Last month, TDT’s Expert Working Party gathered for the second time in our exploration of ‘The Discipline of Teaching Teachers’. This session delved deep into the outcomes from consultations with teachers and school leaders, aiming to deepen our understanding of the incredibly complex and often ‘messy’ challenge of identifying the unique characteristics of teachers as learners.
What emerged was a strong message: it’s less about what is taught and far more about how teachers learn.
‘There’s definitely something unique and individual about this discipline… it’s complex…But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t tackle it. We should embrace the messiness of it to create, perhaps, a more personalised approach.’ (Emma Hollis, NASBTT)
Here are the key insights from our discussions, shedding light on the ‘how’ and the nuanced landscape of teacher learning:
CPD for deeper learning
Our conversations with teachers and school leaders revealed an overwhelming emphasis on the processof professional development over just the content. For professional learning to truly stick and make a difference to practice and ultimately to pupils, teachers and leaders identified that it needed to be:
1. Aligned with identity and impact
Teachers engage most deeply when learning resonates with their professional identity and they can clearly see its tangible impact on their pupils from the outset. They need confidence that their time and effort will directly benefit pupil outcomes.
‘If I’m going to spend an hour of my time, I want it to impact on my teaching in the classroom.’ (Classroom teacher)
2. Driven by dialogue and collective sense-making
Teachers are not passive learners; learning is most effective when they can collectively make sense of new ideas, discuss their practical application, and unpick learning with peers.
3. Focused on practical application
While teachers recognise the vital role of underpinning research, it is the practical, applicable insights that directly support them to bridge theory and classroom reality. The goal isn’t just deep research understanding, but knowing how to apply it for impact.
‘Where people have taken the lead on demonstrating things to me and that’s had a bigger impact whether that be micro lessons you know isolated things so we can actually see it in practice or going and visiting lessons.’ (Classroom teacher)
4. Contextualised and nuanced
It is vital for engagement that learning reflects the real-world complexities of schools. Effective professional development helps teachers understand how to apply concepts in their specific contexts and adjust them for various scenarios, moving beyond ‘perfect scenario’ examples.
5. Flexible and accessible:
Busy teachers value learning opportunities that fit into their demanding schedules and don’t take them away from their day job for extended periods. Large, unallocated blocks of time for CPD can, ironically, inhibit genuine learning.
Challenges in teacher learning
As the group synthesised their thinking and these findings, discussions unearthed some critical challenges and areas for further exploration to truly unpack how teachers learn and the CPD considerations that need to be accounted for within this piece of work.
1. Experience as a barrier and cognitive load
While teacher experience is a significant asset, it is often the increasing demands of more senior roles, or added responsibilities placed on highly experienced teachers, that can inadvertently contribute to the feeling of overwhelm that often impacts engagement in professional learning.
Our working party carefully considered ‘cognitive overload,’ acknowledging that if professional learning aligns deeply with teachers’ beliefs, values, and real-world challenges, it should actually reduce this overwhelm and foster more profound engagement. This highlights a broader need for clarity in how such terms are used within this discipline.
2. Autonomy and collective responsibility
A key discussion point was that of the teacher’s desire to have ownership over their development – a sense of autonomy around their learning. There was a clear alignment between the working party and consultations that, although autonomy is crucial, this still needs to be within a clear school structure.
‘What a teacher perceives as being absolutely crucial with their learners in their room [should directly relate to] a school development plan. (Professor Caroline Daly, UCL)
However, the working party discussion further highlighted the need for a common understanding of the collective responsibility for student success and interdependence among all educators. This shifts the focus from ‘I’m an individual striking out as an island, [to] I’m an individual who’s part of a collective endeavor.’ This collective accountability fosters an environment where no single teacher is solely responsible for a child’s outcomes.
A key discussion centred on the delicate balance between providing research context and ensuring practical application.
While teachers value research, their primary focus is on how learning translates to immediate, tangible impact for students. This points to a significant gap in sharing practical classroom examples, given research’s long-term focus.
4. Beyond a one-size fits all
All education professionals agree that teacher learning isn’t, and shouldn’t be, a one-size-fits-all approach. The diverse career stages (early career, mid-career, senior leadership), the context within which they work and individualised needs make the teaching of teachers incredibly complex.
This argues strongly for personalised approaches over single-model solutions.
5. Teachers as co-designers
To tackle these complexities, it’s vital to consider teachers as explicit co-designers of professional learning, rather than passive recipients. This involves openly working with teachers to identify what learning is happening, how it is happening, what needs to happen, and how it can happen.
Furthermore, support is needed for teachers to understand themselves in the process of learning and teaching, recognising how their personal beliefs and drivers impact their work and how school culture fosters effective practice. This includes creating opportunities to make explicit what is often habitual in teaching, allowing for reflection on decisions and open discussion.
Looking ahead: shaping the future of teacher development
These powerful insights from the working party along with teachers and leaders are guiding our next steps as we work to define this critical discipline of teaching teachers. Over the coming months, TDT will begin to define specific language and concepts that could help to establish a shared understanding of this discipline.
We plan to share this more widely with those leading CPD in the Autumn term. Our aim here is to begin a wider conversation around effective CPD design and delivery that really takes account of how teachers learn for long term impact.
