The Professional Development Plan
What a PDP is
A personal record of:
- Skills you have
- Skills you want
- The plan for getting there
- The reflection on what changed
The four-question frame
- What am I good at?
- What am I not so good at?
- What practices do I want to continue?
- What areas do I wish to improve in?
The PDP cycle
Identify skill -> set time frame -> act -> get feedback -> reflect -> revise
What makes a PDP useful
- Personal, not generic
- Updated, not filed once
- Tied to action, not to a wish list
A teacher who reflects in a journal builds up a private record of moments, but loose reflections do not add up to a career. A professional development plan, or PDP, is the structure that turns reflection into a track. It records what you can do, what you want to learn, and what you have changed over time. It also turns out to be one of the most useful documents you can have when updating a CV.
What a PDP is for
A PDP is a personalised record of one’s career or experiences. It can be used as a catalogue of career development, a base for updating a CV, and a place to look back at the skills and knowledge gathered over years.
The personal part matters. A PDP is not a generic form filled out once a year for the school office. It belongs to the teacher and reflects what that teacher values and is working towards. A PDP filed and forgotten produces nothing. A PDP read and revised every term produces growth.
The plan also makes development visible. A teacher who can show coherence in their own development, a clear story from year one to year five, is read as more professional than one whose history reads as a list of jobs.
A simple four-question frame
A simple format keeps the PDP alive. Four questions cover most of the work.
- What am I good at? Naming strengths is uncomfortable for some teachers. It also matters. A PDP that lists only weaknesses is a path to burnout. The strengths column says what to keep using and what to lean on when learning a new skill.
- What am I not so good at? This is harder to write honestly. The honest answer is what you actually struggle with this year, not the polished version you would say in an interview. “Time-keeping in three-period afternoons” is a useful entry. “I could be more student-centred” is not.
- What practices do I want to continue? A PDP that throws away last year’s good work in pursuit of new methods loses ground. The continue column protects what is already working.
- What areas do I wish to improve in? This is where SMART objectives go. One or two well-defined improvements per term is enough. A list of ten will be ignored.
A PDP is the long-form version of these four questions. The questions stay constant. The answers shift each term.
The PDP cycle
A PDP is not a snapshot. It is a cycle. The cycle has clear stages, and each stage demands its own kind of reflection.
Identify a skill to develop
The starting point is one specific skill, drawn from the four-question frame. A common mistake is to pick too many skills at once. One per term is plenty.
Set a time frame
A skill without a time frame stays a wish. The PDP names a date by which the teacher will review what happened. End of term works well.
Act
The teacher tries the new skill. This may mean trying a new lesson structure, attending a workshop, observing a colleague, or reading a recommended book. The action is small and specific.
Get feedback
Feedback closes the loop. The teacher asks a colleague, a mentor, or a critical friend whether the change made any visible difference. Without feedback, the teacher is judging their own work, which has limits.
Reflect
The reflection asks: did the skill develop? Was the change worth the effort? What did I learn about how I learn? The third question is often the most useful in the long run.
Revise
The next round of the cycle starts here. The PDP is updated. The strengths column gains a new entry. A new skill is named for the next term.
The cycle is the hub of the PDP. It is what makes the document a living record rather than a filing exercise.
Reflecting on the PDP itself
A useful question once a year is not “what have I learned?” but “what have I learned from the process of keeping this PDP?” The answers tend to surprise teachers who try this.
Some find that they learn to write more honestly when they read old entries that were too polished. Some find that they spot patterns that no single year would reveal: a recurring difficulty with one age group, a strength in a kind of lesson they had not noticed. Some find that the PDP shows a slow drift in their values from one year to the next, and that the drift was not random.
A second meta-question is what other ideas you have had about your practice while keeping the PDP. The PDP often becomes a seed for thoughts that go beyond its frame. Capture those thoughts somewhere; they tend to be the source of the next year’s plan.
Identify, set time frame, act, get feedback, reflect, revise
A PDP is not a single document filed once a year. It is a cycle. Each pass through the cycle adds one specific skill, tries it, gets feedback, and updates the document. The document is alive only because the cycle keeps moving.
What a PDP is not
A few common misuses are worth naming.
A PDP is not a CV with a longer description. A CV summarises what you have done. A PDP records the thinking behind it, what you tried, what worked, and why.
A PDP is not the school’s appraisal form. The school’s appraisal serves the school’s accountability needs. The PDP serves the teacher’s growth. They can overlap, but they are not the same document.
A PDP is not a confession. A teacher who fills the document with weaknesses and apologies is not reflecting; they are punishing themselves. The strengths column is half the value.