What Every PD Leader Should Know | A Conversation with Bethan Hindley

engaging people in the early stages to hear their perception of what are the challenges in your classroom, what pupil needs would you like to better meet, versus hey guys since that day let's all do this one thing together and off you go later to make sense of what that means for you and your pupils. Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leaning, welcome to Education Leaders, the chat-topping leadership podcast for school leaders just like you. As an organisational coach I've helped thousands of leaders worldwide lead with greater confidence, make better decisions and create winning teams and on this show we explore the strategies that will help you achieve your goals and transform your leadership. Now this episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association and the Teacher Development Trust so stay tuned to learn more and that is the perfect segue because my guest today is Bethan Hindley from the Teacher Development Trust. Bethan leads the team that designs and delivers the

TDT's programmes and she's part of their executive team who shape the charity strategy and what I really love about the Teacher Development Trust, you will know that they're a partner of the podcast, it's their laser focus on making professional development actually work for school and if you've ever felt like your school PD's a bit all over the place or wondered why despite all the training sessions you're not seeing the impact you'd hope for, well this conversation is going to really resonate with you. We dig into why so much professional development feels fragmented, how to create a joined-up approach that actually moves your school forward and Bethan shares some brilliant practical advice for making your PD more strategic. Let's jump right in. So at the Teacher Development Trust we exist as a charity because we want to support schools to get the most out of the professional development that they're doing so we are often working with schools who are doing a huge amount of professional development. There's a lot of activity going on, people are very busy,

people are working very hard but what we see is fragmented CPD which is where there is an ECLR joined-up approach to the professional learning that's happening in a setting so despite the busyness and the hard work people are learning and often we do see that staff are improving individually but they're not working towards a common goal to meet the needs of their specific community of pupils or the specific improvement plans that the school has so it can feel like people are working really really hard but they're not necessarily going in the same direction together and they can't see what it's doing for their whole school community. It might be that individual colleagues recognise that they're improving but it's not working towards something that the whole school is doing together. This is really interesting because I just know that a lot of listeners are going to be listening now going ah this is me this is this is exactly me because we've all experienced that way you just feel like you're kind of just going it alone and if only there was a bit more joined-up approach we might be able to achieve some good things together. I'm just wondering is this kind of like a modern thing you think has happened with schools like this kind of focus on individual PD being king or something? That's a really interesting reflection I mean we absolutely see it

everywhere and something we're thinking about is what that means a larger scale so on aggregate when you have schools across the country or multiple countries who have so many people individually working separately the amount of time and money that is invested in that you start to see sort of millions and billions of pounds being spent but the changes aren't actually having a huge impact so I absolutely think there is something about individual access to learning that is available now with the new modes of technology that people have an individual interests but without a school leader or leaders being able to draw that together and support colleagues to share learning and work effectively together yeah it becomes quite individualistic and we don't see that impact on people outcomes that we're really hoping for when we're investing in teacher development. So I'm gonna challenge now like because I think there's going to be definitely listeners at that one side going yeah I hear this and then there's going to be listeners who are going but I hate it when we just have one size fits all PD that doesn't mean anything to me so I take it you're not advocating for that. Absolutely not because yeah we've all sat through those training sessions and to be honest I'm probably guilty of having delivered some of those in my past as a teacher and leader in schools so it's a really really difficult thing to get right because you are looking to present professional development for a team of your staff that is appropriate for your school community but you have colleagues with such a range of different professional backgrounds, a range of different professional experiences, a range of different beliefs and values that they bring when they arrive into school and in the profession. We're having to think about the learning that is going to meet those needs as well as the needs for our pupils and move everyone forward in the right direction together so I'm not saying the easy thing is just everyone gets the same training it's about the same thing it's not that but the answer isn't necessarily simple either because it's how do you meet people where they are and provide them the right training but that is also appropriate for your school community and your development priorities that you're working on together. That makes a lot of sense so that's a clear why and I think many

people will agree with that kind of balance. I wonder where we start what is our start in place as a leader to kind of go okay I understand it needs to be individual and meaningful to those individual teachers so that they're taking the step but equally I've got strategic priorities and we need to work towards that. That feels like an insurmountable challenge sometimes to leaders. Yeah it sounds really simple right just start where you are and go from there but I think that highlights the point is you've said first of all they've got strategic priorities. Is everyone clear on what those strategic

priorities are? So I would say the starting point is working with senior leaders to be really clear on what the school improvement priorities are. Why have those been chosen? What is it that you are seeing in classrooms or in the school community that has highlighted that need and what is the current practice at this point in time that you're seeing in those areas? So having a

