The Teachers’ Standards set out the wider professional responsibilities that you must fulfil as a teacher. This involves making a contribution to the life of the school, developing good professional relationships with colleagues and support staff and communicating with parents. There is also the expectation that you take responsibility for improving your own teaching through professional development.

• Refer to Professional Behaviours (Standard 8 – Fulfil wider professional responsibilities).

During your initial teacher training and induction you will follow professional training programmes. Post-qualification you can choose to take courses leading to Masters degree qualifications or the new suite of National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) (introduced September 2021). 

Whether you follow a course leading to a further qualification or not, you should engage in ongoing professional development to enhance and develop your teaching. All teachers from trainees to experienced headteachers should take proactive control of their own professional learning and combine it with continued self-reflection. You should develop these habits as a new teacher.

You also need injections of geography inspiration from others and one important way to do this is through the geography community. It is important to keep abreast of new insights into teaching and learning and how this can impact on your practice. This means to critically engage with research and to read widely about developments in geography teaching.

• Refer to this reading list for more information.

The areas of professional development covered in this section are: