RESEARCH
Working in further education for nearly 40 years, teaching students and training teachers, I developed a strong interest in how FE teachers and trainers can do the best for their students. This led me to study for a professional
doctorate focusing on transformative models of continuing professional development (CPD). My small-scale qualitative fieldwork was carried out in a large FE college and focused on teachers’ views about the quality of their CPD and its impact on their practice. I interviewed 17 teachers from 14 different curriculum areas, and a focus group considered how to improve CPD. At this time, Ofsted was still gathering college data about teaching, learning and assessment (TLA) based on the crude 1-4 grading scale, and it became apparent that a damaging split had developed between teachers’ real, everyday practices and the performances teachers had learned to develop when being observed. Although my fieldwork was small- scale, it uncovered consistently alarming accounts of CPD that’s a waste of everybody’s time; for example, how to produce a grade 1 lesson, how to put on a show for Ofsted, and how to complete reams of paperwork to impress managers and evidence good practice. Little of this training transfers into
everyday TLA practice because it is so distant from the real concerns of
REFERENCES
• Evers, J. and Kneyber, R. (2016). Flip the System: Changing Education from the Bottom Up. Oxon: Routledge.
• Habermas, J. (1987). The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 2. The Critique of Functionalist Reason. Thomas McCarthy (translator). Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Kennedy, A. (2005). Models of Continuing Professional Development: a framework for analysis. Journal of In-Service Education, 31 (2): pp.235-250.
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• O’Leary, M. (2013). Expansive and restrictive approaches to professionalism in FE colleges: the observation of teaching and learning as a case in point. Research in Post-Compulsory Education. 18 (4): pp.364-384.
• Timperley, H. (2011). Realizing the Power of Professional Learning. Maidenhead: University Press.
RESEARCH
SE ARCHARCH
Dr Alison Scott is a lead associate trainer for emfec – the professional development wing of the East Midlands Skills and Education Group. She has worked in the further education and skills sector for nearly 40 years, in a variety of teaching, management and staff training roles.
‘Putting CPD back in the hands of teachers – where it belongs’
Why has teachers’ CPD been top-down for so long? And what can be done to facilitate more collaborative and individual ownership of professional practice? Dr Alison Scott calls for some transformative thinking.
teachers: their students’ progress and the knowledge and relationships required to bring about this progress. With CPD budgets often squeezed amid ongoing funding pressures, surely it makes sense to utilise the knowledge and experience of the experts within our own organisations: the teachers themselves? By using the metaphors of parlour and kitchen I explored how teachers could take control of their own practices. I interpreted the parlour as a stiff and artificial place, similar to a traditional working-class notion of the parlour – ‘kept for best’. In contrast, the kitchen represents the messy nub of teachers’ practice, where people are
nurtured and supported, and where they collaborate and resolve issues of practice. Here are my key findings:
• What has happened to professional and vocational knowledge – or content? There has been way too much emphasis in the sector on teaching skills for the parlour. So, how to teach has been the focus, to the detriment of what specifically needs to be taught and when.
• The art of knowing what is most important to teach (from a syllabus too large to cover in the hours permitted), and when to teach (using a well-considered scheme of work) has been neglected in the rush to evidence teaching tricks and skills that will score well in lesson observations.
• Teachers are seriously worried about their ability to stay resilient as the problems of the wider education and social system are visited upon them. For example, expectations around English and maths achievement, more students presenting with mental health issues, and keeping their students safe.
• Teachers want to talk honestly about their practice issues, with each other and with those managers who listen and show a genuine interest in kitchen practice development. They are less interested in how to consistently perform or jump through set hoops in order to appear ‘outstanding’.
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