Review: The Developing Teacher

The Developing Teacher

Although I already have a thousand things I know I should be doing to develop my teaching (reading those books stacked up in my bedroom might be a start, and volunteering to be observed is always valuable torture), I was so intrigued by the idea of a whole book full of ideas on how to keep developing that I picked this title out of all the interesting-looking ones that Delta Publishing were offering in 2009. My main questions when I read through it were how much it would affect my development, what other kinds of people the book might be interesting for, and whether anyone would really want to read a whole book on the topic.

The author goes about filling the 96 pages in this book by using 63 of them for simple, practical ideas of how to go about your CPD (continuing professional development). These ideas are divided into five chapters which represent the five circles of development that he identifies, starting with yourself and working your way out to envelope You and Your Students, You and Your Colleagues, You and Your School, and You and Your Profession. These five main chapters are preceded by a ten-page introduction explaining the theory behind teacher development, such as these five circles and stuff typical of books for teacher trainers such as “the science model” and “the art-craft model”. This section is thought-provoking but can quite happily be skipped if you want to get straight into the book and get an idea or two for how you could start developing right now (I also have my doubts on the usefulness of such theory even for teacher trainers, but that’s another story…) For such people, you could read through a whole chapter of ideas in less than an hour. You’d probably then need a break as there are up to 20 ideas per chapter, most of them well worth thinking about, but I read through the whole book in less the week without it seeming too samey or long.

Each chapter starts with a two page introduction which has a general introduction to that “circle of development” and a Personal Checklist to add a kind of needs analysis/ Test Teach Test element. Again, these introductions to the chapters are well worth reading but also perfectly okay to skip. In fact, you could open the book on almost any page and find something interesting and instantly useable.

To analyse one chapter picked at random in more detail, You and Your School (the fourth circle) deals with things that will involve school management and other more formal things (in contrast to the third circle, which is more informal things with your colleagues such as mentoring and team teaching). The Personal Checklist in the introduction asks whether you have done things like “proposed academic innovation”, “improved the appearance of the staffroom” and “thought about how I communicate with my colleagues”. The introduction also introduces the idea of “interdependence”, that is the idea of moving from being able to do things on your own (“independence”) to realising you can do even more by working with others. There is then a brief introduction to each of the 11 activities that follow, showing how they tie into more general ideas such as using ones borrowed from leadership training even if you are not a manager. There is a certain amount of jargon (you may have to turn back to the beginning of the book to remember or learn what RISE is), but that is tied in with good common sense such not expecting teachers to necessarily be good communicators with their colleagues and common complaints about meetings.

There are then 11 ideas of (usually) half a page or one page each. They continue in the same vein as the introduction, using common management and teaching training ideas such as the distinction between managing and leading, the SMARTER acronym for refining objectives, and the six ways of talking (supportive, catalytic, confronting, cathartic, informative, and prescriptive), but explaining these things briefly and well, and making their relevance clear.

Ideas I particularly liked from this chapter included using a wiki instead of a meeting to decide something at work, including “social achievements” when thinking about the success of a meeting, and taking a proactive approach to small irritations. There are a couple of ideas that are obvious, such as asking to meet your boss to discuss your CPD and how that can also benefit the school and getting your DoS to observe you, but seeing these obvious things written down can still prompt action and therefore be useful too. In this chapter there were no actual activities I thought were unworkable, but perhaps too much attention was put towards things I can’t imagine needing to sit down and work consciously on, mainly here meaning communication with my colleagues. This isn’t a major criticism, though, as there is remarkably little padding for a book of this size on one subject. There are also the ideas that I’d be a bit embarrassed asking someone to work with me on, something that is suggested quite often, but as with many of the weaknesses in the specific suggestions, it is easy to adapt them to do them your own way.

There is a similar pattern throughout the book. About 50% of the ideas seemed good and were new to me, e.g. critiquing a TEFL article to make a checklist for your own attempt at writing on, asking a teacher to take part as a student rather than observe passively, discussion cards (similar to roleplay cards) to getting students speaking about what happens in class, and a needs analysis form in which students think about how their peers and themselves (rather than just the teacher) can help fulfil those needs. I also loved the title “Scary Movie” for being videoed teaching!

The next biggest category of ideas was things which seemed somewhat off the subject, such as specific ideas on things to experiment with in class (surely a whole series of books just by itself!) Ones that I was not sure about the usefulness of made up less than 10% of the book. Examples of these include: shadowing someone for a day seemed a bit impractical to set up, secretly monitoring what the other teachers speak about seemed pointless and potentially a way of making enemies, and a rapport-building crossword is something that would lose all the fun if you did it unspontaneously as they suggested.

The book also includes a one-page bibliography and 12 pages of longer CPD ideas such as a teaching portfolio.

All in all, there are so many good ideas here that you hardly know what to do with them- and therein lies the only major problem. As I could pick this book up in a bookshop and leave five minutes later with ideas to keep me improving for years, it is hard to believe that the audience of this book really is teachers taking it on themselves to develop. For teacher trainers and other people who might suggest CPD ideas to teachers (e.g. managers), however, this is an invaluable recipe book and a short and painless introduction to the most relevant parts of management and teacher training theory. As there should therefore probably be one copy in every school for such people, I would certainly suggest that all teachers pick it up for a flick through. I would also recommend teachers who are ambitious or feel like they are drifting to have a more detailed look, and teachers who need to look at their CPD in detail (such as Cambridge DELTA Module 2 candidates) to start at the beginning and read as much as they can, before perhaps also switching to flicking through for good ideas. Personally, it hasn’t changed my teaching or the ways I do my CPD (it is hard enough to keep up with the CPD demands at my workplace, unlike previous schools I have worked in), but it has certainly helped me give advice to others, and has also been a great place to get references when writing those ideas up.