REVIEW OF SCOTLAND'S COLLEGES [SLEWG - SG -P05]
WORKING GROUP: STAFFING, LEARNERS & LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
SUB GROUP: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF STAFF
This paper is also available to download as a PDF file
Continuous Professional Development: Next Steps
Introduction
1 The Scottish Executive has indicated that it intends to ask the Funding Council to collect evidence on CPD in the FE sector and to draw up proposals relating to minimum requirements of CPD for all academic staff. This paper presents SFC's initial thinking on how this task might best be conducted.
Background
2 We expect the Scottish Executive to provide the following remit. The Funding Council should work with colleges and other stakeholders to:
· Undertake an audit to quantify the amount of time spent on CPD activity across the sector
· Estimate the resource implications of setting a minimum requirement; and
· Advise on how this requirement could be implemented.
Issues to consider
3 In taking forward this remit, we think that several related issues need to be taken into account.
What counts as CPD?
4 Whereas it is relatively easy to quantify lecturer engagement with TQFE and PDAs, since these awards have a clear structure, numeric estimates of 'notional hours' of study, and measurable outcomes based on achievement of awards, CPD covers a very wide variety of activities. Presumably we will wish to limit our study to CPD which has a direct bearing on learning and teaching, but this is still very broad. For example, CPD relating to new assessment techniques or curriculum development have direct impacts on pedagogy, but arguably CPD in areas such as health and safety, equality and diversity, and IT-related courses are also designed to enhance the professional effectiveness of lecturers and hence contribute to better teaching and learning.
5 If we accept that CPD is necessarily broad in scope, a corollary is that the experience of different lecturers is likely to be very diverse. Quantifying the total annual engagement with CPD will not, by itself, tell us whether a lecturer has had any engagement with matters of pedagogy or their subject specialism, or (at the other extreme) has simply become increasingly expert in analysing databases which may (or may not) contribute to their effectiveness as teachers. Hence the second issue:
What is the intended purpose of CPD and who is it for?
6 At one extreme, we could take the view that selection of appropriate CPD is primarily a matter for the individual professional. Thus, a lecturer may ask permission (and possibly financial support) to pursue a personal research activity, perhaps leading to a research degree, which is only tangentially relevant to her daily work in the classroom. At the other extreme, a college may take the view that CPD is primarily a means for the college to implement its strategic plan; CPD is likely to be selectively available for specific purposes, where this is deemed to make the maximum contribution to the college's goals.
7 If we simply aim to quantify CPD activity yet take no account of its degree of fit with educational purposes and the specific context of the employing college, we may be missing an important point. Improvement may come just as much by increasing the relevance of CPD as increasing its quantity. Should we aim to capture some measure of 'relevance to institutional mission'?
8 SFC has previously funded activity to create a 'CPD toolkit' (full documentation on the toolkit is available for download from www.sfeu.ac.uk/uploads/documents/cpd_toolkit.pdf ). This toolkit was commissioned from the FE Professional Development Network with support from SFEU. The toolkit captures the diversity of CPD in terms of "3 circles" (professional competence, college/sector strategic priorities, individual learning and development). This approach is also used by College Principals as part of their own CPD framework, and it may be useful to frame the proposed new research in terms of these categories.
What are the costs of CPD?
9 The Scottish Executive remit rightly focuses on 'time spent' as a key indicator of activity, but this is not the only metric or indeed the only constraint on availability. An obvious addition is fees or charges associated with training, together with travel and subsistence costs. Time and money are both in short supply but their relationship is not clear. For example, remote and island colleges often tell us that the cost of transport to a course in Edinburgh, and the need for one or two overnight stays, are both equally difficult constraints on the release of staff. In other contexts, colleges have told us that the cost of attending some events is the key constraint rather than the time taken out of the workplace. (This is also related to the question of whether there is an earmarked central staff development budget or whether CPD competes with other expenses such as salaries or consumables.)