really thorough understanding of where you are right now and where you want to get to so the gap of where you are now where you want to get to that's where the professional development comes in. So how are you going to move your colleagues from the point that you are in time to what you want to see in the future? What you want to see improvements in your pupils and in the classrooms are and then if you're seeing those improvements for pupils what do teachers need to be doing differently and how are you going to facilitate that? So I would say the most important thing is having a really thorough understanding of where you are right now and what that looks like and also to challenge that is what you're seeing in your perception is that a shared perception of all your colleagues because you might notice things in a different way to how other colleagues might see it so the most helpful thing at this point is having conversation with other senior leaders and saying I understand this to be a challenge does this reflect your understanding what else might we be able to do to improve this and checking that everyone has that shared understanding because often especially in senior leadership in schools where individual leaders have responsibility in different areas they might be naturally focusing on or noticing or seeing different areas of practice than what the colleagues are seeing so trying to really understand the starting point is so important in this area. That speaks really loudly to

me because a lot of the work I do Bethan is in how do you get that community voice together and how do you kind of leverage community and that's kind of what I've written on and done some work around that and of course for professional development sometimes you can think you as the leader know what the need is but it's just your perception until you've really investigated with the community whether it's theirs too and I'm thinking with my PD hat on or teacher hat on of the times where you've gone to a training in this school and you kind of like really scratching your head questioning what the relevance of this is to me or you're thinking gosh I've been asked to do x y and z and this training's on that I don't understand so sometimes you're almost like having to read the leader's mind to kind of understand what they're even trying to get to there's no alignment yeah exactly and I think as the leader as you've just said you can feel really strongly this is really important and spend a huge amount of time and effort developing a really powerful professional learning program or experience for colleagues but if there's that disconnect if it's not clear to colleagues why is it relevant to me what is the link between what you're asking me to learn about and the need of my pupils then that learning might just not be as effective as we want it to be so the communication is so important and engaging people in the early stages to hear their perception of what are the challenges in your classroom what pupil needs would you like to better meet how can we help you do that those sorts of questions and conversations can start to unearth a huge amount to gain that early buy-in as well so that colleagues can see ah okay I know that I've discussed with my head of department that I would like some more support in adaptive teaching for example and here I am in a session that's discussing adaptive teaching so I can see the relevance to this for me and for my pupils this is great versus hey guys it's inset day let's all do this one thing together and off you go later to make sense of what that means for you and your pupils is a very different experience there that makes a lot of sense if anyone listening is thinking like yeah Shane's pretty giddy today it's because I really am like because to develop a trust is an organization I'm very passionate about just before we came on Beth and I were talking about when I did your associate qualification during Covid times and how that really felt to me and I know you provide a lot of questions and conversation status as part of the work that you do as a charity with schools but also as part of the courses that you do that professional development for PD leaders which I know will come on to talk about but I want to circle back just to kind of sit this in context because we're talking about thinking about designing good PD but there's a big reason for this isn't it and that's because PD is one of the biggest levers we have on student outcomes what's the research around this well the EEF have found that especially when it comes to disadvantaged pupils as you said the biggest lever is professional development for staff when we think about the various different interventions we could make to improve outcomes with pupils it includes things such as giving them more contact time with teachers so extending school days extending school terms increasing the amount of times in classrooms all the way up to things like one-to-one tutoring if you think about the reality of those sorts of interventions the costs are incredibly high and it's really difficult to implement so in terms of the biggest lever and the way in which we can improve things for pupils is improving the effectiveness of the teaching that they're receiving and that has been shown in a range of different research papers to improve outcomes for pupils if you can improve the quality of the teacher in the classroom and the way in which they're supporting their pupils the outcomes improve and that doesn't happen without support for the teachers teachers can't just improve magically overnight by themselves they need facilitated and structured learning to help them get there and in a way that responds to their individual needs reflects what they value as a professional because teaching is a profession and it is really important that we recognize individuals have their own starting points they have their own experiences that they're bringing to the classroom they have their own beliefs and values so the learning that they take part in needs to engage with that as well and provide them those powerful learning opportunities to improve the effectiveness of their pupils that makes a lot of sense and I think many leaders maybe understand that innately that their biggest lever is their teachers and that makes a lot of sense the quality of teaching and therefore PD is a route to that and yet understandably as leaders we have got so much on our plate as school leaders like there's so many things to deal with that sometimes we just in order to kind of keep our cognitive load and our capacity we have to just make things simple for