College Dean | Mr Chris Ryan

Teaching Staff Professional Development

Last year, I profiled our piloting of ‘Educator Impact’, an online software tool that employs the seven Standards of Teaching articulated by the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership to support classroom teachers in using feedback data to reflect on their practice and set professional learning goals.

We had 10 teachers act as our pilot group in 2017 and this year 35 of our staff are engaging in this process with their Head of Faculty adopting the role of professional coach. The process sees the teacher reflecting on some questions derived from the standards and students providing feedback on lessons along with classroom visitations by the coach. This data is triangulated to provide the teacher with ‘big picture’ feedback in order to develop a focus goal and project for an extended period throughout the year. Ultimately, feedback data is collected once again in order to measure growth and the teacher is provided with coaching and professional reading and resources during the project.

We foresee that our teaching staff will participate in this formal process every three years. However, indicative of our excellent professional culture, a number of staff have also come forward to form professional peer groups to use the online tool to support one another in peer coaching groups as well.

We are blessed with strong teams in our Heads of Faculty and Pastoral Team Middle Leadership groups. During this year, these individuals will engage with another online tool provided by Educator Impact which is designed for leaders. It follows a similar model to the process for teachers where feedback data is collected to provide feedback on particular professional domains. This feedback will be of a 360 degree nature and is designed to emphasise the ‘praise’ in appraisal and to present an opportunity for each leader to develop some focus areas for professional growth throughout the year and beyond.

We also have 12 staff engaged in post-graduate study at Masters level through the Australian Catholic University this year in Religious Education, Theology and Educational Leadership. It is our pleasure to support our dedicated and talented staff in this professional development.