Our approach to great teacher CPD
Hear from Professor Rob Coe on why we have built the Great Teaching Toolkit in the way that we have to support teacher professional learning, and why it is trusted by more than 14,000 teachers as the best bet for sustained and sustainable teacher improvement. Below, you can read Rob’s thoughts on:
- Teacher collaboration
- Professional development time in schools
- Instructional coaching
- Teacher knowledge, skill and judgement
- High-quality feedback
A whole-staff approach to improving teaching and learning
Research shows that there are key things that teachers know and do that make the biggest difference to student outcomes (and you can read more about them in our Great Teaching Toolkit: Evidence Review here).
The GTT is anchored firmly in these 17 Elements of Great Teaching, so by doing anything within the platform, you and your staff can be sure you are taking a best-bet approach to teacher CPD. It is also designed with the evidence on learning, and best-practice approaches to teacher CPD in mind.
It ensures that teachers have autonomy and ownership over their professional learning, and helps to:
- Develop a common language across teachers, teaching assistants and school leaders.
- Improve teaching in a sustained, sustainable and evidence-based way.
- Showcase the quality of teaching and learning across your staff.
Read Prof Rob Coe’s thoughts
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Why are we betting on giving teachers more effective feedback (even though no one else is really doing this)?
Great teachers know about the power of feedback, and research supports this. In the Great Teaching Toolkit: Evidence Review (Coe et al., 2020), we summarised the evidence about feedback in both directions: giving students feedback to guide their learning and getting feedback from students to make teaching responsive. But feedback doesn’t just help school […]
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Why do we see teacher expertise as needing knowledge, skill and judgement (even though most people seem to focus on just one of these)?
In their chapter in the second edition of the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, Stigler and Miller claim that “most teacher education and professional development programs for teachers have focused on making teachers more knowledgeable; few actually give teachers opportunity to practice the skills of teaching” (2018, p. 441). Recently, with the […]
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Why aren’t we doing ‘instructional coaching’ (even though everyone else seems to be)?
Instructional coaching seems to be the next big thing in education; it is the latest craze to ride a wave of enthusiasm across our schools. Faced with more and more schools ‘nailing their colours to this mast’, it feels almost brave to be holding back. But is it courageous and freethinking, or foolish and pig-headed, […]
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Why are we holding out for more professional development time (even though school leaders say they can’t manage it)?
According to the Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders survey, the median reported time spent on continuing professional development by teachers in England is 21-30 hours per year—approximately half an hour a week (Adams et al., 2023, pp 36-46, p 124). That compares with their average working week of about 50 hours in total, about […]
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Teacher collaboration: Why we’re for it (even when the evidence is weak)
A collaborative environment, on its surface, seems like an obviously good thing for any school. Who doesn’t like the idea of colleagues working together to increase student learning? But as evidence-informed practitioners, we prefer a rationale grounded in research that our efforts are indeed “best bets” for teachers’ time. Here, the evidence on teacher […]
