Martin Beedle describes how he used the General Teaching Council’s Teacher Learning Academy programme to nurture a professional learning community and fuel whole school improvement.
The Teacher Learning Academy
The Teacher Learning Academy (TLA) was established as a pilot by the GTCE to provide a national system for teacher learning and professional development. Following the successful pilot phase the TLA now forms part of the core business of the GTCE and is being rolled out nationally in partnership with Cambridge Education. Te TLA does not offer pre-designed courses or programmes. Instead, it provides support and recognition for individual teachers and groups of teachers engaged in professional development which is centred on actual classroom practice and leadership of learning.
As professional development continues to diversify from the traditional model of INSET days and external courses, the variety of activities available under the CPD banner brings greater opportunities but also greater challenges especially for CPD leaders.
One of the key challenges for CPD leaders is to ensure coherence, not only at the level of the individual institution, but also across professional learning networks and the wider education system as a whole. Te TLA provides an ideal mechanism for facilitating this with its four-stage framework for professional recognition, founded on six core dimensions which underpin a ‘learning journey’, ensuring a personalised, collaborative and rigorous approach to professional development.