In the second part of this blog, reflecting on the importance of the first five years, Mandy Cuttler, Head of Pedagogy, Learning and Development, London Early Years Foundation (LEYF)/London Institute of Early Years shares how high quality CPD leadership in Early Years can help shape the first five years of a child’s life and significantly determine their future.
Early years leaders play a crucial role in facilitating high-quality professional development for their staff as it directly impacts the quality of care and education provided to young children. Research has consistently demonstrated a positive correlation between highly trained early years practitioners and the quality of education, leading to better outcomes for children (Josephidou et al., 2021).
The well-publicised funding and staffing challenges faced by the early years sector mean that early years settings are increasingly required to hire unqualified staff (DfE, 2023), therefore the role of professional development in equipping our workforce with the skills to support the learning and development of children during their formative years is crucial if we are to address the continuing achievement gap between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more affluent peers (Education Policy Institute, 2024).
Overcoming Barriers in Effective Early Years CPD
When seeking to source professional development for their teams, leaders may feel overwhelmed by the breadth of options available, and given the challenges many leaders face in releasing staff from ratio to attend training, it is important for leaders to feel equipped to select the professional development pathway that will have the maximum impact on teachers and ultimately, the children.
When devising an approach to professional development, leaders may find it useful to refer to the mechanisms outlined in the Education Endowment Foundation’s Guide to Effective Professional Development: in the Early Years (EEF, 2023).
Using these mechanisms as a guide can enable leaders to select relevant professional development opportunities, and support their teams to implement their new knowledge effectively to enhance their teaching.
As a social enterprise, operating 39 nurseries across London, many of which are in areas of high deprivation, London Early Years Foundation (LEYF) are acutely aware of the challenges currently faced by the early years sector. Staffing shortages coupled with chronic underfunding have resulted in a sector that is finding it difficult to attract and retain high-quality staff (Early Years Alliance, 2023).
This makes it even more challenging to ensure all staff are offered professional development opportunities, due to the need to maintain ratios whilst staff are out of the setting attending training, coupled with a lack of funding to pay for additional staff to cover their absence. This requires leaders to think creatively about how to facilitate professional development opportunities for their teams.
Making Space for Professional Development in Early Years
At LEYF, our managers are very aware of the importance of professional development, and will often include themselves in ratios to enable staff to attend training, or source cover from local LEYF nurseries. Additionally, the in-house Learning and Development team have adapted our approach to training. LEYF’s award-winning training provision, now part of LEYF’s London Institute of Early Years, is well established, having been developed over the past 20 years.
However, the technological advances brought about by the COVID pandemic have also given us opportunities to expand our reach, for example through our weekly online bitesize training sessions. These have proven to be an effective means to provide staff with opportunities to refresh their skills and knowledge and engage in reflective conversations about practice, without ever needing to leave their settings.
We have also made changes to the way our in-person training is delivered. Rather than delivering full-day training sessions, all training is now delivered in half-day sessions, which means that staff are able to open the nursery, cover their colleagues’ lunch breaks, and then travel to the training academy. We supplement our organisational-wide academy training with bespoke in-nursery training, where one of the Learning and Development team will deliver training sessions in the nursery, either at a nursery inset day or during a staff meeting.
Adapting Learning for The Workplace
LEYF also recognise that viewing professional development as simply attendance at a classroom-based session is a restrictive approach, and has a team of Pedagogy Coaches, whose role is to work on the floor alongside nursery teams, role modelling practice, demonstrating teaching techniques, providing feedback to teachers and empowering them to think critically about their practice and provision.
Adapting our offer to provide a range of options means that our staff are able to engage in professional development in a myriad of ways; attending training through our academy provides opportunities for staff from different settings to exchange ideas, good practice and engage in pedagogical conversations. This also enables managers to tailor training opportunities to the individual needs of each staff member. However, delivering training to an entire nursery team helps teams to develop a shared language, shared vision, and shared commitment to implementing new practices and approaches.
Being able to see teaching strategies used in practice, followed by reflective conversations with the Pedagogy Coaches, means those all-important spontaneous learning opportunities are utilised. This flexible approach, coupled with aligning our design and delivery with the EEF’s recommended mechanisms for effective professional development (EEF, 2023), means that we are able to ensure our staff teams are engaged in a cycle of continuous learning.
