CPD Team

This will be my last blog post as National CPD Coordinator as I leave Education Scotland at the end of the month.

A lot has changed since I was appointed in May of 2004 with a very open remit to make things happen in the world of CPD. As I look back there are so many highlights and friendships, so much wisdom and fun. Here are some of my personal best bits from the work of a wonderfully dedicated and talented team :

The establishment of the National CPD Network as a learning community, sharing, challenging, learning together – making sure that the real business of CPD – teachers making a difference for children and young people – has stayed at the front of the agenda.

The International Thought-Leaders Programme
Finding the best practice in CPD and leadership internationally and bringing this to Scotland. Ellen Moir, Richard Elmore, Janet Gless, Terry Dozier – so many great thinkers have helped shape our learning

The Flexible Route to Headship
From a single line in the Ambitious Excellent Schools agenda of 2004 (“We will establish new routes to achieve the Standard for Headship, during 2006, to provide choice and alternatives to the Scottish Qualification for Headship”) to the excitement of the launch of cohort 6 in May of this year.

The International Summer Schools on School Leadership
Inspiration, innovation, creativity – learning with and from the world’s best over three great years.

CPD and On-Line Learning
Glow meeting, tweeting, blogging, CPDFind, CPDShorts and building community – this is a journey that has only just begun.

Also PRD, Learning Rounds, Coaching and Mentoring, Strategic Leaders Development Programme, CPD for Educational Leaders, study visits, thought-pieces, occasional papers, Building Windmills – the list goes on.

So thanks to all past and present members of the National CPD Network – you have been our bedrock, our inspiration, our lodestar and our conscience.

Good luck to Laura McAllister and Kate Paton, who will be working with Education Scotland colleagues to carry the flag forward.

And a very special thanks to all the members of the National CPD Team over the last eight years:
Angus MacDonald, Marjory Holmes, Fiona Taylor, John Daffurn, Con Morris, Kat Healey, Jim Keegans, Ruth Johnston, Catriona Oates, Sheila Smith, Margaret Orr

Please keep in touch – I can’t wait to find out what I’m going to do next!

Margaret

margaret_alcorn@yahoo.com

. . to our two new colleagues.

We are delighted that Laura McAllister, headteacher of Moorpark Primary School in Kilbirnie, and Kate Paton, headteacher of Currie High School have accepted two year secondments as Development Officers (CPD snd Leadership) in Education Scotland. Our two new colleagues bring a wealth of experience and we hope they have a productive and happy time in their new roles.

Please say hello when you see them.

This is a guest post by Samantha MacDonald from Architecture and Design Scotland

In connection with our High Street exhibition at The Lighthouse in Glasgow we are offering free CPD sessions for teachers in how to use their local High Street as a teaching resource for interdisciplinary learning.

High Street Stories is an interactive, creative, cross-curricular project for upper primary/lower secondary students or as a P7 – S1 transition project. Comprising a series of lessons that could be a fully immersive, week-long project or spread out over a longer period to allow for further development, this project focuses on the built environment and social aspects of the High Street through almost every curriculum area. Encompassing issues such as sustainability, community, heritage and citizenship, students are guided through a challenging and enjoyable creative process with relevance to their own environment. Curriculum for Excellence experiences and outcomes from mathematics, sciences, technologies, social studies, literacy and expressive arts are covered by the project making it truly interdisciplinary.

The 2 ½ hour twilight CPD workshops introduce teachers to the resource and guide them through the lessons giving them practical, hands-on experience and building confidence along the way. Staff will leave the session feeling more confident about their ability to teach built environment education and architecture. Teachers participating in the workshops will have the opportunity to showcase their students’ work in an exhibition at the Lighthouse and have access to a follow up Glow meet for extra support.

We will come to your school to deliver a 2 ½ hour twilight session for up to twenty members of staff in March 2012. Please call or email Samantha MacDonald  on 0141 225 8351 or samantha.macdonald@ads.org.uk to arrange your free session. Limited number of sessions available.

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.

Recently a few members of the CPD team visited the Teacher Development Agency in Birmingham. We were invited by John Westwell who heads up one of the Directorates in the TDA following a visit he and colleagues made to Edinburgh earlier in the year. We were keen to learn more about the work of the agency, and to explore any potential for shared activity or learning.  A fuller report of what we learned will follow later, but we were particularly interested in the National Framework for Mentoring and Coaching which was first published by CUREE (Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education) in 2005,  as part of the DfES’s CPD strategy. The Framework offers some principles of mentoring and coaching, some core concepts, describes skills for coaching and mentoring and offers a “non-prescriptive” comparison between coaching and mentoring.

