Powerful professional development to help children succeed and teachers thrive. That’s the mantra of the Teacher Development Trust (or TDT), the charity that I set up in early 2012 to champion teachers’ professional learning. We’ve discovered a lot about the challenges of getting great development in every school, as well as having had a number of breakthroughs. This is the story of the TDT.
Formation of the Trust – a personal journey
Back in 2011 I was a full time physics and maths teacher with a role as the school’s data manager. I’d been teaching since a PGCE in 2003 and had become interested in how school data systems capture – or rather, fail to capture – meaningful information about teaching practice to help us develop. Being something of a nerd, and drawing on my background in engineering and computing, I set about creating two tools: firstly, a graphical tool to explore and analyse classroom data more effectively and, secondly, a ‘trip advisor’ type online database for CPD opportunities.
In order to pursue this project, I drew upon some experience in initial teacher training some training in data and Initial Teacher Education/Newly Qualified Teacher mentoring that I had been doing with Brunel University and Teach First. I was also lucky to strike up a great working relationship with Philippa Cordingley and her colleagues at CUREE who gradually led me to discover some of the great research in the field of teacher professional development.
It was an interesting time. Being early in the coalition government and with Michael Gove as education secretary we were mid-way through the ‘bonfire of the quangos’ with the GTC already closed and the TDA on its way out. The relatively recent project of a national CPD database was being closed down and the only CPD policy to speak of at the time was that ‘Teaching Schools will do it’.
Around the end of 2011 I had recently gone for a promotion in my school and had been pipped to the post by someone else. I was thinking about new challenges and happened to meet Mark McCourt, a former maths teacher, headteacher and ex-Director of the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM). Mark suggested the idea of a non-profit or charity to try and campaign for more effective professional development and, together, we set about forming the new charity along with two other founding trustees.
The early months of 2012 were challenging as I was juggling part-time teaching with the charity. I took my exam classes to the end of their courses and finally started full-time as Chief Executive in June.