ourselves and I don't know if you've seen with schools you work with like certainly with international schools sometimes PD can be put in a bit of a box like it's okay what do you do for developing your staff and it can be like well every Monday the 40 minutes after school we have a workshop and it's floating different teachers run it or whatever and that's our PD or it's we send a group of staff to a conference each year or it's we have got someone on the MPQ a national professional qualification or something like that but what you're wanting I guess from what you were saying earlier on is where's that joined-up approach that is leading people towards a common goal and how strategic are you being for your PD yeah absolutely that so as I said earlier when we're engaging with schools it's not that we don't see professional development happening we see it happening but it is fragmented it's a lot of one-off or it's focused on things that don't enable teachers to take practice back into the classroom and practice and reflect and follow-up so as you said it's sort of that box off approach of look there is activity happening in this area I've got all my staff doing lots of these different sessions tick PD is happening but if we move away from the focus on the activity and you know where are the opportunities for staff practice to be changing and developing and for reflection it changes things quite significantly and that strategic focus of what specifically are you trying to achieve with your staff if you have a weekly 40 minutes that's a huge cost in terms of staff salary and staff time you know if you speak to any teacher if you had 40 minutes extra every week to be doing an activity to support your current work wow how amazing to have an extra 40 minutes so if we think about how carefully we want to be using that time given how busy staff are given how much workload there is we need to think really carefully about how we can use that time and for me it actually it comes down to being respectful of staff time because if you're gathering people together on a weekly basis that should be really effectively used that time you're saying this is really important because I'm asking you to spend a lot of time on this activity but if it's something that doesn't have that strategic focus and is fragmented then it's wasteful this episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association now I've been working with the ICA for quite a few years but they've been around for 30 years and they've been around championing quality unlocking potential and improving learning in international schools right around the world I really really love that at their core is a model for improving learning and this model is focused on the learning experience and they have tons of great curriculum materials PD resources and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours so if you're interested and I really do recommend you check them out head over to internationalcurriculum.com today's episode is supported by the teacher development trust TDT's associate qualification in CPD leadership is so perfect for international school leaders it's fully accredited and it's delivered online over 10 months in it you'll create an actual CPD that's a continuing professional development strategy for your school based on research that shows well-planned PD improves pupil outcomes and teacher attention and I actually did this program myself and hands down it's some of the best professional development I've ever done so much so that I am delighted to be co-delivering this special Asia cohort which starts in November if you want to learn more go to TD trust org or click the link in the show notes what I think is really important to remember is this is very normal to feel overwhelmed with professional development it's not a simple task to do and to get your head round it is tricky and if you're running a school and you've delegated PD to a time of day and you're kind of doing it on a cycle you're not alone this is like so common to do it in that way so don't feel like you're doing something that's not actually normal but what's important is to facilitate a way to engage with some of the good research and there is a lot of great work going on to help you and this was one of the things that when I did your program it really transformed me when I was leading PD across a group at a time and it really helped me to just go wow actually there's a lot written on this and there's a lot of good practice there and some of the changes that you have to make small strategic changes that can make a huge difference to the way your teachers engage and develop themselves and I think programs like the associate program are super good so we'd be daft if we didn't talk a little bit about that program so I mean would you be able to give a bit of the background about the teacher development trust and how this associate program has developed and what it achieves then maybe we'll talk about how we've got an exciting cohort coming up just for international schools in Asia as well yes absolutely and I think just to reiterate what you said the job of leading professional development is very very difficult it's very complicated and there's not much support for it it's often a role that people they promoted to it it's one of the best roles I think to have in school but there isn't that support to know how to do it properly so people work really hard to make the time for their staff to provide lots of access to excellent research and learning and are doing a really good job in that sense but those few small strategic changes that you've spoken about can make a really massive difference to the impact that professional development is having in the classroom so to speak to our charity at the program the associate qualification so the Teach Development Trust was founded by David Weston back in 2012 in Watford in his classroom and it very much came from a point of him I think noticing the lack of professional development that was supporting him with the needs that he had in his practice and wanting to find a way to address that so of course his solution was right let me make a national charity as you do as you do if you know David that is very much his approach he will throw all of his energy behind and actually that he can identify and make it just seem so obvious we think actually why is nobody talking about this we're investing so much time and money and teacher learning but it's not having an impact why we're not doing this better so over the last decade and a bit we've grown and we've worked in lots of different areas but the associate qualification is something it was one of our early programs started by David Weston and Bridget Clay