Building subject-specific CPD opportunities

Laura Gatward, Assistant Headteacher, Enrich Learning Trust, UK Developing subject knowledge and pedagogy for pupil success Powerful knowledge, created and delivered by experts, ‘enable[s] students to acquire knowledge that takes them beyond their own experiences’ (Young et al., 2014, p. 7). But how do teachers gain this powerful subject knowledge in school when so often CPD is a generic approach for all? Schools that have the poorest pupil outcomes or inspection results are often schools where this generic approach to CPD is used (Cordingley et al., 2018). Evidence Based Education’s ‘Great Teaching Toolkit evidence review’ (Coe et al., 2020) found that a key feature of great teaching is that teachers ‘understand the content they are teaching and how it is learnt’ (p. 5). Subject communities can help to achieve this by enabling teachers to share expertise and resources, deepening their understanding of their subject and how best to teach it. Subject communities give