Why deciding what not to do is the key to better teacher development

Over the past decade, teacher development has undergone one of the most significant transformations in English education.

Not so long ago, professional development was often characterised by one-off Inset sessions, disconnected initiatives and variable quality. There were, of course, many excellent examples of practice, but they were not always easy to find or available to everyone.

Professional development felt like something that simply happened to teachers, rather than something explicitly designed to help them grow as professionals.

Today, while those challenges have not disappeared entirely, the conversation has changed. Across the profession, teacher development is increasingly understood as something sustained over time, rooted in classroom practice, informed by evidence and embedded within the everyday life of schools.

That shift reflects the work of many people and institutions: schools and trusts investing in their own professional cultures; the emergence of teaching school hubs and research schools; the introduction of the Early Career Framework and reformed National Professional Qualifications; the growth of the Chartered College of Teaching; and organisations such as the Teacher Development Trust (TDT), which helped challenge long-held assumptions about how teachers learn best.

The recent announcement that TDT will become part of the Chartered College marks an opportunity to reflect on just how far teacher development has come and to consider the challenges that lie ahead.

Effective teacher professional learning

When TDT was founded in 2012, it helped articulate a different vision for professional learning. Under David Monis-Weston’s leadership, and later Gareth Conyard’s, it shifted the conversation away from courses and events towards professional culture, expertise and sustained improvement.

The publication of Developing Great Teaching in 2015 gave the profession a clearer understanding of what effective professional development looked like, including the need for it to be focused on improving outcomes for children and young people.

Equally importantly, TDT championed ideas that now feel entirely familiar to many of us: that collaboration matters; that teachers learn best when they are actively engaged in improving their own practice; and that professional enquiry should sit at the heart of school improvement.

The influence of Matthew Kraft and John Papay’s work on supportive professional environments also ran through much of its thinking. Their message was simple, yet important: teachers improve more quickly and are more likely to remain in the profession when they work in schools where collaboration, trust and professional agency are taken seriously.

These ideas are no longer the preserve of a handful of organisations. The language of instructional coaching, implementation, deliberate practice and professional enquiry has become part of the profession’s shared vocabulary. Many trusts have built coherent professional development strategies of their own, while national reforms have created a stronger infrastructure for teacher development than existed a decade ago.

The sector is no longer debating whether professional development matters. Increasingly, the conversation has moved towards questions of quality, coherence, implementation and impact. That represents genuine progress, and organisations such as TDT have played an important part in bringing us here.

How to prioritise teacher CPD

The challenge for school leaders now is what to prioritise. As access to high-quality professional development has improved, leaders have been left navigating a landscape that is rich with opportunity but crowded with competing demands.

Alongside national programmes sit trust offers, subject hubs, conferences, consultancy support, online platforms and an expanding range of specialist training opportunities.

Meanwhile, every new Department for Education initiative seems to arrive with a compelling rationale and an accompanying professional development requirement.

For example, few would not welcome the government’s focus on strengthening special educational needs and disabilities expertise across the workforce. Yet schools are simultaneously responding to curriculum reform, accountability changes, recruitment challenges, workforce pressures and changing expectations around flexible working and wellbeing.

Every one of these developments makes legitimate demands on teachers’ time and attention. Schools cannot continue to add indefinitely without making difficult decisions about priorities.

Powerful teacher learning is taking place in schools

As we move forward, helping schools become more discerning consumers of professional development, more confident creators of professional learning and, occasionally, more comfortable deciding what not to do may prove every bit as important as creating new programmes.

This matters because some of the most powerful professional learning taking place today is not happening in conference centres or hotel meeting rooms; it is happening in departments, coaching conversations, trust networks and groups of teachers working together to solve problems for the children and young people in front of them.

Across the system, schools are increasingly recognising that professional development is not something delivered to teachers but something built with them.

The next chapter of teacher development will not be defined by another programme or another framework; it will be defined by whether we can build coherent professional cultures that enable teachers to keep learning throughout their careers while protecting the time, trust and professional agency on which that learning depends.

The TDT helped shape that journey. Its integration into the Chartered College marks the end of one important chapter, but the wider story of teacher development is still being written.

Kathryn Morgan is leadership and workforce specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders.

Sam Gibbs is trust curriculum and development lead for Greater Manchester Education Trust, and deputy chair of the Trust Wide CPD Leaders’ Forum