after they wrote their book on Leashing Great Teaching great book definitely we often have it held up to us as the Bible in training sessions you can see all the tabs that have been added at the different pages it's a thoroughly read book it's a really great read I'd strongly recommend it if you haven't read it so David and Bridget started to design this program and over many years and different cohorts and you know we had to have a bit of a pivot in the pandemic because it did start as a face-to-face program that we've developed it over time so that it's now blended program that is delivered asynchronously as well as synchronous online sessions so that colleagues can join us from anywhere in the world and we are working together with Shane to do a specific cohort for leaders in an international setting because there are specific elements in the role and in your job that might be slightly different to leaders in the UK and the purpose of this program is to support leaders of professional development to improve the way in which they are delivering professional development in their context so we look at evidence informed practice at two different levels there's the are you using evidence to design and deliver professional development in an effective way and as you spoke about Shane there's a huge amount of research that we now have around what makes effective design of teacher learning and what is less effective what we know doesn't work as well so we delve very deeply as I'm sure you will attest to into the research and develop your understanding of what that then means for your setting in your current practice and help you to critically reflect on the challenges that you're grappling with and how you can improve the professional development in your setting. I could definitely attest to that it's a lot of information but delivered as one would expect from a charity that is all about professional development hopefully easy to digest and interact and you really get to explore that and this I really want to emphasize I mean for listeners if you've got PD leaders in your school or you are a PD leader in your school get your PD leaders on this course I can't recommend it enough and I partner with very few people on this podcast and currently a partner with the Teach Development Trust because I believe in what they do and I know the power so I think this is really important but what's particularly exciting I mean get on the course anyway but this cohort that is coming up is specifically for international schools in Asia and it will be for the time zone and I'll be co-delivering on the course as well to contextualize it for schools I know your schools I work with you all the time and we have very specific challenges and specific advantages sometimes with PD sometimes a PD can be something where in international schools it's not unheard of for people to go we've got pretty good budgets for this and yet we're still struggling to use it strategically right so there's a lot of good reason to get involved in a cohort that's specifically designed for your context in fact I remember on the course we talked about PD needing to be relevant right that being such a big key part of the research is relevance yeah so the way that we've designed the course the thing that you would take away from the program is an organizational plan to improve professional development in your specific setting so yes we look at the research and we work on understanding what that means but we then help you translate that into a plan for your specific setting and knowing how to find that relevance for your staff you just mentioned that and this was something that I really valued in the program is that you come away having created an organizational plan and not only that you get quite detailed feedback I remember my feedback on my plan and it was a real plan so it was not artificial I did this plan based on what I was actually doing at the time and I remember I mean I was working across a school group and this program was great for me so I was working with one particular school and we really dug deep and then that school used that PD plan I know the leader who will be listening into this podcast going oh we actually used that so this is what's great about a program that you can go into the theory you have got a great community of practice around you you're going to learn some of those things and you're going to actually apply it into your school situation this year yeah absolutely and we spoke a lot about the relevance and using your learning and so we can present you with all the research and we can talk to you about it and help you understand what the different ways the research is suggesting to design your PD program but without that support to help you take what you've understood from the research reflect on your setting and what that means for you and then apply it to a plan that learning around the research might just not feel as ingrained or might not be as useful for you so we really want to support you to make that step from theory to practice so taking the research and using it to form a plan and supporting you throughout that process so it's not just a go and read the research and off you go to make your plan we work on it together as you said we spend quite a lot of time providing that feedback on the plan to be a critical friend this is an important part of teacher and leadership learning we need to be able to have open and nice conversations about what's working well and where there are areas for improvement so we might highlight things that you have either are not considered or challenges in actually implementing that plan in your setting so for example we often see people who make really huge ambitious plans which read nicely but when you say how are you going to do this and who is going to be leading on this in your school because it can't just be you then they go okay actually yeah it's quite tricky how can we scale it back how can we just focus on the most important thing and make sure that you do that really well so yeah it's a really fun course to deliver yes and to be on and I'm really excited to co-deliver it with you and it's funny because I think I was that person who was maybe over-ambitious with my plan at the time and that feedback just helped me kind of bring it down but what I really liked is that the person who gave me my feedback at the time it just seemed so linked to what I was learning like sometimes you can be on a course and you've got a tutor and they'll give you feedback and it's not necessarily linked to everything you've been talking about you whereas this feels like you're looking at the base of quality research around what makes great teacher development and adult learning