Professional Development that Benefits Everyone

Have you ever been sent to a conference where you experienced one of the following?

Conference A is packed with session after session of information. Keynote speakers talk about their research and their great new ideas. Among all those breakaway sessions, you can’t find enough that relates directly to your teaching or your students’ learning needs to keep you interested for three days. Still, you feel it’s your duty to attend as many sessions as possible, hoping to pass on something useful to a colleague. So, you sit through workshops that don’t really connect with your daily experience in the classroom.

Conference B is packed with useful information. There are so many breakaway sessions to choose from that it takes some fine-tuning to select those most appropriate to your teaching. The keynote speakers are inspiring, and delegates are basking in new ideas. The networking is meaningful. You leave the conference after three days bursting with enthusiasm and a renewed sense of purpose.

Then back to school. If colleagues ask about the conference, they’re seldom truly interested in hearing about the inspiring keynote address or looking at the slides released to delegates. Even if you attended a workshop you thought might benefit them, finding time to talk becomes difficult. They have papers to grade, exams to set, and lessons to plan. Classroom management strategies for that difficult class often take second place to simply coping at the coalface.

Both scenarios leave conference delegates with dwindling inspiration. The initial enthusiasm soon disappears under piles of student books and presentations, test papers, and behaviour issues—until the next conference comes around. This is how formal professional development usually works. Do you also find the forgotten conference materials from four or five years ago at the back of the cupboard or on and old USB somewhere?

Is there a way to share and retain, even expand, the knowledge delegates gain?
That question bothered the designer of the PEN System. How could a school make sure that everyone benefits from new ideas and knowledge when there is usually no budget for sending everyone to an international conference with first-class speakers.  The answer became part of the multi-pronged PEN system that eventually translates this new knowledge into addressing student needs, not only for the conference delegate’s students, but  to bring about transformation through shared practice.

Both Job-Embedded Professional Development (JEPD) and Formal Professional Development, such as conferences, seminars, webinars, short courses and workshops, have their rightful place within the PEN Framework. Each is planned and purposeful, designed to meet the evolving needs of educators. While JEPD supports ongoing growth through daily practice and collaboration, formal PD offers structured opportunities to deepen knowledge and expand instructional repertoire. One should enhance the other.

JEPD happens where teaching happens — in the moment, in the classroom, among peers. It is contextual, reflective, and owned by the teacher. It invites experimentation, celebrates curiosity, and builds a culture where learning and sharing that knowledge is part of the work, not an interruption to it.

Formal professional development. These experiences introduce teachers to new perspectives, new research, and innovative approaches that may not emerge naturally in the day-to-day rhythm of school life. The challenge is ensuring that this knowledge doesn’t vanish into forgotten folders, unshared notes, or unvisited slides once the excitement fades.

This is where the PEN framework bridges the two. It provides a clear process: teachers begin with honest self-reflection, examine data from their own students, and connect their goals to the broader vision of the school. From that point forward, their professional development becomes a living plan — dynamic, tailored, and continuously shaped by their practice. Formal PD becomes fuel for ongoing inquiry, feeding into the conversations and actions that define JEPD.

How? It is a plan that lives in dialogue — between educators, between individual aspirations and school-wide goals. When do busy teachers make the time for this? This is where knowledge sharing in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) comes in. The time for sharing is scheduled, and participation is compulsory.

A PLC is more than a group of teachers working together. Collaboration must be structured and purposeful, focused on improving student learning through continuous educator development. This is where those great lessons from formal PD sessions find their next life — not forgotten at the back of a cupboard or on an unused hard drive, but brought into discussion, adapted, and applied to bring about transformation through shared practice.

At its core, a PLC must bring educators together in a cycle of inquiry: they collectively identify learning goals, examine student data, discuss and implement new strategies, and reflect on their impact.

The strength of a PLC lies in shared responsibility. Teachers no longer work in isolation but as part of a team that grows together through dialogue, feedback, and mutual support. Regular meetings give space to talk about student progress, teaching ideas, and what’s actually working in the classroom.

PLCs aren’t divided by subject, but by teachers working with the same age group — keeping every conversation relevant, practical, and immediately useful to everyone.

In our next blog post, we’ll talk about action research and how it fits in with the teacher’s personal growth as well as the learning needs of the students.

For our handbook describing the PEN Framework in detail, contact us, it’s free of charge.