Our Mechanisms for High Quality Professional Development in Early Years
What follows is an exemplification of how some of these mechanisms are applied to our professional development design, and whilst examples are provided under each set of mechanisms, there are practices that encompass numerous mechanisms at once.
1. Building knowledge
Figure 2. Building knowledge mechanisms. Adapted from EEF, 2023, p.6
It is important that the limited time early years practitioners have to engage in training opportunities is used wisely. This group of mechanisms largely relate to the structure and delivery method of professional development sessions. Those designing professional development programmes must ensure they do not contain an overload of information, and may instead opt to focus on key learnings that participants should gain through attending.
It is also helpful to consider how professional development provides opportunities for participants to revisit prior learning, as retrieval of learning can increase the retention of new information.
As a Teacher Development Trust Delivery Partner, LEYF offers the NPQEYL programme to all of our Nursery Managers and Deputy Nursery Managers, to enhance their confidence and skills as early years leaders. The programme is broken down into distinct themes and chapters, avoiding participants becoming overwhelmed by receiving a large amount of information at once.
This approach provides clarity to participants on the key learning from each chapter and enables them to focus on the acquisition of new knowledge. The programme consists of a blend of asynchronous online content, live virtual seminars and in-person workshops. Both virtual and in-person taught sessions include an element of retrieval practice, where participants are asked to revisit prior learning, check their understanding, and contextualise this knowledge to their own
2. Motivate staff
Figure 3. Motivating teachers mechanisms. Adapted from EEF, 2023, p.6
It is crucial that professional development and the implementation of new knowledge and skills is motivational. Professional development is sometimes viewed as remedial; simply a means of addressing concerns about an individual’s performance.
Whilst professional development should absolutely enhance the skills and therefore the performance of those who attend, it is important for settings to avoid perpetuating the narrative that professional development opportunities should be reserved for those who are less confident, skilled or experienced than their peers, as this can cause professional development to be demotivating, or lead teachers to wonder whether they are being asked to attend training because they are not performing well.
At LEYF, all staff are offered professional development opportunities regardless of their level of experience, confidence or seniority. A culture of continuous learning is role-modelled by senior management and the Learning and Development team, who themselves frequently engage in professional learning. This also serves to ensure that those facilitating professional development are viewed as credible sources of knowledge, which is key to motivating learners.
A Research Culture
LEYF is a research focussed organisation, that actively seeks to bridge the often-lamented gap between those who carry out educational research and those who ‘do’ education. All of our training programmes make reference to both well-established and contemporary theory, as we work with teachers to enable them to put theory into practice and articulate the pedagogical rationale behind every element of their practice, from the way they manage care routines to the planned activities and learning experiences offered to the children.
Teachers are also encouraged to carry out their own action research projects, which often stem from professional curiosity about a challenge they are facing within their settings, or a desire to make improvements.
All of our nursery teams regularly carry out reflective assessments of their provision, using the LEYF Pedagogy Development Scales (LPDS), a self-audit tool framed around the LEYF Pedagogy, and set themselves targets to drive continuous quality improvements.
Progress towards these targets is reviewed by nursery teams with the support of their allocated Pedagogy Coach. Both goal setting and reviewing progress are key to both motivating staff and embedding practice, and the impact of this is clear at LEYF, where nursery staff talk enthusiastically about how they are working towards their targets and how their drive for quality improvements positively impacts children’s experiences.
3. Developing teaching techniques
Figure 4. Developing teaching techniques mechanisms. Adapted from EEF, 2023, p.6
Two of the mechanisms within this category suggest that effective professional development involves instructing teachers on the use of new techniques and providing opportunities to practice these techniques. At LEYF this is a teaching approach incorporated into many of our programmes.
For example, when seeking to train teachers in the use of dialogic reading strategies (an approach to sharing stories that we advocate at LEYF), the session provides opportunities for teachers to practice the techniques in a safe and low-stakes way, by reading stories to each other and giving peer feedback. This approach is often referred to as deliberate practice, and research suggests that engaging in deliberate practice, followed by feedback from peers enhances the effectiveness of professional development programmes (Bronkhorst et al., 2014).
