As a teacher, you’ll often find yourself in situations outside of your comfort zone. In fact, it pretty much happens from day one of your career when you find yourself standing in front of thirty students quaking in your boots as they look expectantly at you.

Whether you feel anxious because you’re new to teaching, are facing the challenge of teaching a new topic, or find you need to make changes to your practice, there are tried and tested ways of appearing confident. Here are 5 confidence boosting tips.

Over the past few years, the concept of a 'Growth Mindset' has become increasingly popular.  Discovered by Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, growth mindset is the idea that our intelligence isn't fixed. Dweck found that students who believe they can develop their basic abilities and improve themselves have greater motivation and higher achievement than those who see their abilities as fixed and unchangeable.

Tim Matthews is Deputy Headteacher at Oriel High School. As well as creating this helpful blog, he has also built a useful group in the IRIS Connect platform,‘Leading A Self Improving Department'. It's a great starting point if you are taking your first steps as a Subject Leader or are looking to review how you are doing things.  It's FREE to our customers. Click here to login and join today >

Tutors at VIA Health in Denmark, started using video for professional development (PD) because they lacked a concrete tool for developing and qualifying their own teaching, and the time to watch each other lecture.

But with the help of video PD, they have been able to see their own teaching from multiple angles and share specific situations, allowing them to step back and reflect on their own teaching in new ways

Professor of Professional Didactics Birgitte Lund Nielsen is one of two facilitators who set the course in motion. She shares her tips on how to use video PD in higher education:

As you're probably aware, one of the biggest challenges for any network of educators, whether it's within an individual school or across a school district, is transferring existing knowledge and new practices, not just from teacher to teacher, but from school to school.

Until now ‘sharing good practice’ via verbal and written presentations has been the traditional approach for knowledge transfer, but despite its popularity, the success rates are low. In fact, coaching and mentoring have a far better success rate than simply listening to other teachers or reading reports. But why?

Joint Practice Development (JPD) has a lot to offer schools and school districts. With the right culture, commitment and challenge in place, it has the power to take professional development and wider school improvement to a whole new level.

Here are 5 steps to help you embed JPD in your school or district...

As the percentage of new teachers in schools nationwide has skyrocketed, so has the need to support them. But according to this report from the New Teacher Center, States are largely failing to invest in programs that support new teachers. 

Mentors, therefore harbour an increasing amount of pressure to ensure new teachers are being adequately supported themselves. So how can you be an inspiring mentor and support your new teachers?

Video is a hugely versatile tool when it comes to professional development.

It can be used for self-reflection, coaching and modelling examples of best practice, to name just a few.  Here are just some of the fantastic ways teachers in our community across the UK have told us that they are using video to drive learner's progress.