As TLDU members, we joined Macmillan Education training event entitled Continuing Professional Development: Perspectives and Options. The training was given by Rod Bolitho on 15-16 November 2017. Rod Bolitho (after nearly eight years as Academic Director and M.A. Programme Leader at Norwich Institute for Language Education (NILE) is now freelancing as a trainer and consultant. He has been involved in teacher education and trainer training for over 30 years. He has been consultant to a number of British Council projects in Europe and beyond since 1989, and is currently involved in ELT reform work in Uzbekistan. He has authored many articles and a number of books, including (with Brian Tomlinson) ‘Discover English’ , (with Tony Wright) ‘Trainer Development’ and (with Amol Padwad) ‘Continuing Professional Development’.
In this two-day training we had a chance to discuss the following topics with the other participants who are involved in CPD activities from different universities.
• Ways of defining and locating CPD
• Teacher perspectives
• Learner perspectives
• Institutional perspectives
• Where to focus CPD and its possible impact
• How a policy helps
We took part in various activities such as pair/group discussions, analysing case studies and reflecting on our own CPD journey. It was a good opportunity for us to reflect on our CPD practices in our school. In most of the activities we were proud to see that what goes in our institution is based on the universal principles regarding CPD. Specifically in one of the tasks which determines whether the institutions are CPD friendly or not, it was nice to see that our institution meets all the 12 requirements in the task. We hope to continue our school-wide effective and successful CPD journey .