Review of PD Standards: The Podcast | Episode 2: What even is a conceptual framework?

Conceptual Framing: What's Really Driving the PD Standards Review?

Adam Kohlbeck is back with Professor Sam Twiselton OBE, independent chair of the Review of Professional Development Standards, to check in on progress and take on a question sent in by a listener: what is the conceptual framing behind the review?

Sam explains why the review is being built from the inside out. Instead of starting with a fixed idea of what good CPD looks like, it starts with teachers and school leaders and puts the evidence in front of them. The common thread is decision making at every level of the system. That runs from the split-second choices teachers make in lessons, through the CPD choices leaders make, to how trusts, local authorities and government spend their time and money.

In this episode:

- Where the review is up to, from local authority leaders to conversations with the DfE about Universal RISE and the hubs

- Why disagreeing on the detail shouldn't stop us backing the bigger picture

- What a conceptual framework actually is (and why doctoral students find it so slippery)

- The assumptions behind the review: teaching is complex, teachers build mental models and much of what they notice is tacit

- Sam's "task manager" mental model and how expert teachers free up their headspace for learning

- Why expert teachers don't automatically make expert mentors (and what learning to drive has to do with it)

- Pigeons, mice and lockdown: what happens when a situation is new enough to force your thinking into the open

- Trade-offs between school development plans and individual teachers' aspirations

- Why the forums will ask "what changed on Monday morning?" rather than "did you enjoy it?"

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Review of Professional Development Standards: https://chartered.college/research-and-policy/policy-and-advocacy/review-of-professional-development-standards/

Register for project updates: https://r1.dotdigital-pages.com/p/449V-177Q/pd-standards

Wolff, Jarodzka, van den Bogert and Boshuizen (2016) Teacher vision: expert and novice teachers' perception of problematic classroom management scenes. Instructional Science: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-016-9367-z

Universal RISE (DfE): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regional-improvement-for-standards-and-excellence-rise

Got a question you'd like us to dig into? Send it to us by email or on social media and we'll tackle it in a future episode.

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