Mission
The Teacher Development Trust is an independent charity, founded by teachers, dedicated to improving the educational outcomes of children by ensuring they experience the most effective learning. We are raising awareness of the importance of professional development and building tools to help teachers to transform their practice and achieve success for all their pupils.
The Trust believes that demand for professional learning should be driven by the aspiration teachers have for the children they teach and the passion they bring to their work.
We are determined to bring about radical improvement in the quality of the ongoing training that teachers receive based on the evidence of what creates effective learning.
Our Approach
There is now strong international research that describes the characteristics of successful teacher professional development. At the Teacher Development Trust we are working with the entire education sector to promote these principles by:
- Stimulating demand for high quality professional development through our work with schools and teachers;
- Ensuring access to high quality training provision via our free database, GoodCPDGuide, and encouraging providers to attain high standards via our quality marks and community reviews;
- Providing tools and networks to help schools engage in high quality collaborative teacher enquiry;
- Promoting and disseminating research, and campaigning to raise the status of professional development.
Our work is underpinned by the key principles of effective teacher professional development and learning, which must:
- maintain a tight focus on pupil learning needs with ongoing rigorous evaluation of outcomes,
- be applicable and relevant to the teacher’s current classes, and contribute toward whole-school development,
- be collaborative and teacher-driven,
- be sustained over a period of at least two terms (and ideally more),
- involve regular external expert input and build on the best existing practices and understanding.
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