Towards a Better Future

Chapter Ten: Professional Development in Teaching
DES auspices in the wake of the 1998 Education Act – e.g. SDPI, PCSP, SLSS, and LDS. DES
initiatives since the arrival of the Teaching Council in the CPD arena have sought to streamline the
Department’s CPD work. These include the establishment of the Professional Development Service
for Teachers (PDST), the Project Maths support programme, and Junior Cycle for Teachers (JCT).
Particularly significant is the recent setting up of the Centre for School Leadership (CSL), the
consequence of joint efforts by IPPN and NAPD with the DES. This succession of initiatives marks
a welcome advance on the changes inaugurated in the late 1990s, where national policy on the
development of the teaching profession largely lacked a leadership perspective. In the recently-issued
Action Plan for Education, there are a few references that link professional development with
educational leadership, including the following:
In the coming years, new innovative programmes to support the professional
development of school leaders will commence. This will provide for professional
coaching services and the introduction of a post-graduate qualification for aspiring
school leaders.
(DES, 2016j, p.31)
The coaching service is designed to support those who are already school principals (pp.35, 36) and
the post-graduate programme to support aspirants. Both are welcome developments, although the
reference to new innovative courses commencing fails to credit the dramatic rise that has already
taken place in the numbers pursuing post-graduate courses for aspiring educational leadership within
the last decade.
In any case, to build profitably on the succession of initiatives mentioned above, it is crucial that the
experience gained by the different agencies is regularly shared so that there is a continuing exchange
of perspectives, including constructive criticisms, between the agencies. Such exchange is also
conducive to the emergence of new leadership ideas. This, in short, is an essential form of professional
development for the agencies themselves. In its absence, it is only to be expected that the effects of
corporate insulation will come to prevail, including unawareness of new cognate expertise that could
yield valuable insights and synergies. In addition to the support agencies and statutory bodies like
the NCCA and DES (including TES and the Inspectorate), other bodies need to be active
participants in this exchange. These include the Teaching Council, the educational research
community, the Education Centres and not least, IPPN and NAPD. The State Examination
Commission is another key agency to include here. As suggested in the remarks on partnership at
the close of Chapter 6, a sustained commitment to such exchange builds a tradition with its own
singular benefits. Prominent among these is a regular renewal of the springs from which flow
promising and practical ideas for realising the real potential of professional development itself, and
for leading this potential to fresh woods and pastures new.
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