Continuous Professional Development (CPD)

Be always ready to continuos learning is needed for the teaching improvement.

CPD obligations are common to most professions. CPD is a planned, continuous and lifelong process whereby teachers try to develop their personal and professional qualities, and to improve their knowledge, skills and practice, leading to their empowerment, the improvement of their agency and the development of their organisation and their pupils.

Nowadays I’m a teacher, but I’m not working yet because I’ve just finished my studies and I’m preparing my competitive exams for next June.

But, if I were already working in a school I would like to attend to the courses of the CEFIRE which gives a lot of support for teachers by free, because it’s funded by Conselleria. I would like to learn more about how to assess taking in to account the 8 competences based on the multiple intelligences of Howard Gardner, I think I would chose some course like that, but the offer is really wide.

Besides, it would be great to take part in an Erasmus + programme funded by the European Union. I find it very interesting because we can learn a lot of things travelling to others countries and adapting their best practices. It’s a beautiful experience to share knowledge around the UE and improve our skills in teaching and also in language and communication.

I hope someday this programmes will be available for all teachers, working or not, because there are very interesting courses and experiences that if we aren’t in a school/high school we can’t access to.

There are also other ways to be aware of the continuous development as:

• Classroom Action Research: teachers develop research questions, collect and analyse data and then they share their data with others teachers and write about it.
• Communities of practice: are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, teaching in that case, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.
• Professional Learning Communities at School: teachers update their professional knowledge and skills within the context of an organised, school-wide system for improving teaching practices.

In my opinion, Professional Learning Communities at School are one of the best ways to practise CPD, because it’s easy organize a group in the school (it could be formal or not) where talk about teaching practices and try to improve the students learning sharing their best experiences, but also the errors, because all teachers learn about it and with less effort teachers can find better solutions to their problems.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter the programme we chose, the important thing is be aware that we should be responsible of our Professional Growth.