Identifying and engaging in effective early professional development (EPD) should help you to develop your practice and in turn become more effective as a teacher.
You will want to choose EPD activities that make the most of your professional time and maximise the impact you have on your pupils’ learning. For this reason, it is necessary to assess the impact of your EPD. This will also help you make choices for future professional development activities.
How to evaluate the impact of your EPD:
- Look at what has changed in your teaching practice as a result of EPD
- Look at pupil outcomes before and after your EPD experience – did the improvements you expected in terms of pupil motivation and engagement with learning happen?
- Involve pupils in your evaluation by developing a pupil voice processes: use attitudinal questionnaires, votes and interviews. This is particularly useful if the planned outcomes for the EPD involved improvements in pupils’ attitudes or awareness
- Consider using parent surveys. These can provide useful information about whether something that you have introduced, such as a different teaching strategy, has had an effect in how the pupils approach homework tasks.
Impact evaluation will also help your school and local authority to improve and refine their EPD framework.
The TDA’s guidance on continuing professional development (CPD) impact evaluation offers useful advice.