and then the school setting and then you're applying it in real life and then you're getting feedback by people who know that well I think that's really useful so that's the associate qualification go and check that out I have put links in the show notes so you can access that and have a read about it get in touch that's going to be absolutely fantastic and then what can we do let's say you know okay that sounds great but I'm just going into the next school year and actually I'm feeling energized at the minute and I think actually I would like to make PD a bit more effective for me I'm definitely going to silence that program so tick yeah gonna go do that but is there one thing you think schools could like look at as we go into this year that might make that PD just like a plus one if you like so the thing that I would really suggest to make the difference is looking at the plans that you have in place if you have any if you don't then you can reflect on that towards the end but thinking about your plans this year what's the key priority or maybe you've got two or three what are those priorities and how are they being revisited so if it really is a key priority we should see across your plans it might be a whole staff input for example but whereabouts in either phase or department time or in team meetings is that priority being revisited and then for individual staff members where are the opportunities for them to have reflective conversations and feedback from colleagues around their practice in that area as well so can you see that thread from the whole school priorities throughout the plans in your setting and if you can't see those how can you look at the existing plans that you have and make some small adaptations or existing meetings that are in place how can you add opportunities for follow-up and feedback because we often see people just adding more on it's not about adding more on it's about stripping back a bit and how can you keep the main thing the main thing and how does staff know that that's the main thing so how has it been communicated from you and from other colleagues because it shouldn't just be you as a professional development leader there should be some other colleagues supporting you in this whether it be middle leaders or other senior leaders is everybody clear on what the main thing is this year and how are people able to see that that is brilliant advice so clarity on what is your thing and then not just kind of doing a one-and-done at the start of the year but going how do we revisit how do we follow up how do we feed back throughout the year and I guess in much the same you're doing with your students in the classroom as well like revisiting often so it kind of cements what it is you're trying to achieve absolutely and I think that can be a really hard thing as a leader because you feel like a bit of a stuck record we're talking about this thing again because in your position that will be the thing that you're thinking probably a lot about and talking to lots of different colleagues about but for some colleagues they might not hear it that frequently it might be only a couple of interactions that they have with you or in sessions where they're reminded of that thing so don't be afraid to sound like that stuck record and you know sometimes that can even be funny where people go oh it's so and so again with that we're talking about the thing again it can become a bit of a trope but as long as people are clear on what the main thing is that's the most important thing in fact I'd say that's ideal like I've seen schools with their mission gets lost or whatever and there was that oh gosh I'm gonna struggle to know who said that you know about repeating a mission you know hundreds of times you just need to keep repeating it and I agree I think some of the best schools are the ones where people go oh they're talking about that thing again because they know it they feel it they get it yeah absolutely that and they can see why it's important to their pupils so it can sound a bit obvious but if you are delivering training sessions just making sure there is a really clear opportunity for colleagues to think about their own classrooms and it might be the last five or ten minutes at the end of the session say okay we've spoken about this as a whole team or as a whole staff group what would you do with this information to provide an opportunity to change your practice over the next few days a home like this work in your classroom is it appropriate for your classroom if not then that's another conversation what else might you need what other support can we provide but if it's something that really is that important there should be opportunities for colleagues to take that away and practice it pretty immediately you could probably hear it in my voice I love this conversation it got me thinking all about how we approach PD in our schools Bethans point about that fragmented PD really hit home you know when we're all working really hard or attending sessions or ticking boxes but somehow we're not moving in the same direction I think what struck me most was that emphasis on starting with clarity are we actually clear on our strategic priorities do our staff understand why we've chosen these priorities and crucially can they see the thread running from whole school priorities right through to their individual classroom practice so much practical advice in this episode to looking at your plans asking where those key priorities are being revisited through the year not just a big launch at the start of the term but ongoing opportunities for practice reflection feedback that actually embed the learning and that reminder that if you're a school leader you might feel like a stuck record talking about the same things over and over again but that's exactly what you should be doing your staff need to hear it many times to really get it if you're interested in the teacher development trust associate qualification which I am so giddy about especially that Asia co-op I mentioned you will find the links in the show notes please go check it out honestly if you've got PD leaders in your school or you're a PD leader yourself I cannot recommend this program highly enough it genuinely transformed how I approach professional development when I did the course a few years ago education leaders is hosted by me Shane Leaning thanks to the show editor Pete McGill and for the original music by Guillermo Silva and thank you so so much for tuning in today as ever if we don't speak before I'll see you here next week if you want to learn more about the brilliant work of the teacher development trust and the International Curriculum Association you can find them using the links in the show notes