CPD Team

I spent some time today with Terry Kerr, Tony McCulloch and Kevin Logan of Highland Council talking about online CPD. As often is the case , I got back far more than I gave!

Highland have long had a practice of enhancing their face to face CPD with online support. Much of this is housed in the Staffroom on the HVLC, Highland Virtual Learning Community. Here you will find considerable CPD programmes and reflection frameworks, such as

• the Support for Leadership Project in the Highlands which provides support for individual leadership skills
• the CPD Reflection framework which seeks to promote professional dialogue especially in AiFL
• and a wiki for Probationers.

I am struck by the strong links between CPDReflect and the Leadership framework and hopefully the two will feed off each other in time.

In discussing reflection on practice, Tony made a telling comment on how pupils can be vital partners in helping teachers teach better. This got us talking about a CPD opportunity on how to have these conversations in the classroom. Anybody out there help? If so, let me know and we will get it into CPDFind.

Highland Council are very happy to share these resources with the rest of Scotland and beyond. Tony was telling us how one of their online courses for pupils was recently translated into Sinhalese for nurses in Ceylon!

Actions I will take as a result of the meeting:

- find some time to describe some of the individual HVLC opportunities on CPDFind (especially the opportunities on the reflection framework as demonstrated so passionately by Kevin!)
- look at a more in-depth case study of how Highland have embraced online CPD on the CPDScotland site

I am grateful to Terry for setting this up and I am looking forward to taking up the invite to talk to Highland CPD coordinators later in the year.

CPDConfer our new tool for discussion on key CPD developments goes live on the afternoon of the 28 February and can be accessed through the CPD Scotland site.

The first edition concentrates on coaching and mentoring and contains examples and accounts of practice from across Scotland. It also features pieces written by Gary Bloom and Jan Robertson who offer international perspectives on coaching in education. Thanks to the many folks in the CPD community who have shared their work and colleagues in LTS who have helped bring CPDConfer to life. 

Please join in the live discussion and share your ideas at  http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/cpdscotland/cpdconfer/index.asp

And if you want to encourage colleagues to join in, send them this CPDFind entry.

On Friday of last week, my colleague Anne McGhee and I hosted two workshops for registered CPD providers on how to make best use of the CPDFind system. Both workshops were over-subscribed and went down well with attendees. It was a pleasure to work directly with CPD providers and we came away with some excellent ideas for improving the system and the access to information about CPD opportunities.

Here are our top 5 tips for CPD providers using the system:

• less is more! Remember the average visit to a web page lasts 1.5 seconds!
• write for an individual. Have a specific person in mind who you want to attract to your CPD
• use your website to host the more detailed information and hyperlink to that from the CPDFind descriptor
• don’t forget to use http:// before any hyperlink
• don’t forget to add at least one occurrence or your opportunity will not be made live.

I have just returned from a very informative visit to CUREE in Coventry.  More information about them can be found at on their website. I was there investigating their work/research in Coaching and Mentoring but as usual on such visits found out a whole lot more.  For more information click curee-visit.doc

I spent a very illuminating day with some of the EIS learning reps who came from all over Scotland to learn about our online CPD project, CPDScotland.

The 24 reps who attended over 2 sessions looked at, and discussed, the various aspects of the project, including the use of CPDFind and how Glow may become an invaluable tool for CPD.

In turn, I found out the variety of ways that EIS learning reps contribute to CPD in their local authorities. This varies from being an independent sounding board on CPD matters for their members, to the management and delivery of key aspects of CPD, including the role of professional recognition. I look forward to the day when EIS learning reps feature as providers of CPD in CPDFind.

It struck me that many of the EIS learning reps are well advanced in online CPD skills, given that some act as tutors for the Chartered Teacher programme in the University of Paisley, which is delivered online.

You can find out more about the work of the EIS learning reps on the EIS website.

