Evaluating the impact of CPD activities not only allows you to gauge whether or not your professional learning is having a positive impact on pupil outcomes in your classroom – it can also help to identify the particular elements that can be sustained and shared across school to encourage widespread impact in the longer term. There are some key principles to bear in mind:
- Evaluating the impact of CPD on teacher practice is important, but the focus should be primarily on pupil outcomes and the effect your practice has on these.
- Evaluation starts before any activity takes place and continues as long as you maintain that particular change to your practice – helping you understand the impact of your changes and focus your efforts on sustaining these.
- Using a variety of measures will offer a clear picture of what impact has been achieved and why: quantitative data could suggest changes in pupils' attainment, for example, while qualitative data might allow you to understand which changes to practice facilitated these improvements.
We have chosen three example CPD activities and suggested some simple tools that you could use to consider the impact of your professional learning.
Direct impact can be difficult to prove, but these tools will give an idea of the difference your CPD is making in the classroom. No single approach is definitive: these examples can be swapped around and adapted as best suits your own CPD.
1, Evaluating the impact of external courses
One-day conferences or courses can, on their own, be limited in terms of transformational impact on your practice and pupils' learning. However, the content provided can offer the starting point for sustained change and impact. Using some appropriate evaluation can help you target and maintain this.
Pupil interviews
Using short pupil interviews and other forms of feedback can be a useful way of evaluating the impact a course might have, and can particularly be used well with older pupils. Identify the group most likely to benefit from the content of the course or event. Put together some short, simple questions to ask a number of pupils from this group in relation to the particular areas the course will cover. Seek the necessary permission to record these interviews for future reference. Further feedback might be gathered via a pupil survey, or other channels already used in school to collect pupil feedback.
Phrase your questions to identify the pupils' learning needs in a particular area, building where relevant on your existing understanding of their learning from their work and your observations in the classroom. However, take care not to ask leading questions, and be prepared for the short interviews to throw up comments you may not expect.
The types of questions you will ask will vary according to the course content. For a course on literacy, for example, your questions might attempt to gauge pupils' understanding of particular skills – with greater nuance than classroom work or test scores, for example, might allow.
For a classroom management skills course, you might seek to ascertain pupils' perceptions of disruption in the classroom. Study pupils' responses in the lead up to the course and have them in the forefront of your mind on the day itself.
After the course, having taken time to implement your learning from the day, revisit the interview questions and recordings.
If your questions matched the course content well and are relevant to the changes you have subsequently made, repeat the short interviews with the same pupils, making any small changes as necessary.
Compare the two data sets to identify any changes that have taken place, and consider the extent to which this matches your expectations.
As you sustain the changes to your practice over time, repeat the interview process at intervals, to ensure your direct, positive impact is well-targeted at the desired areas.
Tests and pupil recordings
If your course relates to a particular part of the curriculum, use a short test made up of relevant questions to take a baseline measure of learning needs. Ask pupils to complete the test, or – for greater insight – select some case study pupils (see below) to talk through how they might go about answering the questions.
Use this to target your professional learning: if you are attending a course on teaching the new science curriculum, for example, the understanding you gain from these tests will help you understand which areas of your pupils' learning you need to target most. Repeat this process after the course to track pupils' progress in not only attainment, but also attitudes and approaches to topics.
2, Attending twilight or INSET sessions
The professional learning you engage with during an in-school training session is particularly easy to relate to your classroom context. Make the most of this opportunity by considering how you will evaluate the impact of the learning from the day.
Case study pupils
As early as possible, find out the topic of the upcoming INSET and discuss this with the member of staff who oversees your development. Once you understand how the chosen area relates both to your classroom and whole-school improvement, select three case study pupils who are most likely to benefit from the session content. Take time to reflect: this may include pupils who do not instantly spring to mind.
Consider their attainment, behaviour and your professional understanding of their learning to build up a "profile" for each case study pupil in relation to the chosen area. Meet with any support staff who also work with these students to gather their reflections and input.
Consider approaching the pupils for a short, informal interview, which you can record and use to gently probe their attitudes to learning. These profiles will form your "baseline measure" ahead of the INSET session.
During the session, keep these pupils firmly in mind and relate your learning back to the elements uncovered by your "profile-building".
After the training, put together an action plan of the changes you are going to introduce. As you do so, predict the impact of these changes on your three case study pupils. Make a note of these predictions for future reference.
At intervals, repeat the profile-building process for each case study pupil and compare against the initial profiles and the predictions you made after the training session. What impact has your professional learning had? Does this match the predictions you made? If not, why not? If yes, how can you successfully sustain this impact? What wider implications can you anticipate, extrapolating from your findings? Use these questions to keep measuring, maintaining and maximising impact.
3, Coaching
Coaching can be an extremely powerful tool of professional development. Even within a small group of colleagues, coaching relationships can be structured to offer on-going support and developmental guidance. Evaluating the impact of a coaching relationship will help staff to understand how they can continue supporting one another most effectively.
Peer-observation
Observation is used in schools across the country to "evaluate" staff performance. However, using observations to grade practice against Ofsted levels is of limited value in terms of meaningfully developing and supporting staff. Such an approach can be particularly damaging to a coaching relationship, which should be based on trust, communication and support rather than judgement.
Yet when used well – and free from Ofsted gradings – peer-observation can be an extremely powerful tool of reflection and evaluation.
Use peer-observation from the very beginning of a coaching relationship, but not to comment on practice. A coach can provide a useful "second pair of eyes" to identify pupils' learning needs within the coachee's classroom.
These observations can then inform a discussion around which elements of practice could be developed to address these needs. As the coaching relationship develops, maintain this "pupil focus" in peer-observations and triangulate it with data from other sources to track the impact of changes to practice on pupils.
Video technology can be a really useful tool in this process. Focus the camera on particular pupils and re-watch the footage together to track pupils' reactions to new changes in practice. Some systems allow for real-time observation and in-ear coaching – use this to share instant feedback on which elements of classroom practice appear to best support the observed pupils.
- Sarah Coskeran is GoodCPDGuide programme manager at the Teacher Development Trust, an independent charity for teachers' professional development. Visit www.teacherdevelopmenttrust.org