I am aware that there is a lot of interest in coaching and mentoring in relation to CPD, and there are some useful articles and case studies on this site. Well worth a read!

This is the May 2011 edition of the CPD Team Newsletter.

We hope you find it interesting – let us know! And do feel free to re-circulate it to anyone who might be interested.

Team plan 2011

The team has prepared a plan for the next six months with five key areas of work and we’d love to hear your thoughts on these. They are

• PRD and Measuring Impact
• Leadership Development
• Support for innovative, creative and cost effective professional development models.
• Support for online professional development
• Support the development of more effective policy and support for professional development from national level.

Check out the details here http://bit.ly/teamplan11  

CPD Network Conference, 21st June 2011           

The summer conference again addresses a very topical theme – “Leadership – Principles and Practice”. This time it will be held in Verity House, Haymarket and we are delighted with the very positive early response. The programme will include opportunities to trial the interactive Leadership Framework

If you haven’t booked your place yet do so now please by contacting ruth@cosla.gov.uk

Learning Rounds

Learning Rounds continues to excite interest in a wide range of schools and centres. In response to a number of requests the team are offering a one-day training session in Edinburgh on June 7th. This will take the same format as last year’s successful event. We would like to invite small teams (3/4 colleagues) from authorities who are interested in learning more about the potential of Learning Rounds to offer system-wide change in the context of Curriculum for Excellence. A team might be made up from authority staff, and/or school-based staff. There will be no charge for this event.

Intended outcomes:

• Resources and expertise required to use Learning Rounds as a vehicle for system change in schools and authorities are shared
• The potential of Learning Rounds as the basis for a professional learning community is explored
• The implications of the model as a driver of systemic and collegiate change is explored
• Participants record a high quality personal learning experience with the potential to change practice
• The new LR’s Glow Group is launched

Places are limited so contact Ruth@cosla.gov.uk  as soon as possible if you are interested.

Learning Rounds Community

The Learning Rounds online community is now fully up and running. As well as providing access to the Learning Rounds Toolkit which gives a comprehensive insight into the why and how of the approach, it has up to date news on LR activities, a question and answer facility, and most importantly a means to engage with colleagues across the country whether you are a veteran or a beginner. Membership of this community will give you access to all of the benefits, including an official LR logo which, once you have registered your LR, you are very welcome to adopt on your local authority and school documentation.

Its success depends on a healthy uptake so please sign up now on http://bit.ly/lrounds   

CPDCentral

CPDCentral continues to grow its membership with over 370 members. Con Morris of the team has been working with a number of colleagues across Scotland to build ‘affiliated’ communities using the CPDCentral model and tools. There are now communities for Global Citizenship (http://bit.ly/cpddgc), Games-Based learning (http://bit.ly/cpdconsolarium) and Internet Safety and Responsible Use (http://bit.ly/cpdcisru).

Con also led a session with West Lothian Music specialists in early May which serves a good example of how CPDCentral can be used to add impact to a face-to-face event. Colleagues were invited to introduce themselves, share practice and share intentions. The result is also a ‘mini-community’ that any music specialist can now join (http://bit.ly/cpdcmusic). You can see a version of Con’s talk and a wide variety of online CPD examples on http://bit.ly/cpdlinks

If you are not yet a member of CPDCentral, please join now (http://bit.ly/cpdjoin). If you want to know how you can add tailored CPDCentral tools to your CPD programmes or events, see the CPDCentral affiliation guide (http://bit.ly/cpdcaffil) and/or talk to Con (c.morris@ltscotland.org.uk).

CPDFind feedback required

It was great to see that CPDFind (http://bit.ly/cpdfind) got a specific mention in the Donaldson review. Regular readers of the CPDNews will know that CPDFind is changing to reflect the personal and local nature of effective CPD. See the blog post CPDFind is changing http://bit.ly/hyFzeD for more details. We are looking for a local authority CPD manager and establishment CPD managers who would be willing to spend a few hours with us testing the new environment and making it even better for its introduction in August of this year. If you are interested, please contact Con at c.morris@ltscotland.org.uk

CPDNet

• Have you visited CPDNet – the online home of our CPDNetwork – recently?
• Have you checked out the resources and ideas shared by colleagues from the Network?
• Have you added your own intentions, local innovative practice, ideas or insights to our interactive Donaldson (Teaching Scotlands’ Future) tool?

