This job-a-like is for all leaders across a school, Early Years, Primary and Secondary, that coordinate and lead professional learning. This includes, but is not limited to: Principals, Deputies, Heads of Faculty, Coordinators and Instructional Coaches.

As professional development practitioners, we are constantly striving to ensure we meet the needs of all our learners.

This job-alike will focus on how we evaluate if those needs are being met by allowing participants to explore with peers different areas of evaluation. Discussion topics will be influenced by research on how to effectively provision and evaluate professional development. Links to recent research published by the Education Endowment Foundation and Thomas R. Guskey are included below:

This Job-Alike will be coordinated in the following manner:

• One week before the meeting a survey will be sent asking you to identify the topics you are most interested in and to identify questions you want to be answered in relation to that topic;

• Participants will be able to self select the breakout room they wish to participate in, which will be identified by the topic, and given the questions raised related to that topic;

• There will be two breakout sessions:

  • The first breakout session will be for 20-minutes where participants will get quickly acquainted, review and prioritize the questions identified in the survey, build consensus on the most pertinent question(s) and begin sharing relevant experience;

  • In between breakout sessions, each group will share what question(s) they have begun exploring and set an expectation for how they would like to use their time in the second breakout session;

  • All participants will be given an opportunity to re-select their breakout room. This not only gives everyone a chance to network with different peers but also explore different topics;

  • The second breakout session will be for 60 minutes, allowing for peers more time to share personal experience related to that topic;

  • We will try to limit the size of each group to 6 people, which may mean multiple groups exploring the same topic; and

  • In the end, each breakout room will share key learnings.

As a job-alike, participants are both teachers and learners. As such, group discussions in break-out rooms are self-directed, not being specifically moderated or directed by the event hosts. There are 4-hosts for this job-alike, whose responsibility was to coordinate the meeting and identify relevant reference materials to provoke discussion and sharing of experience.

Why Should I Join?