In this short article, Dr Peter Levrai, an English teacher here at the Centre for Language and Communication Studies (CeLCS) describes our project to harness the talent of our staff to help each other. Peter has been the architect in creating a structured network that enables teachers to share their knowledge and facilitate the professional development of our staff in a whole new way.
Professional Development (PD) is a key component in job satisfaction and well-being and last semester a working group looked at PD provision in CeLCS, which led to the development of two PD initiatives which could better support teachers.
The first step was developing a shared conception of what PD is. While PD is the development of experience and skills it is also the interrogation of, and innovation in, practices of teaching and learning. PD should be challenging, flexible, relevant and applicable to teaching and encourage dialogue and collaboration. PD can take many forms, beyond presentations and workshops (see Fig 1).
Figure 1 - Forms of PD session
The aim of PD is to strengthen existing skills and aid in the development of new skills, thereby increasing confidence and job satisfaction. Yet PD has a more important role than this as it also increases collegiality and provides support for staff across the breadth of their work: before the classroom, in the classroom, at the computer, at work and at a university.
In order to bring more flexibility and to be able to better target individual teacher needs two PD initiatives have been launched: the Peer Support Network (PSN) and the PD mini-conference (see Fig 2).
Figure 2 - Two new PD initiatives
Through these two measures it is hoped that teachers will have more scope to shape their PD in the university and a thriving network can emerge to help us all do our work better.