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Professional Development

What professional development do we need?

An important element of the SEAL approach is the development of the social and emotional skills of staff. Schools involved in SEAL have found that improving staff social and emotional skills has a positive impact on pupil learning and behaviour.

Teaching is based upon social interaction and effective learning, and teaching requires high levels of skill. This is of particular importance when the focus of teaching is on the social and emotional skills themselves. Staff will need a high level of understanding and competence so they have the confidence to model, demonstrate and coach when teaching these skills to pupils. In addition they will need to model the skills at all times, in their relationships and interactions with colleagues, pupils and parents/carers and during everyday routines in and out of the classroom. The following approaches are useful:

• using systems of staff development that exist within the school, e.g. lesson observation, pairing staff to work together, shadowing, coaching, mentoring, demonstration of model lessons, etc. These can be extended to include work on the development of social and emotional skills;
• in-school professional development, delivered either by staff themselves, with the Behaviour and Attendance Consultant, with other member of Children’s Services, or with an outside trainer. Professional development might focus on social and emotional aspects of learning in general, or on particular areas (e.g. anger management, assertiveness, etc.);
• setting up an in-school ‘SEAL working/support group’ in which staff come together to discuss and plan learning opportunities and learning and teaching approaches together, and review successes and solve problems. It is important that the atmosphere is a safe one in which people feel that they can celebrate their successes, take risks and express any fears or worries.