Alan Smeaton: Why Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is Essential for Good STEM Education

I enjoy my teaching, I find it satisfying and rewarding, but I also find it to be a learning and creative process. Frank Oppenheimer, younger brother of Robert, is credited with being the first to say that ‘the best way to learn is to teach’ and it is true. You can learn much about a topic by reading about it; you can learn much more by talking to others about it or making a presentation on it; but if you have to teach something to a class, whatever the age group or level, then you have to know the topic inside out. That is why I enjoy teaching, the act of teaching helps to deepen my understanding of what I teach and it is creative in that I will often get new ideas while preparing for class, or even sometimes while lecturing.

This brings me on to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. These subjects are not static topics as new discoveries are constantly being made and curricula are revised to reflect these discoveries. A good STEM teacher is one who really understands the topics he or she is teaching because, as any teacher will tell you, pupils will respect a knowledgeable teacher and will easily see through one who is bluffing. Thus it follows that if we are to have the best possible STEM education for our citizens, then we need to have the best-educated STEM teachers, and these teachers need to have a thorough knowledge and understanding of what it is they are teaching. That, in turn, leads me on to continuous professional development (CPD), which I believe is one of two absolute necessities if we are to improve the quality of our STEM education.

In our primary and secondary schools, many of our STEM teachers learned their science in the not-so-recent past and, without CPD as an integral part of their profession, it is impossible to remain abreast of their field. In many industries in the technology and science areas, CPD is openly welcomed, encouraged and rewarded, not because it has to be but because employees and managers realise that their technology is constantly evolving, and so it behooves them to keep up to date with it. I was delighted to read recently that the Teaching Council announced a new professional register where teachers will have to prove that they are undergoing training and upskilling on a regular basis. That all sounds promising but the language here is disconcerting when it talks about ‘having to prove’ that CPD is taking place. This makes CPD sound like the National Car Test, something that we have to do, that has to be paid for, and that nobody likes. When reading further, you discover that teachers themselves will define what is their own CPD, the details of which will not be finalised until March 2016, 18 months from now, with no timescale as to when it will subsequently be implemented although discussions on CPD can be held in schools using the extra hours from the Haddington Road agreement. This is not a good recipe for success.

The second absolute necessity that I believe we need for good STEM education is to focus on women in science and engineering. Ireland has always had great women scientists and engineers and continues to now. We have role models like Aoife McLysaght who was on the team that analysed the initial sequence of the human genome; Emma Teeling who studies the genome of the bat and why it lives for so long; Mary O’Connell who in 2014 had papers published in Science, Nature Reviews and Cell, three of the top-ranked journals in the world; and Linda Doyle who directs the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research (CTVR) centre, one of the most successful of such centres in the world. The world-class work of these women, and many more like them, deserves to be highlighted and used to inspire others to follow in their footsteps and help to make STEM an even more powerful contributor to this country

About This Series

In November 2014 to coincide with Science Week the Academy and Silicon Republic collaborated to produce an opinion series authored by selected members of the Academy around the topic of STEM Education, particularly focusing on primary and post primary level.

Authors outlined their respective opinions on the current practices and future initiatives that may advance STEM Education in Ireland. The views and opinions expressed by the authors were their own and did not reflect, the position of the Academy, but were simply an illustration of the various opinions reflective of the diverse Academy membership.

This article was originally published on 10 November 2014 on Silicon Republic.

Silicon Republic is Ireland's leading technology news service covering the ICT industry, communications, CIO strategy, venture capital investment, academia, as well as emerging areas like innovation and discovery, green tech and the digital lifestyle. It has been voted Ireland's leading technology website six years in a row.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.