Ashton Sixth Form College
Plotting our course: discovering hopeful spaces for teacher research and professional development in further education.
As we await the outcomes of the Education Endowment Foundations practice review, conducted by Sheffield Hallam University’s Institute of Education Research and Knowledge Exchange, to understand what professional development looks like for post-16 practitioners, I will take delegates on a journey of hope–filled professional development. A journey that challenges notions of centralised, institutionally led CPD and commonly expressed understandings of what FE teachers might want and /or need as they navigate their careers.
My PhD focuses on action research, where I have designed and led a professional development programme called Be Curious. The programme is influenced by scholar and action researcher Jean McNiff (2013, 2017), whose work underscores the value of professional curiosity as a requirement for meaningful change in the classroom. This initiative aims to enhance the practices of the teachers, but crucially, it also champions agency and authenticity.
The journey to creating a sustaining infrastructure of professional development has not been, and is not, an easy one. In this presentation I will share some of the major influences on my own practice as an educator and impactful experiences of ‘CPD’. I will offer an overview of the CPD model at the heart of my PhD and leave session participants with more questions than answers about future possibilities for FE educators’ professional development.
The session will navigate informal and formal CPD spaces, from networks and conferences to podcasts and postgraduate studies, with the theory of Stephen Kemmis’s (2014, 2022) theory of practice architectures acting as my GPS.
Jo Fletcher-Saxon’s BERA profile