Continuous Professional Development
Because the world that teachers are preparing young people to enter is changing so rapidly, and because the teaching skills required are evolving likewise, no initial course of teacher education can be sufficient to prepare a teacher for a career of 30 or 40 years. Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is the process by which teachers (like other professionals) reflect upon their competences, maintain them up to date, and develop them further.
The extent to which education authorities support this process varies, as does the effectiveness of the different approaches. A growing research base suggests that to be most effective, CPD activities should:
- be spread over time
- be collaborative
- use active learning
- be delivered to groups of teachers
- include periods of practice, coaching, and follow-up
- promote reflective practice
- encourage experimentation, and
- respond to teachers' needs.
Read more about this topic: Teacher Education
Famous quotes containing the words continuous, professional and/or development:
“There was a continuous movement now, from Zone Five to Zone Four. And from Zone Four to Zone Three, and from us, up the pass. There was a lightness, a freshness, and an enquiry and a remaking and an inspiration where there had been only stagnation. And closed frontiers. For this is how we all see it now.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“The belief that there are final and immutable answers, and that the professional expert has them, is one that mothers and professionals tend to reinforce in each other. They both have a need to believe it. They both seem to agree, too, that if the professional’s prescription doesn’t work it is probably because of the mother’s inadequacy.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“They [women] can use their abilities to support each other, even as they develop more effective and appropriate ways of dealing with power.... Women do not need to diminish other women ... [they] need the power to advance their own development, but they do not “need” the power to limit the development of others.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)