Almost by accident, CPD has been transformed in the past few months to become something quite different from what it was before.

To meet the challenges of school closures, leaders have innovated to support their colleagues with remote learning, and many teachers have turned to an array of online learning opportunities. Teacher development has, rather inadvertently, become remote and personalised, and has been made to fit around new routines.

What questions should we ask of our brave new world of teacher development? Research evidence is not easily matched to this coronavirus crisis. We need to consider the existing “best bets” on teacher development and apply them to our current context.

So, let’s focus on the most common form of CPD over the past few months: short video sessions on almost every conceivable subject (I’ve enjoyed many myself).

This can offer a rich opportunity for teachers to take control of their own professional development. Indeed, because the medium offers flexibility, it gives teachers the chance to build their own personalised CPD menu with the expert input in which they are interested.

However, if we scrutinise the research evidence on teacher development, it should give us pause. Such evidence indicates strongly that one-off communications, such as an expert video, simply won’t be enough to support the complex habit change required for sustained development.

Where we need to linger is on the c-word in that familiar CPD label: “continuous”.

The available evidence reveals that sustained training, with feedback, modelling and wrap-around support (eg, coaching) - from colleagues or external people - is required if teachers are to make gains in the classroom based on their training.

And if you look at effective training programmes, such as the independently evaluated Embedded Formative Assessment, they include carefully orchestrated professional learning communities. These provide structured peer observations and carefully chosen formative assessment strategies that offer wraparound support.

So, while watching a talk by an expert can prove illuminating and exciting, turning such new knowledge into action is less likely without sustained support and new school structures to facilitate teacher learning.

Alongside this, the evidence suggests that teachers require practical tools and they need to talk with their colleagues.

So, it may be tempting to see the CPD of the previous few months as a new dawn and something we should take with us into the “new normal”, but we should be cautious.

Can video be as effective as in-person training? How much training is enough? Do training sessions have to be synchronous or can they be accessed more flexibly?

Patently, we need to learn more about remote adult learning as schools rebuild and bounce back from the coronavirus crisis.

Alex Quigley is national content manager for the Education Endowment Foundation, a former teacher and the author of Closing the Reading Gap and Closing the Vocabulary Gap

This article originally appeared in the 17 July 2020 issue under the headline “Is this a brave new world for teacher CPD?”