Educational institutions will always prioritize the learning outcomes of their students, but it’s vital for them to ensure that educators continue to be active and inquisitive learners. This continuing professional development or CPD is essential to ensure that educators’ skills and expertise remain current so that they can deliver high-quality learning experiences for students. It also gives them access to new opportunities for personal and professional growth and helps them embrace the wave of technological change currently sweeping through education.
What is CPD?
CPD for educators is an ongoing process that supports teachers’ professional learning and development from initial training to senior management roles. It includes both formal and informal opportunities to build skills, knowledge, and experience. Ultimately, CPD for educators aims to improve teachers’ professional competence and to maximize potential. As the UK’s Department of Education puts it:
“Effective professional development for teachers is a core part of securing effective teaching.”
There’s a wide range of easily available CPD resources available to global language educators. This blog post highlights three main types of material – those which are available from established third parties, those produced by Sanako itself, and those produced by our international network of partners and resellers. We hope that you’ll find some inspiration below to support you in the classroom and beyond!
If there are additional CPD resources for language teachers that you would like Sanako to develop, please do let us know by emailing info@sanako.com
CPD materials produced by third parties
Language educators can access a wealth of high-quality resources from well-established providers to enhance and support their professional development. These include formally assessed and certified courses – over 250,000 teachers globally are, for example, currently studying “How to Plan and Teach Great English Lessons” – a specialist course for ESL teachers developed by the British Council and FutureLearn.
But there’s also a wide range of free material produced by learning resource providers such as Cambridge English and OUP to help and support language educators. Although complete access to content is limited to their members, international teaching associations such as TESOL do provide significant CPD content as well as providing curated links to a wide range of additional materials. And, of course, make sure that you’re following your favorite providers on social media to keep on top of the very latest CPD releases.
CPD materials produced by Sanako
Sanako also produces a wide range of free resources to help and support language educators. These resources are available to Sanako customers and those using other language learning solutions.
Given that you’re reading this post, you’re already familiar with at least one of Sanako’s most popular CPD resources – the Sanako blog! With new posts added regularly across a wide range of topics (e.g technology, pedagogy, remote teaching, teaching approaches, student engagement/motivation), there’s a wide range of highly relevant insight and best practices for educators to enjoy and learn from. Educators can also easily subscribe to the blog to receive all new content via email as soon as it’s published!
New blog posts are also promoted via Sanako’s social media channels – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. Subscribe and follow these channels for further advice, information, and best practice from across the global language teaching community. We also share a wide range of content from other expert sources that will help you become a more efficient and effective administrator/educator.
Given that Sanako products are used in 110 countries and over 50,000 classrooms, we also have a unique insight into how the world’s best language educators teach and work. It’s part of our mission to share unique best practice insights from these educators with our wider language teaching community. This is principally achieved via detailed case study blog posts that highlight new pedagogical approaches (e.g “How can Cuisenaire rods transform English grammar teaching?”), share international insight (e.g “Foreign language teaching in Finland’s world-leading education system”) or support educators’ career development (e.g “Start your language teaching career in Europe with a language certificate”).
Leading global educators also share their experiences with other practitioners through an ongoing series of language teaching webinars. These bring together global language educators to learn from each other through a virtual meeting format and have seen educators from across the world share their best practice and expertise with colleagues. The webinars are promoted through the Sanako blog, newsletter, and social media, and recordings of previous events are made available through Sanako’s YouTube channel. Webinar attendees can also receive a CPD certificate of attendance for their personnel records and development files.
Finally, there’s a wealth of information and resources available for Sanako customers to support them to get the most out of the tools and technologies they have purchased. Extensive “how-to” guides, resources, and videos are available via our help site. Such resources help educators to gain confidence in using new technologies/teaching systems and to develop new skills that can transform their approach to language teaching.
CPD materials produced by Sanako’s partners
In order to deliver the best possible service to our customers, Sanako works with a global network of partners and resellers. They act as our local experts in each territory and respond as our local representatives wherever our customers are located.
As well as helping with installations and deliveries, they also provide a wealth of CPD opportunities and resources to help the language teaching community. Perhaps most frequently, this comes in the form of training sessions, both face-to-face and virtual, to support anyone interested in the Sanako product range. As above, it’s worth following your local partner on social media to keep updated with forthcoming activities and sessions.
For Sanako customers, our partners also create bespoke CPD programs to develop the skills their institutions really need. As a US teacher said of Sanako’s partner Bill Desch at Educational Systems & Services:
“Bill really helped us with Sanako Connect, which I absolutely love! Bill’s not a teacher, but he has great ideas for language teachers and how Sanako software can really help. He has a clear grasp of what teachers do and how Sanako can help us to do it better!”
Most of our resellers also provide detailed, downloadable training guides, how-tos, and videos that support educators to use Sanako products to the max. These materials are invaluable in helping teachers to get the most of the products they have and to use them most effectively. This helps educators to better engage and motivate students and to improve their language learning outcomes.
Sanako is the global-leader in teacher-led language instruction technology. Our software supports language teachers to deliver inspiring and effective lessons. If you’d like to find out more about how Sanako’s dedicated language teaching software could transform your approach to language teaching, click here or the banner below to learn more!
This blog post was last updated 6 July, 2023.