Kennedy, Aileen and Clinton, Colleen (2009)’Identifying the professional development needs of

early career teachers in Scotland using nominal group technique’, Teacher Development, 13:1,29

– 41

This article talked about a study done in Scotland that focused on professional

development in the early stages of ones teaching career. The nominal group technique (NGT)

was used to pin point the needs to teachers in years 2 – 6 of their career. The nominal group

technique is a problem solving process that starts with identifying the problem, making

generalizations, and then making a decision. The process of the NGT was to interview teachers

that fall into the year range (2 – 6) and gather information on their needs for professional

development. After all group interviews were complete an analysis was done first compiling a

list of ‘nodes’, or categories and then the categories were ranked basked on top five priority. The

research showed that the professional development done by teachers in early stages of their

career needed to be more collaborative based with encouragement in engaging with colleagues.

As I was picking what article to read I was drawn to this one based on the topic alone. At

my school we are constantly attending mandatory professional development trainings and I

almost feel that I am wasting my time. The findings in this study discussed in the paper tend to

reflect the opinions of myself and some of my colleagues who are just now in our second and

third years of teaching. I agree with the comments of the teachers interviewed regarding the

professional development not meeting their particular needs. In my personal opinion I would

rank the nodes a little differently, however I found that most everything on the list would be

beneficial to me at some point in my career. The main node that stood out to me, that has yet to

happen since I started teaching in 2011, is the subject based professional development. I would

love to attend mandatory trainings to grow in my subject field, as it is not a common one

throughout our school. In my own personal rankings of the nodes identified in this article, I

would place planning in my top priority. Lesson design and unit planning is a big deal at my

school right now so it falls on a higher level of importance. A CPD as the article calls it, on our

schools design model, which is very similar to the design model in our Chapter 1 reading, would

not only beneficial to myself but also beneficial to my colleagues that have been in their teaching

career a lot longer than myself. Overall, I appreciated this article due to the simple fact that it

focused on what a teacher needs in their profession rather than what someone else of power

wants them to do.