Teacher Guide

Published

Effective Professional Development in 16-19 settings

This section is designed to support teachers in making the most of professional development (PD) opportunities. It complements the guidance for PD leads by focusing on what is within teacher’s day-to-day practice and what they may influence directly.

Choosing impactful PD

With a wide range of PD options available—from short webinars to in-depth programmes—it is not always easy to decide what is most relevant or how to ensure lasting impact. This guide offers a practical approach to help you make informed choices and aims to get the most value from your PD, whatever form it takes:

What

What do you want to improve or change?

Start by identifying a specific area of your practice you would like to develop. Clarity of purpose can help you better choose your next steps.2

Why

Why this area?

Inform your decision in multiple ways; your learner outcomes and feedback, insights from quality monitoring, peer-observation feedback, and professional judgement. Drawing on multiple sources can help you pinpoint what matters most.27

If you are considering a particular programme or approach, ask what evidence supports its effectiveness?

  • How do you know that you can rely on this evidence?
  • Is it based on someone’s personal experience, correlation, or causation?
  • Can PD leads help you interpret the evidence?

Tools like the That’s a Claim! website can support you to evaluate the reliability of evidence.

To help turn professional development into lasting behaviour change, the KEEP framework outlines four principles—Knowledge, Engagement, Execution, and Practice—that support meaningful implementation through a personal commitment to practice change.29

The EEF recognise that time is limited, so a series of prompts and suggestions have been provided for each principle. You don’t need to apply every example; choose what fits your context and capacity.

Knowledge

Build an understanding of the approach you are exploring.

  • Consider your starting point and where you are headed.
  • Plan time to revisit the ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ of the approach over time to strengthen your knowledge.
  • Talk it through with a peer or use quick self-quizzes to check in.

Engagement

Stay connected to your goal and keep it visible.

  • Write down your goal, share it with your line manager, or make it a professional goal.
  • Set a check-in date to reflect on your progress. This could be self-acknowledgement, with a manager, or with peers.
  • Use existing feedback systems to identify your improvements over time.

Execution

Refine your delivery.

  • Try out the approach with a peer providing feedback or record yourself and reflect.
  • Watch others model the approach and talk through what makes it effective.
  • Learn from others who have tried it before.

Practice

Make the new approach part of your routine.

  • Set reminders or cues (in your planner or phone) to apply approach.
  • Schedule specific times to try the approach at least twice – don’t keep it as an intention.
  • Keep a log of what you tried and what you might adjust.

The KEEP framework provides a set of useful prompts to help turn professional development into lasting practice change. Whether it’s a short webinar or a longer programme, the key is to be intentional—choose what matters, address it meaningfully, and commit to change.

Practice example

Making the most of a two-hour webinar

A short webinar on feedback may provide you with a lot of new knowledge on an approach and demonstrate how to implement it. However, to get the most out of the session, ensuring that all four principles of the KEEP framework are implemented as part of a personal commitment to change, will better support effective practice change.

Knowledge

Build a strong understanding of the approach you’re exploring.

  • During the session, the presenter shares that using whole-class feedback followed by structured learner reflection improves outcomes. This is supported by a reference from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF).
  • You note the source and plan to revisit it in subsequent allocated PD time, to help secure your knowledge, and build on your understanding.

Engagement

Stay connected to your goal and keep it visible.

  • You set a clear goal to help you focus your attention during the webinar and identify relevant strategies. You have shared it in advance with your Line Manager as part of your professional development discussions.
  • “I want to improve how I give feedback, so learners act on it more consistently.”

Execution

Refine your delivery.

  • After the webinar, you decide to trial one technique: using structured reflection prompts after feedback.
  • You discuss the prompts with your line manager, and how you might identify if and how learners are acting on them.

Practice

Make the new approach part of your routine.

  • You write feedback plans into your planner and schedule 10 minutes after the lesson to reflect on how it went.
  • After trying it, you note what worked and what could be improved, and plan a second attempt with minor adjustments for your class next week.

Summary

To capitalise on PD, focus on what matters to your teaching and your learners. Choose PD that you can be confident in, then, use the KEEP framework—Knowledge, Engagement, Execution, and Practice—to support effective behaviour change. Look to EEF’s wider 16-19 hub for further guidance and insights.