Learning Outside the Classroom
However, simply attending a standalone workshop is not sufficient to embed the implementation of new knowledge and skills, therefore further steps are needed outside the classroom, to help cement the teachers’ new learning. Social support is also a feature of effective professional development, and effective social support networks can develop into communities of practice.
Recognising the lack of training available to early years Chefs, LEYF created an NCFE/Cache-endorsed training programme aimed at supporting Chefs’ understanding of young children’s nutritional needs and helping them to understand how to support young children’s holistic development through cooking and other food-based activities.
Since the inception of this programme, LEYF Chefs have engaged in regular professional development opportunities where they discuss techniques they use to support children’s learning, engage in group problem-solving, and share their expertise with their peers. The impact of this has been remarkable, with many Chefs indicating that they feel more confident working directly with the children and feel more valued as part of the nursery team. Nursery Managers have noted the improved confidence, motivation, and skills of their Nursery Chefs.
4. Embed EYFS Leadership and Development Practice
Figure 5. Embedding practice mechanisms. Adapted from EEF, 2023, p.6
Leaders often overlook this category of professional development mechanisms. Leaders may arrange for their staff to attend a training course, and be disappointed when they don’t see lasting change as a result. This is because it is crucial to follow up training with opportunities to practice using their new skills in context, to create action plans to embed new practices and to monitor progress.
The LEYF learning and development team incorporates several Pedagogy Coaches, whose role is to work on the nursery floor alongside staff, role modelling practice, providing feedback to nursery staff, and adopting a coaching approach to encourage them to reflect on their practice and drive quality improvements.
Peer observations are central to our approach to professional development, and we often use them as a learning opportunity for all. An experienced teacher may ask an Apprentice to observe them reading with the children and ask them to pay particular attention to the way they incorporate the dialogic reading prompts into the story, or a teacher who has just learned about the SHREC approach may ask a more experienced peer to observe them interacting with the children, to provide feedback on their use of the strategies.
Making Change Happen
An often overlooked element of professional development is the importance of viewing the implementation of new knowledge and skills as a process rather than an event, and planning this through the lens of change leadership. At LEYF, we recognise that often resisting change impedes progress. Thus, it can hinder the effectiveness and impact of professional development programmes. Therefore, we created an approach to change that. Staff across the organisation are encouraged to use this model to enable them to plan change carefully, and maximise their chances of success.
Figure 6. LEYF’s model for making change happen
The change model above is included in all professional development sessions designed and delivered by the LEYF Learning and Development team, with learners encouraged to use this as a template to formulate an action plan for putting their new skills and knowledge into practice. This helps to ensure that after attending professional development programmes, learners leave with clear follow-up activities, a coherent plan of how they will cascade their knowledge to their team, and an understanding that in seeking to adopt and embed new approaches to the care and education of young children it is crucial that they give themselves and their teams the time and space to practice, make mistakes and learn from each other along the way.
References
- Bronkhorst, L.H., Meijer, P.C., Koster, B. and Vermunt, J.D. (2014) Deliberate practice in teacher education. European Journal of Teacher Education, 37(1), pp.18-34.
- Department for Education (2023). 2022 Childcare and Early Years Provider Survey (SCEYP). Available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/childcare-and-early-years-provider-survey/2022 (Accessed: 15 December 2023).
- Education Endowment Foundation (2023) Guide to Effective Professional Development in the Early Years. Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/support-for-schools/evidence-for-the-early-years/early-years-evidence-store/guide-to-effective-professional-development-in-the-early-years (Accessed: 6 November 2023).
- Early Years Alliance (2023) Breaking point: The impact of recruitment and retention challenges on the early years sector in England. Available at: https://www.eyalliance.org.uk/breaking-point-impact-recruitment-and-retention-challenges-early-years-sector-england (Accessed: 15 December 2023).
- Education Policy Institute (2024) Annual Report 2024. Available at: https://epi.org.uk/annual-report-2024/ (Accessed: 26 July 2024).
- Josephidou, J., Rodriguez-Leon, L., Bennett, S., Bolshaw, P., Musgrave, J. and Jonathan Rix (2021) Where measurement stops: A review of systematic reviews exploring international research evidence on the impact of staff qualification levels in ECEC on the experiences of, and outcomes for, children and families. Available at: https://oro.open.ac.uk/81980/1/Where%20measurement%20stops_FINAL.pdf (Accessed 26 July 2024).