Planning and supporting effective professional development with your team
Arranging our own continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities is one thing but, planning moments for professional development within a team is another! The benefits of CPD are well-documented and well-established, but ensuring that these opportunities are accessible to everyone and effective for practice can be challenging.
At the Institute, we pride ourselves on giving individuals the autonomy to explore their own professional development opportunities and reflect on them. But we also recognise the part that managers and leaders play in empowering, motivating and supporting their whole team to flourish. So, in this learning workout, we’ll have a look at some of the ways you can support your team by setting up CPD that is effective and valuable for their precious time.
What is effective CPD?
It's continuous!
We never stop learning and the experiences we are fed through work help to sustain an appetite for constantly wanting to learn more. Effective CPD is continuous in the sense that there is always room to improve. It can seem exhausting to think of all the things we don’t know (yet!), but with a growth mindset the prospect of always growing in knowledge and confidence can be an empowering opportunity for greater things to come.
It's professional!
Everyone is a professional, despite the sometimes skewed perceptions encountered when working with children. Those who work in early education and care have an important identity, and a skillset that is unique to the working environment and responsibilities of educating and caring for young children. When it comes to CPD, it can be challenging to find the time during a busy work day where the unpredictable often happens! But, here at the Institute, we believe the scope for CPD should be one enriched in evidence-based, high-quality practice, best placed to support and inform your working life in accessible ways that weave into your professional life, not sit outside it, or create barriers within it.
It's developing!
Just as we never stop learning, the world never stops turning and people never stop growing. Knowledge is not a static product, picked off a shelf and consumed to tick a box and rack up the certificates. Effective professional development contains so much more than just the initial learning content. It allows us to reflect on the immediate learning that has taken place and evaluate what this means for future practice. It involves returning to the same article or the same infographic later on to reassess your thoughts on the topic from a perspective with enhanced experience. Development is about pursuing new ventures, clicking those external links, and exploring developed ideas and new questions beyond the initial resource.
What to ask yourself when planning for CPD
When we support the team with the continuous adventure of professional development, it’s important that the intentions come from a self-motivated desire to learn more. Identifying areas for improvement is something that can be supported by managers and leaders through observations and supervisions, but we need to ensure that the individual is wanting to engage in the topic area to maximise its impact. Once this is established, it’s time to start thinking about how CPD can be carried out in a way that is meaningful and relevant to the individual member and their practice in the present, and beyond. Whether it’s a training session, a dedicated webinar or time for reading an article, CPD moments come in many shapes and forms but it’s about ensuring the appropriateness of the resource for the individuals involved.
Some questions to ask to ensure the development opportunity is going to have the biggest impact might include:
Who is it for?
CPD is continuous and about developing, which means that there are opportunities designed for complete beginners, through to experts in the field who are looking to learn about new perspectives and engage in ongoing knowledge growth. Ensuring that CPD opportunities are designed for the experience and comprehension of the individual team member is important to sustain confidence and motivation. If the content is designed for someone with less experience than themselves, it is likely they will be repeating basic knowledge that they have a good understanding of already, and potentially cause feelings of boredom around the area. If the content is aimed at someone with more experience, it might miss out foundation knowledge that leaves the professional lacking confidence in their ability and becoming disengaged with the subject area.
Does it build on knowledge?
One aspect of professional development involves building upon existing knowledge and building new knowledge to inform best practice. This might surround an emerging concept, understanding a new policy or developing a confident understanding on a theoretical approach to learning. Creating opportunities for knowledge to grow is one step towards sustaining professional practice that can be applied with a full understanding of why these decisions have been made, relating knowledge directly with the skills of best practice, translated into rich learning environments for the children in our care.
Does it motivate change?
Cultivating a strong bank of knowledge is an effective initial step to thinking about broadening horizons and weaving direct knowledge and contemporary research with everyday practice, but it is useless if kept in our heads! Effective CPD doesn’t just add more knowledge, but gives professionals an excited sense of driving change. Providing effective CPD doesn’t just mean that it gives us the capability to use new knowledge and skills, but that it encourages us to do something with it! Think about this aspect before committing to a CPD opportunity to ensure its impact will be felt throughout practice too.
Concluding thoughts
CPD can come in many different forms, suited to a variety of circumstances and needs, but it’s essential that the engagements we have in additional training, knowledge-building opportunities and moments for growth are effective in their implementation too. Have open conversations with your team about the most useful aspects of development, who is best suited and most engaged to lead in this area, and the plans for how to implement change because of it.
Think about your current team and ask them to identify areas in which they would like to know more. Are there any common themes that emerge? Do they align with what you were expecting? Use this to inform your next CPD opportunity.
