When educators have talked about student learning over the past few years, there has been a consistent emphasis on student “voice and choice” to promote engagement, ownership and personalisation - but why should this not apply to adult learners, too?
Educators know that students need multiple opportunities to explore, refine, reflect and extend their learning - we would never teach something once and then walk away feeling confident that the student had embedded that knowledge or skill for life.
Yet with single Inset days, webinars or time-limited professional development workshops, this is often the situation for teacher CPD - and it serves no one well.
Year-long teacher CPD
With that in mind, at ACS International Schools we have, since 2021, created an annual professional development series that is designed to offer more choice and scope, and we believe it is having a real impact.
The programme works by allowing teachers at our three campuses (in Cobham, Egham and Hillingdon) to focus on a specific theme of CPD, based on our long-term education strategy, across a school year.
This year, for example, our theme is “There is no mountain top in teaching”, a phrase coined by our partner and leading educational strategist Steve Barkley. It reflects the idea that for educators there is always potential for growth.
Previous themes have included “WELLcome everyone”, which was focused on inclusion and wellbeing, and “Authentically ACS”, exploring authentic learning.
Access to experts
When we have chosen a theme, we invite seven different educational specialists from around the world to talk to our 400 educators at a virtual event held in mid-August. Experts who have been involved include Jennifer Abrams, Ben Kingston-Hughes, and Loui Lord Nelson.
Each thought leader runs two hour-long virtual sessions on a particular speciality area relevant to the theme. Staff choose which two of these sessions to attend and then afterwards pick one to carry forward into their teaching that year.
All choices are also logged so that leaders know what is of interest within the school community.
Once term gets underway, our educators begin implementing these new strategies into their teaching. For example, one teacher might begin to increase the frequency of, or change the type of, “opportunities to respond” (OTRs), while another might build a choice board for the next unit of study.
Reflecting on progress
Six weeks after the start of term, staff attend the next session during our after-school meeting time. There they work with their relevant subject expert and ACS International Schools colleagues in the session to build on the prior learning and discuss what they have tried, learned and considered.
They then have the opportunity to work on these developments for another six weeks before returning to share together again in November. This final session adds a last extension to the learning but also provides space to reflect, refine, and consider where they will take the work next.
By focusing these sessions on practical, impactful approaches for daily classroom use rather than educational theory, the aim is for all staff to take away actionable ideas they can quickly embed in their practice and build on for student impact.
Moving into the spring term, we switch the focus from a whole ACS International Schools perspective to an individual school perspective - and enable each of our schools to build on the concepts learned and enhance particular elements that relate to its own objectives.
As an example, ACS Egham might have a particular interest in exploring elements of play in learning, so is able to interact further with our educational specialists and create personalised opportunities for staff.
We have chosen to approach professional development in this way because we want to provide autonomy and personal choice for our teachers and leaders, which is also “practising what we preach” for student learning.
Providing ownership
Feedback from staff has been positive and it has been great to see people adding to and enhancing their teaching practices with new ideas and evidence-based strategies.
Perhaps most importantly, by collaborating and offering ownership over certain professional development topics, and then shifting the focus to each school, we have ensured that we are addressing needs at the group and individual school levels, all while keeping teachers inspired.
This is, of course, vital if we are to retain our excellent teachers, who have the most important task of developing well-rounded global citizens with the academic and emotional intelligence to empathise and engage with tomorrow’s big issues.
Brianna Gray is head of professional learning and growth at ACS International Schools
