Managing Your Professional Learning and Development
Professional learning and development are about creating a culture of quality teaching, feedback, and growth for all teachers within all schools. Nationally and internationally, there is unequivocal evidence that the quality of teaching is the most significant in-school factor affecting student outcomes. There is also strong evidence that better appraisal and feedback leading to targeted development can improve teacher performance.
Professional development activities and practices contribute to a teacher’s professional competence and enhance the quality of teaching and learning.
• Job-embedded opportunities, eg. professional learning communities or staff and/or team opportunities for collaborative learning. The focus of these opportunities is part of an inquiry cycle of self-improvement grounded in student work samples and monitoring evidence of student progress in classrooms. Teachers determine an element of practices to improve, learn, action, and reflect, to grow their knowledge and skill with impact measured in student evidence or reflective journaling.
• Workshops, seminars, conferences, short courses offered by consultants/providers.
• Contributing to education system initiatives, pilots, trials, and projects.
• School-based and/or employer-provided professional development in response to identified priorities, including professional development days and guest speakers.
• Syllabus, curriculum, and assessment development provided by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), education associations, and professional associations.
• Training for participation in national and state test marking, ACARA, and school-based assessment procedures.
• Preparation for and development resulting from formal presentations to colleagues on topics related to improving student learning outcomes.
• Leading school-based curriculum and/or policy development.
• Preparation for and development through providing collegial professional support for preservice or beginning teachers or peers as part of a supervising/mentoring role.
• Practitioner inquiry/action research projects, and case studies.
• Reading educational publications, journals, and discussion papers, including critical analysis and impact on professional experience.
• Formal study leading to a qualification in education or a field related to the teaching area.
• Participation in work shadowing, collegial visits, learning communities, and other collaborative learning activities.
• Participation in online learning activities including web conferences, webinars, self-paced learning programs, networks, forums, and discussion groups.
You can record any professional development activities in your TRB Online account. If you are renewing or reapplying for registration, you must list at least one professional development activity.
To record an activity, log in to your TRB Online account and follow these steps:
- Click the second blue tab labeled ‘My Details’
- Click the blue heading ‘Professional Development’
- Click ‘add PD Item’ and record the details of your activity