KES Help Guide: Creating your Professional Development Record (PDR)

It is important to keep a constructive record of the work you do and your professional achievements. In line with DfES guidelines, KES strongly recommends you produce and update your own professional development record (PDR).

What is a PDR?

A PDR is a collection of material that records and reflects your work, using your experiences and present activities. It helps you think about your practice in a planned and systematic way.

The first part of a PDR contains all your evidence of your achievements so far, e.g. certificates, courses attended, posts held and their responsibilities, important and relevant learning experiences.

The second part of a PDR is the developmental section where you can:

Reflect on your teaching and learning
Analyse your strengths and areas for further development
Set your learning priorities and plan your future, creating a development plan

Why have a PDR?

PDRs help you:

Prepare evidence for interviews/review meetings
Plan your career by recording your career history so far and allowing you to reflect on your progress and where to go next
Plan your training and development by letting you reflect on where you are now and identifying learning and development opportunities for the future, as well as preparing for qualifications

How can you create a PDR?

In creating a PDR first time, there are some systematic steps to follow:

1. Review your experience

List what you have done and how you have contributed to pupils’ learning. You might find it useful to start with a brainstorm, then organise the different points under appropriate headings, listing them chronologically and supporting them with some details of what happened.
A possible format could be:

Area:
Date	Title	Description

To help you, here are some examples:

External courses/qualifications, e.g. your degree, postgrad, training courses through KES or the school/LEA
Observing good practice in school, e.g. shadowing a colleague
Activities that are part of your role, whatever level of responsibility you are at in school, e.g. planning a programme of study or managing a department
Activities outside your job role, e.g. helping with INSET, serving as a governor/union representative, working on extra-curricular activities, mentoring colleagues, working with exam boards
Additional work with pupils, e.g. taking a group on a field trip, supporting school councils, school productions or developing teaching skills across a wide range of ages/abilities
Evaluations of your work, e.g. lesson observations, pupil feedback, pupil exam results
Relevant experience outside teaching, e.g. previous careers/ responsibilities or additional roles like local councillor, sports referee etc.

2. Assess what you have learnt from these experiences

Add an extra column to your list and note next to each experience what you have learnt from it. Try reflecting on:

Why you did it?
What did you do?
How did it go?
How did you share what you had learnt?
What did others think?
What were the results of it?
How effective was it overall?

3. Plan your professional development

Through examining your experience, you are now ideally placed to build on your strengths as well as improve areas that you have identified as needing development. It’s time to write a development plan. It is a good idea start by setting aims and objectives, then breaking them down into specific goals to achieve your desired professional development. Try to think about 3 different areas: you, your pupils and your school/department. Always check your goals are ‘smart’ i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-framed. You are likely to use a wide-variety of methods to achieve your goals. These could include training opportunities, mentoring and/or coaching, lesson observations, research, project work, work shadowing, additional qualifications. This is not an exhaustive list.

Below is a suggested format for your development plan:

Aim:
Objective:
Smart Goal:
What are you going to do?	Who else will be involved?	By when? (Deadline)	How will you know it has been achieved? (Evidence)

The Importance of Collecting Evidence

To support your PDR at all stages, you need to be able to substantiate your knowledge, skills and experience with evidence. In addition, as you work towards your professional development goals, evidence will reflect your progress. At the centre of this is evidence is pupils’ learning. Supporting evidence could include: lesson plans, lesson observations, certificates of courses or achievements, details of posts or responsibilities, videotapes of lessons, letters, reports, project plans and evaluations, photos, website development.

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