knowledge. When reflecting on these areas, it is equally important to draw on your strengths alongside your weaknesses and build out these to support the areas of improvement. 

Subject knowledge:

I identified my area of strength being year 6 science. This was an area I focussed on a lot and taught many lessons around. I really loved further exploring the circulatory sytem to a level where I could confidently address all pupil queries. With the curriculum being so large, it is impossible to be at a happy academic level to all content knowledge required. Overwhelming is one way to describe the amount of knowledge needed, and for me the area of arts and dt I struggle the most. I personally feel creativity is an area I lack confidence and experience in, to overcome this barrier, in addition to attending all university seminars focussed on these areas I will refer to literature. Art in the primary school (Lancaster, 2002) specifically Chapter 2: The framework for planning art activities, will allow me to access content to address my limitations. Another tip to give, and something I draw from when teaching areas of content I feel less confident in is through a cross curricular approach where you can draw from your strengths to supplement your limitations. 

Curriculum knowledge:

I identified my strength in this area was being able to confidently break large curriculum points into specific lesson objectives and success criteria to shape the lesson and learning to take place. This was an area I was able to work on during my BA1 placement portfolio I had lots of practice doing this for a range of subjects. With no prior experience, my limitation I currently identified in this area is my EYFS framework document knowledge and application. With my next placement here, I have already started addressing my limitations. From my experience now on placement, I strongly feel I have approached this now as a am familiar and confident using these frameworks when activity planning. I set up collaborative work with peers who had an EYFS placement last year for high quality discussion addressing an unknown area for me. In addition I explored the framework documents in depth to understand and highlight the focus and assessment areas. To improve my practical application and get inspiration for the classroom, I am currently reading Hoskins (2019), Exploring learning threads for the EYFS which I am throughly enjoying and recommend to all fellow students and teachers. There is excellent guidance and advice sharing practical activities that I can incorporate into my teaching. 

Pedagogical knowledge:

From reflecting on my ROLO's (lesson observations) from last year, in terms of pedagogy, an area of strength I have identified was using a variety of teaching methods incorporated into the same lesson to allow my teaching to be accessible for all learners. In hand with differentiation, it allows pupils to expand their capacity to understand. Following on from curriculum improvement areas, my main pedagogical limitations are in areas where I do not the skill itself again like art. When combating this, I am going to further explore Lancaster (2002) literature, this tome reading Chapter 3: Planning to teach, to understand further how to shape lessons tp deliver the content sufficiently through multiable ways through a range of pedagogical techniques. 

In addition to these areas, classroom environment and establishing and working on this throughout your development is also crucial. In particular the area of behaviour management. When reflecting on my first placement, this is an area that I would like to be more confidence in 'taking control'. Due to this, through NEU (teaching union), I completed a CPD course which focussed on the three core areas of: The importance of connectivity (session on resilience and communicating authentically in the classroom), language and learning (session on reducing the barriers to learning for learners with expressive and receptive language difficulties) and communicating teacher presence in a covid classroom (a session on behaviour management). Through completing these I was able to reflect on my practice so far and take inspiration to help me improve further. An example of this is through using an animated voice. A simple 'trick' like this as huge influence in the classroom as it can easily convey:

1. Expectancy

2. Passion for subject

3. Enthusiasm for students' responses

4. Disappointment - ability to use a contrast voice, bring it down, lower tone to show how they feel. This can. be paired with contrasting facial expression. 

If you have read any of my previous pages, I always discuss my passion and how I believe reflection is the pinnacle point to allow any form of development, especially for your CPD. There is always more to learn and like for students, the learning process is a continual cycle . To finish, this quote sums up the need and excellent for CPD exceptionally as making ourselves 'better' is the only way can be be the best teachers for our students.

"Every teacher needs to improve, not because they are not good enough but because they can be even better." - Dylan Willam

- Miss Yeoman