Over the past 10 years, reams of research has been made accessible to teachers - from the EEF to researchED to simply being shared on Twitter - and I’ve certainly witnessed the impact of this in schools I’ve worked with.

However, knowing is one thing but doing is another. A perennial problem in teaching is that an interesting CPD session leads to the good intention to try out new ideas in the classroom, but then disappears in the face of workload pressures, meaning teachers stick to what they know.

But using best practice ideas is something all teachers want to achieve. So, how can schools ensure efforts to deliver CPD turn into on-the-ground best practice?

1. Consider the environment

Firstly, schools should ensure any professional development is relevant for their context. For example, if pupils are challenging teachers on the basics of behaviour, embedding questioning is a tough ask as their attention will usually be elsewhere in the classroom.

If you want to ask all pupils to watch the teacher when they talk, you’ll need to think through your room structure; making eye contact will be harder in a horseshoe layout or group tables.

The operational side of the change being fully thought through should be a prerequisite to any improvements you’re looking to embed.

2. Provide the chance to practise

We’ve largely accepted that practising key skills and concepts is a must-have for a successful lesson - but how about when training our colleagues? We must build deliberate practice into in-school CPD.

This can be as simple as setting aside time in sessions to get teachers to practise any new skills being shared. This helps to move a theoretical concept into a real-world example that teachers can then feel confident about embedding in their classroom practice.

The chance to try things out before using them in the classroom is one reason why instructional coaching has such a strong evidence base: it allows teachers to hone a key facet of their teaching and practise it with their coach, and then feel confident using this in class.

3. Target sessions and make them relevant

Whole-school professional development is always a challenge when you have everyone from new teachers to seasoned professionals, SLT to teaching assistants focused on one thing.

This can mean sessions feel irrelevant to some colleagues, making them less likely to land. Then there is the challenge of how long you spend focused on one topic: too long and it feels repetitive; move on too soon and you risk overloading people with new ideas.

Ideally, then, you need to find a sweet spot that gives each element of your school a clear focus for their CPD. One headteacher I know does this by running whole-staff CPD only twice in a six-week block.

The remaining four weeks are set aside for middle leaders to develop their teams in their subject areas - including practising and building on the whole-school input.

This means each member of staff feels CPD is aimed at them and directly relevant, rather than simply being a session they have to attend regardless of its purpose.

4. Create secure motivation

Teachers are often consciously or unconsciously reluctant to change their methods because they have had great success using their current ones.

As such, it is vital that leaders articulate the improvement the change will lead to and why it’s important.

For example, I’ve always been surprised at how resistant colleagues are to move away from marking and towards whole-class feedback. If colleagues have secured great results for pupils, they may fear that doing less could reduce their impact.

In this example, taking the time to narrate the change in their working lives by removing hours and hours of written feedback alongside the likelihood of pupils continuing to do well with carefully delivered, timely whole-class feedback is vital to reassure colleagues.

Whatever the change, all leaders need to be consistent in explaining what the school is hoping to achieve and why teachers need to get behind the CPD helping to deliver on this.

5. Be honest and open with feedback

Finally, whether CPD has an impact will depend on relationships that ensure feedback is given and received where practice is not yet good enough.

This is something teachers manage on a daily basis with sensitive pupils when work is not of a high enough standard. 

Of course, colleagues can pose more of a challenge - we tend to know more about our colleagues’ lives and be more sensitive to the things they may be facing - but just like pupils, it is in our peers’ best interests to receive feedback that will help them to improve their practice.

Having a long-term view and a culture that aims for high expectations for teacher CPD ensures that, if we can get it right, trying out new ideas and developing best-practice habits becomes second nature.

Jo Facer is a former headteacher and the head of the national professional qualifications faculty at the National Institute of Teaching