Appendix 1: Continuing Professional Development (CPD) frameworks

Over the last decade, a number of CPD frameworks have been developed and made freely available to support teachers, their managers and teacher educators to map out learning and development goals for teachers. CPD frameworks include sequenced descriptors which reflect different stages of a teacher's development across a range of categories of teacher knowledge and skills. These descriptors serve to identify teachers’ current stage of professional development and the areas they need to focus on, and to provide guidance on how to access the knowledge and skills needed to achieve specific goals. They are often accompanied by online diagnostic tools based on the frameworks that can be used to help teachers and their managers.

The CPD frameworks listed below are different in:

1. their focus – whether they describe competencies which are common to all teachers, or those which are specific to different groups of teachers or specific domains of teacher expertise

2. their component categories – the specific areas of professional competence and practice included in each framework

3. their identified phases of development – these reflect the different stages of competency or skill in teachers’ careers

4. whether a digital version is available, which can be used for online self-assessment.

The table below offers guidance to identify the specific features of each framework, so that you can choose the one(s) that is/are more appropriate for your context.