Continuing professional development

In schools and colleges, continuing professional development is generally known as in-service training or INSET. The scope of INSET is as broad as the teacher's role is. So most teachers will attend courses relevant to their subject specialism, to their pastoral responsibility and to their extra-curricular activities.

Typical INSET courses might be attending a training day offered by an examination board on some aspect of an A-level course, listening to a speaker invited into a school to address the whole staff on an issue such as bullying or drug abuse, and spending several days at an outward bound centre gaining a mountain leadership award.

A great many INSET opportunities are focused on career developments such as specialising in pastoral matters or school management.

As well as attending INSET courses, teachers might well spend a lot of their private time reading about their subjects and about how to teach them. This might include reading some more advanced text books and reading journals that cover the subject area or deal with general educational issues. Among the journals is Teaching Statistics which is particularly aimed at teachers of statistics in schools.