CPD Team

National CPD team summer newsletter

Welcome to our final update of the session. As many of you will know, the National CPD team will be moving into Education Scotland over the summer months, and we’d like to take this opportunity to take stock of our work so far and reaffirm our core beliefs about CPD. We have never been shy about sharing our guiding principles:

the best CPD is collaborative

CPD builds professional capacity

CPD is central to leadership development

the PRD process when owned and driven by the educator can be a powerful lever for change

and above all…..

CPD must have impact on learning

As a wee reminder of these principles for us all, we’ve made this short video, which sets them out in an entertaining way. Please take a look, we hope you like it! Feel free to share it widely among friends and colleagues who might like to learn more about our work.

We are looking forward to the next phase of our work in Education Scotland and the new challenges ahead. We will update you with our new contact details as soon as possible. Have a lovely summer holiday.

Many of you will remember with pleasure the visit of Dr Avis Glaze to Scotland a few years ago. Many more Scottish educators have had the privilege and pleasure of visiting Avis in Ontario as part of the SCIPD programme.

A highly respected leader and mentor to many Ontario educators, Avis has worked in several school districts, both rural and urban, and has been a supervisory officer and director of education in both public and catholic school boards. She knows education systems across the world firsthand and has been asked to work with educators in many countries, including, of course, here in Scotland.

The CPD Team were delighted when Avis agreed to act as a critical friend to the team, particularly in relation to the Leadership Framework that we are developing with our network partners.

She contacted us recently to say:

“Scotland’s leadership development model represents innovation at its best. It is current, creative and progressive in its approach. It is research-informed. It appeals to all domains of learning and achieves its strategic intentions by challenging minds, inspiring hearts, honing and acquiring new skills and stimulating action. It assumes an inside-out approach, beginning, as great thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle would, with the importance of self awareness and knowledge. It includes values, personal attributes and commitments. This Framework is truly comprehensive.

I commend the work of the National Continuing Professional Development (CPD) team for its fidelity to research, respect for the promising practices that exists in the field and its efforts to ensure international comparability for their model.

Well done! I am impressed! With such assiduous attention to deep implementation, the school system will continue to improve as you build upon current successes and push the boundaries for higher levels of student achievement. I hope there will be opportunities for us to work together as we continue in our efforts to close the achievement gap and ensure that schools deliver on their promise to educate all children successfully.

Within today’s global economy, and with international efforts to improve school systems, Scottish children deserve no less.

Congratulations!”

Needless to say we are delighted with this very positive endorsement and look forward to continuing to learn from this inspirational thinker and leader.

Sometime ago, we came up with the idea of making the key CPDCentral features available to other ‘affiliated’ CPD communities. You can find out more in What is a CPDCentral affiliated community?

Features such as the About Us profile, I-share, I-intend and the CPDMeets programme can be made available to any CPD leader for use in more specialised communities than CPDCentral.

We already have a number of these communities up and running:

• Games-based learning and design (cpdconsolarium)
• Internet Safety and Responsible Use (isru)
• Early Years
• Gaelic (dachaigh)
• CPDLead

There are several more in the pipeline; for example Perth & Kinross, Positive Relationships, and Probationer Supporters, Aberdeenshire, University of Aberdeen, Journey to Excellence.

Over the coming 2 months, Catriona and I will be ‘on the road’ helping colleagues from all over Scotland. We have an understanding with these colleagues that these workshops will be open to others who are keen to build their own communities.

Some of the dates are below:

• Monday 4^th July – Dumfries
• Tuesday 5^th July – Dundee
• Thursday 7^th July – Aberdeen
• Thursday 21^st July – Hamilton
• Monday 1st August – Ayr
• Tuesday 2nd August – Edinburgh

If you want to find out more, look me up on CPDCentral, where you can also find out more on the CPDCentral affiliation area (http://bit.ly/cpdcaffil)

Thanks

Con Morris