10 However, there are also constraints on the supply side. For example, national agencies such as SFC, JISC, SFEU and HMIE may provide training opportunities which are free or low-cost, and in many cases held at multiple venues to minimise time and travel costs. But usually colleges are limited to a fixed number of places at each event. In principle, the outcomes of these events can be disseminated more widely in the college through 'cascade' or 'train the trainers' models, but we don't have much evidence of how effective these models are, nor indeed of the 'latent demand' for additional places at such events. It would be possible to increase the volume of CPD by multiple repetition of events to ensure that everyone who wished to come was able to do so; but would that be a good use of resource?
What are the outcomes of CPD?
11 Put simply, CPD means that staff are 'taken out' of mainstream activities to engage in some development activity. What are the benefits which arise from this development activity, and how do we know that they justify the 'loss of resource' in time and money?
12 Anecdotally, we have found from work with SFEU and HMIE that colleges do not always take a very strategic view of CPD as an investment activity. In some cases, they see it as a quasi-regulatory requirement (eg TQFE or the forthcoming PDA on working with young people). In some cases they see it as part of the necessary overhead of keeping curricula and teaching practices up to date, or as a staff benefit and hence part of the 'unwritten contract' in the terms and conditions of staff. But there is not much evidence of the use of any 'cost-benefit analysis' to determine whether the same level of funding spent on different forms of CPD produce the same sorts of returns to the college or to the individual. There are several implications:
· How is CPD quality assured to ensure that training provided is fit for purpose? This is largely achieved in practice through user satisfaction data, which presumes that the user is well placed to judge whether 'something different' would have been better.
· What role do managers or staff development officers play in monitoring the quality of the CPD which they ask their staff to undertake? How do they know whether it is effective?
· Are opportunities being missed to exploit the positive outcomes of CPD? Evaluation reports of previous SFC-funded staff development programmes often cite lecturers who feel the skills they learned are not being fully exploited because senior managers did not take enough interest in the activity, or because the CPD activity did not mesh with the timing and scope of departmental developments.
Informal CPD
13 There is a temptation to focus on formal aspects of CPD which involve attendance at courses or 'time out' from normal duties. However, a great deal of routine college activities is focused on continuous quality improvement, such as annual self-evaluation processes, course team reviews, departmental or college-level quality committees. Participation in such activities may have significant benefits for staff and a positive impact on their teaching, without any extrinsic resource requirement. More generally, professional development may have strong peer-driven elements through conversations, email, networks, and other opportunities for sharing good practice. It will be important to ensure that the proposed research does not undervalue or ignore such informal CPD activities.
Methodological issues
14 The reference to 'conducting an audit' carries a risk that colleges and staff may misunderstand what we wish to measure, or the motivations for the study. We need to avoid creating a perverse incentive either to exaggerate or minimise the costs in time and money. We should also recognise that colleges may vary in their capacity to centrally track and quantify CPD undertaken since in some cases staff development is centrally managed while in others it is devolved to departments or schools. There is a risk that we will miss and undercount lots of good work which is not 'known' at institutional level.
15 For these reasons, it may be appropriate to pilot the proposed methodology and also to take the time to build a common understanding of what we all mean by CPD, costs and benefits.
16 In developing this research, SFC would wish to work with relevant groups from the college sector, (such as HR directors, PDN, PDF, HMIE). We would wish to consider the option of a commissioning model (in which one or more appropriate groups is invited to propose a work plan to achieve specified outcomes) as well as a competitive tendering model; and we would propose to set up a steering group involving all key stakeholders to give advice on the specification and operation of the research and the interpretation of its findings.
Recommendation
17 The Group is invited to discuss the issues raised in this paper, and to give a steer to SFC on how it should take forward the proposed task on CPD in the FE sector.
Further information
18 For further information, contact Dr Bill Harvey, Deputy Director for Learning and Teaching, Scottish Funding Council (email bharvey@sfc.ac.uk, direct line 0131 313 6513)