Teacher Motivation & CPD

Let me say this right off the bat, the inspiration for writing a blogpost on a podcast I recently listened to comes from reading Rachel Tsateri’s highly practical summary-blogpost of Gabriel Diaz Maggioli’s conversation with Graham Stanley on Teacher Talk Radio.

The practice of articulating our thoughts on a topic and sharing it with others, in my opinion, is one of the most profound ways to consolidate our comprehension on the topic and boost multiple linguistic as well as non-linguistic sub-skills. I might be blowing my own trumpet here🫣, but my learners often engage in similar activities, where they summarise, or get into a group discussion, or share their written or verbal perspectives on a specific piece of content.

In this post, I would like to share what I have gathered from listening and reading Dr Amol Padwad’s thoughts on teacher motivation, where he finely coalesces Daniel Pink’s theory of motivation and Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs with three broadly categorised stages of a teacher’s career; entry level, early stage and advanced career.

Dr. Padwad, who doesn’t really need an introduction, is a professor and director for Centre for English Language Education at Ambedkar University in Delhi. Here is a link to his complete bio. It was this episode of the TEFL Training Institute’s podcast, aired on 14th November, which led me to explore his work in the area of teacher motivation.

In his paper, Dr Padwad encourages readers to view teacher motivation as a dynamic phenomenon which is affected by various factors at different stages of a teacher’s career. Below, I have tried to pictorially represent an overly-simplified gist of his paper.

The part that caught my attention was when, during the podcast, Dr Padwad shares practical implications of his paper on writing CPD policies at schools. He affirms that there should be a shared understanding, collective development and periodic reviews of the CPD policies. Moreover, he advises against an overarching definition of CPD, as individual teachers have their own trajectory of development. What is essential is a clarity of roles and responsibilities for all involved. The trickiest part would be collaboratively designing a mechanism which allows teachers to demonstrate their progress or achievements that integrate with the schools’ goals and vision.

Here is some of Dr Padwad’s advice for organisations who genuinely intend to support their teachers’ professional development.

I can’t help but notice the seamless support and transition from one stage to another. Hopefully, the above table would guide us in designing our CPD policies at EngVictus in the near future.