When teachers seek their own Continuing Professional Development (CPD), they are increasingly required to justify its immediate impact on classroom practice and alignment with school improvement priorities. This performative framing of CPD raises important questions about what professional learning is for—and who it serves. Traditional postgraduate qualifications are not accessible to all primary teachers and an offer of self-directed professional learning facilitated by a teacher educator was at the heart of this CPD offer.

A recent report by the Teacher Development Trust introduces the concept of “Didagogy” to describe the complex, dialogic nature of teacher learning, arguing that effective CPD must meaningfully engage teachers’ professional experience while carefully considering design and impact (Teacher Development Trust, 2025). Against this backdrop, this blog explores what CPD facilitated by a university teacher educator can offer, focusing on the design, implementation, and evaluation of a collaborative CPD model grounded in professional agency and reflective dialogue.

Conception: Reimagining CPD as a space for thinking

The design of the collaborative CPD model was informed by Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2018), which identifies autonomy, relatedness, and competence as core drivers of intrinsic motivation. The intention of the CPD model was to foster professional growth through reflective, dialogic engagement rather than prescriptive training. The motivations for accessing teacher educator facilitated CPD were explored through university and school partnerships and collaborative CPD with time to think being seen to be of benefit. Five primary teachers with middle or whole-school leadership responsibilities participated, motivated by a personal interest in pedagogy rather than school improvement targets alone.

This approach responded to a gap in the CPD landscape for primary educators, where teacher voice is frequently marginalised and choice limited. Recent findings from Teacher Tapp (2024) suggest that much CPD fails to meaningfully address classroom practice or support critical engagement with pedagogy (McCrea, 2023). Too often, CPD is delivered through workshops, courses, or mentoring models that prioritise activity over inquiry and adopt an implicit deficit framing of teachers (Njenga, 2022).

In contrast, this collaborative model aimed to reposition CPD as a non-performative space for professional agency, inquiry, and intellectual engagement. It was not designed as a “what works” model, but rather as a deliberate alternative that gave participants time to think and talk about their pedagogy.

Implementation: Structure and Pedagogical Design

The design of the CPD programme was influenced by my involvement in the successful recent rollout of blended learning in a mentor training model that integrated structured reflection across synchronous and asynchronous tasks. The programme comprised three half-day sessions delivered across an academic year on a university campus with asynchronous gap and personal study tasks. The CPD content was deliberately non-subject-specific, focusing on cognitive science and metacognition—areas of professional learning often saturated with online CPD resources but lacking curated, research-informed alternatives for primary teachers (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Korthagen, 2010).

The first session prioritised relationship-building, acknowledging the lack of shared contextual knowledge. Across the programme, a reflective “third space” (Bhabha, 2012) was intentionally created, bridging academic and practitioner expertise. Professional dialogue evolved responsively to participants’ needs, enabling boundary-crossing between facilitator and teachers (Jackson & Burch, 2018; Simmie et al., 2023).

Key Features of the CPD design:

Structured Time for Reflection and Dialogue

Participants led sections of every session, responding to the prompt “What does this look like for me?” This foregrounded professional identity, power dynamics, and contextual application (Daza et al., 2021), and enabled teachers to reflect on implications for their own school settings.

Asynchronous Engagement

Asynchronous tasks supported extended engagement beyond sessions, encouraging professional dialogue rather than one-off expertise sharing (Cordingley et al., 2015). Activities included online “fireside book chats” after the school day and reading-based gap tasks that were revisited in subsequent sessions.

Philosophical Provocations

Influenced by my interest in Philosophy for Children (P4C) approaches (SAPERE, n.d.), photographs were used as provocations for reflection and discussion (Cameron, 2025). These tasks supported exploration of teacher positionality, values, and assumptions about behaviour change as an outcome of CPD.

Autonomy, Motivation, and Professional Capital

Group and paired dialogue activities fostered open inquiry and peer support, cultivating professional capital (Fullan, Rincón-Gallardo & Hargreaves, 2015). Teachers engaged with dilemma-based coaching strategies (Lofthouse, 2022), questioning one another to explore how research evidence might be applied to authentic pedagogical challenges.

Evaluation: Impact and Professional Learning

The CPD model fostered autonomy, deep reflection, and collaborative learning within a non-performative space. Participants valued the intellectual freedom and peer dialogue, though time outside sessions remained a challenge. Feedback gathered via Microsoft Forms highlighted practical application within schools and meaningful professional takeaways.

“The practical ideas and sharing these with other colleagues from other schools.” (Participant 2)

“To support staff with an agreed pedagogy approach in our teaching and learning policy – e.g. questioning, chunking, reducing cognitive load & retrieval strategies.” (Participant 1)

“Possible support for staff training at ……..School around metacognition and reducing cognitive load.” (Participant 1)

One participant withdrew, describing the CPD as “not what they expected it to be.” (Participant 5). This response prompted reflection on how expectations are communicated, how collaborative CPD can be scaled, and how teachers can be supported to engage with non-traditional professional learning models.

Conclusion: Rethinking the Role of University-Led CPD

This university-led CPD offer represents a meaningful shift toward a research-rich, dialogic, and self-determined approach to professional learning (Ryan & Deci, 2018). It highlights the potential for higher education institutions to offer accessible CPD that values teacher agency, professional dialogue, and intellectual engagement—particularly for primary educators working across diverse contexts.

Next Steps

• Accreditation of the CPD programme to provide formal recognition and incentivise engagement.
• Embedding sustained reflection as a core CPD principle for teachers, aligned with collaborative, research-informed inquiry.