Here are the items that were discussed at the CPD team meeting on 4th February. If you would like further information please contact one of the team:

• Feedback from the February Network meeting has been posted on the CPD Blog
• CPDConfer will be launched on 28th February with Coaching and Mentoring as our first theme
• The CPD team will combine with the Teachers’ Capacity Team on 1st April, based in COSLA
• The programme for the National Conference on 24th/25th April is taking shape
• A one day national/regional seminar for establishment CPD co-ordinators has been proposed for early Autumn. Views welcome!

We’re currently preparing an evaluation of the International Thought Leaders’ programme. I’m particularly interested in hearing about ways in which the visits of Terry Dozier, Ellen Moir, Janet Gless, Jan Miles, Gary  Bloom or Richard Elmore have influenced or shaped practice and policy development in schools and/or authorities.

 Please get back to me if you have  a story to share!

Dear all

It was great to see the members of the CPD network on Friday – I thought we had some very interesting and important discussions.

You will find the presentations from our speakers and the feedback from the workshops elsewhere on this blog.

I wanted to remind you of the offers and requests I made on Friday – I’d be really pleased if you could get back to me by close of play on Tuesday 12^th February if you are interested in any of these or have suggestions to make!

1.      Our D&G colleague Gillian Brydson has agreed to lead a small working group in collaboration with the team to look at the issues around “Measuring impact”. If you’d like to be part of this group, please let me or Gillian (gillianbr@dumgal.gov.uk) know.

2.      A once and never to be repeated offer regarding an opportunity to have Patrick Duignan of the Chair of Educational Leadership at the Australian Catholic University work with a group of your school leaders. Patrick was one of the stars of last year’s summer school, where his presentation on “Authentic leadership for authentic learning and teaching” was very highly evaluated. You can see his presentation here.

Patrick will be visiting Scotland on a study tour and has offered to do a seminar on either 29^th April or 30^th April. The CPD Team are looking for an authority or group of authorities to work with on this. Any interest – let me know!

3.      And in a similar vein, Richard Teese, who is the raconteur of the recently published OECD report into Scottish education is coming over for the Learning Festival, and has offered us an opportunity to hear him on 22^nd, 23^rd or 26^th September. Again, we are looking for an authority or group of authorities to partner us in this. More information about Richard here

4.      And finally, we are looking for new team members. Please help us identify colleagues who are looking for a fresh new challenge, and an opportunity to work at national level on all the exciting areas and issues we are engaged in around CPD and Leadership. As I said on Friday – our ability to offer you the highest quality support depends on getting the very best people into the team. Names, suggestions, etc to me please!

The CPD network was fortunate to hear from two passionate advocates of excellence on Friday 1st February.

Click here to look at the slides from the presentation given by Annette Bruton, Chief Inspector HMIE, on Improving Scottish Education.

Annette covered a range of topics in her presentation including HGIOS 3 and the Child at the Centre, Leadership for Learning, focus of inspections and, of course, Journey to Excellence.

Click here to look at the slides from the presentation given by Gillian Brydson of Dumfries and Galloway Council on the Evaluating the Impact of CPD.

The 1st part of the afternoon session of the meeting was given over to an update on CPDScotland,  the CPD team’s online CPD project.

Some of the key points to emerge:

• there are over 150 CPD providers on the CPDFind system and many such as The University of Glasgow, the Open University and LTScotland’s – Learning about Learning are committing heavily to populating the database with their CPD resources
• Finding CPDFind will be all the easier as almost all of the local authorities in Scotland have installed a magic button to CPDFind on their local sites (the CPD Superheroes as they are now to be known!)
• the CPD team are hoping to try out the CPDConfer tool from mid-Feb with a  occasional paper on coaching and mentoring.

We started the second part with a game of ‘PRD Fortunes’! “We asked 100 colleagues what they reflect on before their PRD interview…” etc. It was a bit of fun to start the vital discussion on CPDReflect. CPDReflect is the online self-evaluation tool and CPD portfolio currently under development.  CPDReflect, among other things, hopes to help bring the Professional Standards to life.

The 1st workshop was on the ‘who and how’ of exemplifying the Professional Standards. This generated a tremendous amount of discussion and you can see the complete summary of points made in this document.

Lastly, and all too briefly because of the worsening weather, we considered the ‘building blocks’ needed to make CPDReflect a success.