3 min read
Continuing professional development (CPD), as well as being a requirement for registration provides teachers with a range of professional experiences that expand on their skills, knowledge and understanding in order to enhance student learning outcomes. Professional development helps you grow as an educator and is important to your career and teaching success.
Life Long Learning
There is no doubt that professional development provides the opportunity to never stop learning and growing as an educator. You always have the potential to progress and refine your teaching skills. There is always more to learn and new skills to attain.
Set PD Goals
Make your Professional development count by setting goals at the beginning of each year. It can seem hard to schedule the time to devote to courses and seminars, but if you know what you want to achieve, this makes your time worthwhile.
Reflect, plan, prepare, and take action are the key to moving your career forward. For example, make a goal to attend a professional development talk or seminar every term. Even a one-hour webinar is great, choose a topic that you’d like to learn more about or are unfamiliar with, and document it.
Overcome Failures with Professional Development
Think of failures as an opportunity for improvement. If you’ve been struggling in a particular area of teaching, such as behaviour management, use PD to learn how to overcome these challenges.
Professional development is about improving and moving forward. You will gain confidence by learning new methods and information about every aspect of your field.
Your career is important to us and we want to see you succeed. TPAQ will be offering workshops to members in the near future, starting with Behaviour Management. We would like to know what topics you would be interested in learning more about. Email us at hotline@tpaq.com.au with your suggestions and stay tuned for our member survey - coming soon!
Online Courses
In the meantime, here are some online CPD you may wish to consider.
Differentiation in Teaching 23 & 24 March: 2 Day online Conference
Child protection for teachers – a free short course for teachers and school staff wishing to learn about how child abuse and neglect affects children’s learning, why abuse occurs, and how to recognise signs of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and neglect.
Illustrations of Practice – examples implementation of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers - Australia
Teachers TV – Australia
Reflection template for viewing activities
OLT - Special Educational Needs courses (for Queensland state school teachers)
Positive Partnerships – supporting school age students on the autism spectrum
BRITE – Building resilience in teacher education: Five online interactive learning modules focussed on building resilience, relationships, wellbeing, taking initiative and emotions - designed primarily for preservice teachers but of interest to all teachers
Future Learn - Enhance how you teach subjects such as English as a foreign language or STEM, or try new approaches to assessment, behaviour management or special needs provision.