CPD Team

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.

The next SELMAS conference will be on 13th January 2012 in Tynecastle High School, Edinburgh.  The focus will be on how schools raise achievement and improve learning by working in partnerships.

This event will be centred on five presentations on good practice but will be enormously enhanced by the input of Professor Mick Waters and Professor Susan Deacon. The attached flyer gives the details of the content of the event.

You should also note that in these cash-strapped times this event is being offered on an exceptionally economical basis.  The delegate fee is £25 per person; £10 for current full-time students.  Places will be awarded on a first-come (with payment) first-served basis.  To make a booking contact SELMAS Secretary Alex Wood – contact details below.  Cheques should be payable to Scottish Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society.

49 Acredales
Linlithgow
West Lothian EH49 6HY

Tel: 01506 848259
Mob: 0775 989 8890

alexander.wood@blueyonder.co.uk
v1awood6@staffmail.ed.ac.uk

NO SCHOOL IS AN ISLAND promotional leaflet

Report of a review of teacher education in Scotland

The CPD team welcome the publication of “Teaching Scotland’s Future” with its clear case for a high priority to be given to teacher quality and leadership. We are delighted to see lots of themes that build on current CPD Network concerns and activities.  There are many relevant references, for example:

• recommendation 33 talks about the “shift from set-piece events to more local, team-based approaches which centre around self evaluation and professional collaboration”;
• recommendation 34 addresses the need to consider the likely impact of CPD on pupils;
• recommendation 40 is about on-line CPD as “part of the blended, tailored approach for all teachers”.
• And many more . . .

We are delighted that the report recommends that our work on CPDFind should be developed (see recommendation 41), and that PRD emerges as a key tool to improve school and teacher effectiveness.

However the Report describes many challenges in the “ambitious and far-reaching  agenda” set by the Report, and success will require new partnerships, creative solutions and new ways of working for many of us involved in all aspects of teacher education. We look forward to contributing to this agenda.

As part of its support for CPD for supply teachers, the National CPD Team is offering local authorities the chance to augment their local provision with a free session on CPDStepin. CPDStepin is the professional community on Glow specifically supporting colleagues, like supply teachers, who are not fully employed but still want to keep their skills up-to-date for CfE.

Anne McGhee, the facilitator of the CPDStepin community, will lead the session and they will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. To request a session, please email stepin@ltscotland.org.uk as soon as possible.

Please note, for funding reasons, the session must be requested and agreed by Friday 25th March 2011

The programme kicks off in City of Edinburgh Council on the 26th January and other LAs have already taken up the offer.

Edinburgh City organised a very innovative CPD experience for head teachers , deputes and principal teachers on the 5 November . For the first time the senior management teams were given the opportunity to reflect on the strengths of the sector as a whole and to identify how, collegiately, they could continue to develop capacity within and across the specialist areas to deliver on Curriculum for Excellence. It was my pleasure and privilege to facillitate the session. The richness of the discussions and the enhanced awareness which colleagues gleaned from the opportunity provided immediate professional development which has sown the seeds for ongoing collaboration on a system wide level.
The challenges facing school and service leaders is significant but the realisation that there is a shared agenda and the opportunity to explore solutions with colleagues makes it less daunting !

Following the session on Learning Rounds at the April STEC conference I was invited to a meeting of the Learning Development Group at James Watt College to discuss the potentail of the approach within the FE  setting. As with a previous opportunity at Anniesland College there was as much learning for me as there was for the colleagues who were considering the approach., which seems to chime very well with the principles of engagement already agreed by the group.

The discussion was very informative and opened up new avenues re particpation with the recognition that adult students had as much of a right to particpate as did school age pupils .
Given that the college has 850 staff it underlines the need to view Learning Rounds as an ongoing collegiate activity rather than a one off event for a few interested colleagues.

The CPD team look s forward with interest to hear of on going developments !

PARTNERSHIP WORKING – CPD ON OUR DOORSTEP !

Curriculum for Excellence places great emphasis and value on partnership working – the CPD Network reflects that in practice. The seminar on the 17 March will profile the contribution from a range of partners who may not have always been recognised as having an impact on the professional development of teachers and support staff, or whose traditional role may have been focussed on colleagues with particular remits : eg pastoral care, additional support needs, behaviour support.

Colleagues from the school library service, social work services, psychological services, the independent and voluntary sector, health  and SQA will outline resources and experiences which are relevant to the professional development of all staff in 7 minute presentations which will set the scene for “Open Space” follow up activity of discussion and sharing.

We realise that our sample range is not exhaustive and hope that pre, during and post the seminar colleagues will be able to share similar or different examples from their own authorities.   If you have partnership working on your doorstep please share it with us on the CPD blog.

I had the good fortune to be invited to talk with Parental Involvement coordinators at their national conference in Edinburgh today. The conference was headed up by members of Scottish Government and the LTS Parental Involvement team, Celia Burn and Lorraine Sanda. It was attended by coordinators from all over Scotland and I outlined how some of the tools put in place by the CPD Team and LTScotland will help with the development of their CPD framework. The conference had already identified CPD as being a crucial part of their work.

Thanks to the work of Celia and Lorraine and others, it was great to be able to point to a wide variety of CPD opportunities on CPDFind, including the online opportunities from the Parental Involvement team and Dimension 6 of Journey to Excellence.

An excerpt from the presentation is available here. (I haven’t included the PRD Fortunes game, sorry you had to be there! Suffice to say the Uh-Uh sound was much in evidence!)

Celia (pictured here) is retiring in a short while and I for one will miss her enthusiasm, not just for her own programme, but also for the work of the CPD Team. Good luck, Celia!

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!