Designing an evidence-informed trust-wide professional development programme

Richard Harvey-Swanston, Kerri Burns, Tiff Cole

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle

Abstract

Teacher professional development (PD) is a critical factor influencing student outcomes (Cordingly, 2015) and teacher retention (EEF, 2023). While research has extensively explored the characteristics of effective PD, the process of translating evidence into actionable PD design remains under-investigated. This case study addresses this gap by reporting our approach to designing evidence-based PD for middle leaders at the University of Brighton Academies Trust (UoBAT), a group of 14 infant, primary and secondary academies spanning East and West Sussex.

Our brief was to design, implement and evaluate PD for newly established subject leader groups (‘faculties’), with the aims of improving subject leadership, student outcomes and cross-trust collaboration, and form part of a wider strategy to enable colleagues to develop sustainable, self-leading and evidence-informed professional learning communities. UoBAT academies serve a range of different communities and face different challenges. Consequently, our trust strategy identifies key common priorities while seeking to value and foster the individual character of each academy. We see the significance of context also reflected in the application of research to practice where generalisability is challenging; what works well in one setting is not guaranteed to do so in another. For us, applying evidence to practice is less about enacting research insights or selecting well-trialled PD models (e.g. Lesson Study) and more about understanding how our strengths, needs and contextual parameters connect with the existing research literature so that we might best judge what ‘appropriate’ means for us now and in the longer term.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)40-41
Number of pages2
JournalImpact
Volume22
Publication statusPublished - 24 Sept 2024

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