All the latest from the CPD Network is here http://bit.ly/cpdnet

Probationer support community

After the response to the item in the March edition of the CPDNews, we are going ahead with an event and programme to build a national community for probationer teachers and their supporters. There are still a few places on the programme, the face to-face element of which is an event in Stirling on 1st and 2nd June. If you are interested, please drop Con a line at c.morris@ltscotland.org.uk

CPDStepin

Our CPDStepin community for supply teachers continues to grow in strength. Here are some upcoming highlights – please share with all contacts who work with supply teachers

• CPDMeet: Reflecting on approaches to working with disaffected young people: 12 May 4.15. In this CPDMeet, David Noble CPDStepin Mentor will facilitate a ‘collaborative problem solving’ session to improve the way we work with this group of students. Sign up here http://bit.ly/cpdmeet34  
• TeachMeet Supply 18 May 6.30pm : University of West of Scotland Hamilton Campus. CPDStepin is delighted to be hosting this Teachmeet to provide supply colleagues with this face to face opportunity to learn, share and network with colleagues from across the country.  TeachMeets are informal gatherings of those curious about teaching and technology. Anyone can share great ideas they’ve trialled in their classrooms, ask important questions or simply sign up to take part in learning conversations. Sign up here http://bit.ly/tmsupply

Next month on CPDStepin

We are looking forward to launching our first CPDStepin Summer Summit – In the 3rd week of June, CPDStepin will host daily CPDMeets with a special focus on Additional Support for Learning.  Our experienced practitioners will be sharing their knowledge on Dyslexia, Aspergers and Autism – more details to follow.

Also in June we aim to be launching phase 2 of our online coaching pilot using Glow tools and we are in the process of recruiting a small team of coaches and coachees. Watch this space for more details.

 CPDMeets

The National CPD Team is making great use of the new Glow meet system with its continuing programme of CPDMeets.  Since the last update,  we’ve  had  George Smuga, on BYC- the senior stage;  Hugh Smith of the University of the West of Scotland leading some keen teacher-learners through a simple methodology to learn how to play the guitar. Due to popular demand, this one has a sequel which will take place on May 23rd at 18:30 – 19:30, in the CPDCentral meeting room as usual. We’ve also had an in-depth discussion on non-directive coaching lead expertly by Kate Coutts from Uyeasound School on Shetland.

Coming up

• SQA Academy on Glow (http://bit.ly/cpdf1628) is hosting a series of CPDMeets starting on May 17th at 12 noon. Each CPDMeet in this series will be on a different aspect of e-assessment, and if you are interested in these CPDMeets, please sign up for the first (http://bit.ly/sqaac1). It is hoped that a wide range of interested parties, including students, will take part in these discussions to help shape the future of e-assessment
• Catriona from the team will also lead CPDMeet 31 on intercultural awareness and MLPS on May 18th at 4pm. Please sign up http://bit.ly/cpdmeet31
• Pam Currie from the Glow team will also be exploring the possibilities within the daily online newspaper for students, the Daily What! On Tuesday June 7th at 4pm. Sign up here http://bit.ly/cpdmeet32.

Leadership Framework

We are continuing to develop the Leadership Framework based on the principle of progression through 3 broad levels of early, middle and school leadership.

Through the Professional Review and Development process and using the Framework, teachers are in position to critically reflect on their leadership skills to inform their professional needs and identify suitable CPD opportunities.

The Leadership Framework is an interactive resource. Currently we are working on populating the professional actions at each of the 3 levels of leadership. This allows online access to a wide variety of resource materials for each of the professional actions. The menu of resources includes video extracts of leaders in school operating at each of the 3 levels and talking about their own experience and practice on their leadership journey.

A number of focus groups have considered the Framework and have provided valuable comments which we will now further consider for final draft form.

Join us on June 21st at the Network meeting to find out more.

PRD Initiative

Thanks to everyone who has welcomed Catriona and Bob to their school or authority recently.  They have met with a range of colleagues to continue the process of learning about different systems and approaches to PRD.  Despite some of the negative messages we have heard about PRD, it is becoming clear that there is some really encouraging practice to celebrate and disseminate.

