My passion is designing and facilitating CPD that actually improves performance sustainably over time. Professional learning that enables teachers and leaders progressively go plus one.
The fundamental aim influencing the way I design and facilitate learning is to enhance the growth of teacher/leader agency and efficacy through the process.
Whether one hour, one day or longer term professional learning programmes, my aim is to maximise the impact of learning on performance.
Conference/Keynote/INSET for leaders or teachers
Tailored to the learning needs of the audience, my sessions are a blended mix of theory and practical tools and strategies grounded in sound research. They are planned backwards so those attending have a clear theory of action by the end of the session, so they can work on developing their performance further. Sessions have ranged in audience size from five to a thousand.
Typical areas of focus for teachers include;
- Planning and curriculum design
- Developing learning norms
- Modelling and explainingQuestioning
- Feedback-Challenge loop
- Retrieval
- Feedback
Typical areas of focus for leaders include;
- Leading learning and teaching
- Overcoming processing overload
- Maximising shared clarity
- Developing learning within teams
- Overcoming the barriers to adult learning
- Slower thinking
- Designing and leading impactful professional learning
- Developing effective feedback protocols and norms within teams
Thanks for the extra resources and a HUGE thank you for the course yesterday. I really got so much out of it and have been sharing some of the ideas with colleagues today. Managed to purchase one of your books yesterday and look forward to reading it and learning so much more. Really appreciate all that you have done. Thank-you.
Teacher, North London
Many thanks again, Mark. Your conference input was very positively received – engaging, humorous, thought-provoking and practical. Nailed it!”
Education Officer, LA (Scotland)
Just wanted to say a big thank you for your amazing session this afternoon. It was really high impact, I felt really inspired and the teachers have already emailed saying how much they got out of it. I really look forward to working with you more in the future.”
Primary MAT Project and Executive Support Manager, London
The feedback from staff has been incredible. You had a significant impact on people which is hard to describe. Someone told me about a Facebook discussion which involved over 30 staff all saying how fantastic the day was. Newly made resources have been ‘found’ in photocopier rooms. Your work was universally very well received. A huge thank you personally and professionally.”
Head teacher, secondary school
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Multi-session CPD Programmes
Plus One Learning Cycles – Teachers
Plan, test, reflect does exactly what it says. A professional learning programme that provides teachers with iterative opportunities to step off the intense, fast paced and transactional treadmill of school, to engage deeply with a rich mix of research, think pieces, as well as practical strategies and tools.
The programme is structured with rich collaboration, reflection and possibility-focussed dialogue at its’ heart, enabling teachers to develop their practise sustainably.
Recent areas of foci for teachers have included:
- Developing classroom dialogue for learning
- Developing shared clarity through effective Modelling and explaining
- Making learning ‘stickier’
- Challenge and scaffolding
- Developing the competence-rich classroom
Throughout the programme, teachers collaboratively develop portfolios of impact demonstrating their gains and their own personal learning and the impact on the learning of their class(es). These portfolios are shared at the conclusion of the programme.
This programme is running with both primary, secondary schools and colleges too.
Mark has brought outstanding professionalism and expertise to our professional learning and has done it in a highly engaging and practical way that has made a significant impact to our classroom practice. I look forward to working with him in the future to continue developing our staff.
D MacDonald Headteacher
St David’s High School
Thought I’d drop you a quick message to let you know feedback from staff. I have had a chance to catch up with everyone now and everybody has found the days really useful. They have like the practical ideas which you can implement straight away. They appreciate the time to reflect and talk about their practice. All of them felt like it would be a really beneficial for the rest of the staff. In middle leaders meeting this morning they were incredibly positive about the experience and appreciated how it was tailored to the individual needs. So, all good stuff!”
Deputy Head teacher
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Plus One Leadership
Schools have faced unprecedented change over the last ten years to curriculum, inspection, assessment, pedagogy, as well as political, social, economic and technological changes which have impacted on the communities they serve. Given there is little sign of let up in terms of change, it is imperative that those who work in schools, both leaders as well as teachers/TAs are effective learners. After all, in the words of Eric Hoffer, ‘In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.’
According to the Sutton Trust, “teachers working in schools with more supportive professional environments continued to improve significantly after the first three years, while teachers in the least supportive schools/colleges actually declined in their effectiveness.” Plus One Leadership, enables leaders and their teams to explore ways to maximise the impact of professional learning in our schools on teaching and leadership. It will also address the key drivers for staff wellbeing and retention.
The programme examines four fundamental questions:
- How do we grow a sustainable and impactful learning culture within the staffroom of our schools?
- How do we, as leaders, reduce the variance between the most and least effective teaching within our teams through teacher learning?
- How do we develop a learning culture that nurtures excellence and staff engagement?
- How do we move from talking about teaching, to deep dialogue about the impact of teaching on learning, and how do we know it’s impacting?
I have always been sceptical of leadership and management, as I previously thought that the majority of leaders are leading for their own interests, but having worked with you and the group I can see exactly the type of leader that I want to be and more importantly how I can achieve this…A moment that defines the change in me is the phrase, ‘modelling, modelling, modelling… If you want someone to do something show them exactly how you would like them to do it.”
Lead Practitioner and Key Stage Lead
You’ve relit the fire. Looking forward to work my way through the professional learning you have made available to us and holding myself accountable to put it into practice.
Principal Teacher
Thanks for another great day of reflection and learning. I really feel this programme is helping me to see where we are going next as a school and also to consider how I can support other HTs – I am getting so much deep learning from it.”
Headteacher
In a short space of time we have seen a shared language develop across the team which now permeates some of the work we do as a middle leadership team. We have noticed the quality of planning for meetings improve and also stronger relational trust in the middle leadership team.
Headteacher
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Building Internal CPD capacity
My strong belief is that we should curate the curriculum for teachers and leaders, in the same careful way we design curriculum for our children/young people. After all, I think it truly demonstrates professional regard for staff if we provide well-sequenced, feedback-driven professional learning for staff that supports them to be even more effective over time. Competence drives confidence in adults as well as young people in schools.
With more and more schools and colleges are running CPD in-house, it is crucially important that we make sure it’s of high quality, as the opportunity cost of poor CPD for busy teachers is huge. They could be using this time to more productive ends. Not only that, but the loss of goodwill in poorly planned, and executed CPD can close minds to future changes.
I’ve nearly twenty years full-time experience of designing and leading CPD programmes in schools and colleges. In that time, I’ve also been leading and quality assuring a large team of facilitators who run my programmes in schools. This experience and expertise is what I can bring to add value to building internal CPD capacity in your school/college.
In particular, I’ve worked with schools/colleges to:
- Co-construct CPD processes within schools/colleges that actually focus on developing performing and closing the knowing-doing gap
- Evaluate existing CPD processes to pinpoint further developments
- Develop CPD programmes to support the development of your staff to plan and lead consistently high quality CPD in-house
- Develop staff to support the development of teaching through impactful coaching-mentoring
Mark has now worked with us for several years, playing a pivotal role in supporting the development of our TLA strategy. His expertise has been instrumental in creating an effective lesson framework that is central to our quality processes. Mark’s thought-provoking sessions have helped to structure and enhance our CPD programme, helping our staff progress from good to great. Additionally, his work with our Advanced Teacher Practitioners has been exceptional, supporting their growth into effective coaches and significantly boosting their capabilities.
College Manager, Hugh Baird College
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