The challenge for us all is to use the good practice that exists to bring about a levelling-up in the PRD experience for everyone, and so we hope to share descriptions of interesting practice and support materials in PRDShare which is an area of CPD Central (or it will be by the time you read this!)

To quote Richard Elmore when he last visited Scotland: “If you can’t see it in the classroom, it didn’t happen”.

Our aim, when we finish this programme, is to ensure that you will be able to see the impact of PRD and CPD in the classroom.  We’re getting there….

As always, if you know of a school we should be visiting to add to our store of interesting practice that should be brought to everyone’s attention, please get in touch catriona.oates@cosla.gov.uk; bob.cook@cosla.gov.uk

And so that’s all folks – happy CPD’ing!

Margaret

Margaret@cosla.gov.uk

Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee Report

The Parliamentary committee which has been looking at local authority funding of education and children’s services, and the future of schools management in Scotland reported earlier this week.

A large number of organisations and individuals gave evidence to the committee on issues such as the future structure of state school education,  arguments for and against change, future issues and models of governance, the number and role of local authorities, collaboration and shared services, school autonomy, leadership and devolved school management, and many other related issues.

The Committee expressed a hope that this report will form a useful starting point for  debate. Although it does not offer a complete vision for the way ahead, it has set out a number of key principles on which there appears to be broad consensus. The Committees hopes that these key principles will guide those responsible for decisions on the future of education and children’s services and on their funding.

in 1978, I became part of the exciting educational innovation that was Wester Hailes Education Centre. Along with many other colleagues, I committed myself to the concept of community schooling as a way to redress social and economic injustice. We were young, passionate and bursting with ideas and energy.

One of my new colleagues was Ian Smith, and from our first meeting he prompted me to think in new ways about education, learning and the responsibility of teachers to change society. For me he was a key thinker who had a huge impact on my thinking, and of course, he was great fun to work with.

We parted company as colleagues after just a few short years, and he went on to influence a much wider range of people, and to have a much greater impact on ideas of learning and teaching than had been possible as a class teacher.

At various points, we reconnected. His unrelenting focus on good learning and what it looked liked, was a touchstone for many of us who continued to work in schools in areas of poverty. He was always generous with his knowledge, skills and friendship.

I met Ian last year at an event in Orkney and he was still firing on all cylinders – his passion for learning undimmed. Being with him, talking to him, reminded me – as ever – of the essential importance of education and teachers. I will miss his energy, insights, learning and essential humanity.

On behalf of the CPD Team I extend our deepest sympathy to Ian’s family and colleagues.

Regular readers of our blog will know about CPDStepin (the community for supply teachers and other colleagues who have difficulty accessing CPD through the ‘usual channels’)

Anne McGhee will be leading an introductory practical session for such colleagues in Broughton High School on 26^th January. This will be the first of, we hope, many practical sessions around Scotland to further encourage use of the Stepin community.

The CPD Team are particularly pleased that the Cabinet Secretary, Mike Russell, has kindly agreed to lead a discussion as part of the session.  The theme for the discussion is “The challenge of keeping your skills up-to-date for CfE when not fully employed”

The discussion will also be webcast as a CPDMeet on CPDCentral, the national CPD Community on Glow. The practical session begins at 4.30pm and the discussion at 5.30pm.

Please help us support this session and CPDStepin:

• Are you on supply or are under-employed, see this CPDAnswers post to find out how to get a Glow username and password and becoming part of the CPDStepin community
• Are you a CPD manager in a local authority? Please alert teachers on your supply list. See also this blog post if you want to book a similar session for your supply colleagues
• We ask all our readers to pass on the word about CPDStepin to colleagues not currently fully employed.

Related links:

1. More information about CPDStepin and how to join
2. How to sign-up for the 26th January practical session and discussion
3. How to sign-up for the 26th January discussion only
4. Anne McGhee’s blog post on Engage for Education
5. Follow CPDStepin on Twitter

At this year’s Scottish Learning Festival, the National CPD Team are running a very special CPD prize draw with several mystery prizes.

All you have to do is provide your Glow username and email address.

You can take part in lots of different ways by:

• saying ‘hello’ to one of the CPD Team at SLF and filling in one of the golden tickets
• attending any of the CPD Team supported events at SLF
• visiting this page on CPDCentral +glow

Of course, being the National CPD Team, we will not use any of your personal details for anything other than keeping you informed about free, high-quality CPD and PRD.

Good luck!