This post contains a compiled list of the free online CPD for teachers along with their details, to assist teachers and teaching assistants take their career to the next level by becoming professionals.
Firstly, CPD stands for Continuing Professional Development, and it any activity that helps an individual develop their knowledge and skills, and promotes their professional practice, but in this case, that of teachers.
Now, using the definition above, free online CPD for teachers, are free online courses designed to develop or polish the knowledge and skills of those in the teaching profession and make them professionals.
In the teaching profession, teachers need to keep upgrading their skills, exploring new teaching ideas, strategies, and acquiring a vast amount of knowledge. It has to go on like this for the – teachers – because the community has to keep evolving and that happens through part of the ideas that teachers share with their students.
This is what makes the teaching profession a daunting task, because you have to keep updating, upgrading, getting better, and more professional. There’s absolutely no end to it but it is for the betterment of society, community, and the world at large.
Becoming a professional teacher requires a lot of time and dedication as you will be learning a whole range of skills, teaching techniques, and even subjects to apply in classroom teaching. It might cause a bit of stress attending these professional teaching classes and still handling your own classes.
Thanks to online learning that problem has been eliminated, you need not attend a face-to-face class to learn professional courses for your teaching career. Instead, you need a PC or a tablet and an internet connection to enroll in an online professional course and equip yourself with the right skill.
In this article, we have outlined some free online CPD for teachers each of their details, and application links for you to enroll.
Of all the advantages of online education, the ones I personally prefer more are flexibility and cheap/free courses. Online education allows you to learn anywhere, at your own pace and there are plenty of courses online that are for free which actually offers on-demand skills.
It’s really amazing, you don’t get to stress nor spend money in getting a skill of your choice or skill required by the current business model.
Free online CPD for teachers is one of them and you don’t have to pay anything, well aside from your time and commitment, to earn these professional teaching skills.
What are CPD courses?
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses are courses specifically designed to train or develop individuals to become professionals in their current field of studies, for example, teachers.
Are CPD courses free?
There are a lot of CPD courses you can find online for free, allowing you to harness the power of the internet and the benefits of online learning. In this article, we will be listing some of the free online CPD courses for teachers.
Do employers recognize CPD?
Not sure if employers will recognize a CPD?
Well, the answer is Yes. Yes, employers do recognize CPD certificates gotten from an accredited CPD service. With a CPD attached to your CV or Resume you’re automatically ahead of the competition who don’t have one in any organization.
You could either be offered a much higher role or position in the organization or if you were already employed there, you could get a promotion.
How many hours of CPD do teachers need?
Teachers must complete at least 30 hours of CPD per year.
How do teachers earn CPD points?
Teachers earn credit units when they participate in CPD programs that emanate from the PRB for the development of the professions. The programs include; seminars, workshops, tours and visits, non-degree training lectures and scientific meetings, modules, technical lectures, and subject matter meetings.
These CPD programs may take any nature of learning or participation, like online learning, professional work experience, self-directing learning, formal learning, informal learning, and non-formal learning.
Now, with these questions cleared and much clarity given we will now go on to the main subject matter; free online CPD for teachers.
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Here are 17 free online CPD for teachers, main courses, along with their details and links to enroll for the classes to earn points and become a recognized CPD holder.
- Bullying in Schools: How Should Teachers Respond?
- Professional Relationships with Young People
- Get Moving, Get Healthy
- Take your Teaching Online
- Linking Curriculum Learning to STEM Careers
- Managing Behavior for Learning
- Understanding Language: Learning and Teaching
- Essential Digital Skills
- Emotional Intelligence at Work
- Teaching Students who have suffered from Complex Trauma
- The Online Educator: People and Pedagogy
- Accessibility of e-Learning
- Why Teach Art?
- Introduction to Cybersecurity for Teachers
- Understanding Computer Systems
- Foundations of Teaching for Learning: Developing Relationships
- Diploma in Education Psychology
Bullying in Schools: How Should Teachers Respond?
This is a one-hour course and a free online CPD for teachers equipping them with tested and trusted strategies to deal with bullying in their classroom and school in general. You will have an understanding of bullying and how to identify it, engage helpfully when a child reports bullying, and be able to interpret people’s different attitudes towards bullying.
Professional Relationships with Young People
In an educational setting, developing the right kind of professional relationship – a positive one – with young people greatly influences their learning outcomes. This kind of relationship can offer young people new perspectives on approaching, developing, and managing quality relationships of their own.
In this free online CPD for teachers, you will explore various approaches in building relationships that working practices that can inform work with young people.
Get Moving, Get Healthy
This is a free online CPD for teachers which covers the health benefits of physical activities such as exercises and involvement in other physical health education, and the importance of diet.
Armed with this knowledge, teachers can go on to impart it to their students, teach them the benefits of physical activity and how it can prevent the risk of diseases like diabetes, and encourage them to take their physical wellbeing seriously.
Take your Teaching Online
Reading this you already know how huge online learning is and how much it has helped students all over the world, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic where a lot of people have to earn their degrees online and even graduate online.
The importance of online learning is just so versatile and every teacher should become a professional at setting it up and handling it efficiently.
This free online CPD for teachers which can be completed in a day guides teachers through the practical steps of delivering an engaging, seamless, and flexible online teaching experience to students.
Linking Curriculum Learning to STEM Careers
As a teacher, it is important to develop your students’ career aspirations and through this course, you will be able to help students interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, or mathematics) by enhancing your role as a STEM subject teacher by merging curriculum learning to careers.
This is one of the free online CPD for teachers and at the end of it, you will be able to provide a real-life understanding of your subject and its relevance in future career paths.
Managing Behavior for Learning
With this free online CPD for teachers, you will explore how behavior management skills can help you and your students and how to control your emotional responses when you’re interacting in the classroom.
This program will equip you with skills and techniques to effectively manage your classroom, recognize students’ behavior, and develop trust in the classroom.
Understanding Language: Learning and Teaching
This free online CPD for teachers is offered by the University of Southampton and the British Council and then delivered online via FutureLearn. The course introduces teachers to some of the major concepts of effective teaching and learning of languages.
Essential Digital Skills
The latest trend is being digital, everything is now online and it keeps expanding and doesn’t look like it will blow off in the years to come. In this free online CPD for teachers, you will partake in a class that will offer you essential digital skills which you can then pass on to your students.
Students need to start getting involved in the digital world at an early age since it is what they’ll be having for a long, long time and their teachers must equip them with the skills the right way.
Emotional Intelligence at Work
You prepare and leave for work (school) as a teacher where you meet other employees (teachers & other staffs) and your emotions at work is certainly different from home.
In this free online CPD for teachers, you will explore the meaning of emotional intelligence, its importance, and how to develop your emotional intelligence skills. With an understanding of emotional intelligence, you will see how it improves workplace performance and in building better relationships.
Teaching Students who have suffered from Complex Trauma
Traumas are a real thing and affect the physical, emotional, and social development of children and adolescents. To reduce harm, teachers need to respond appropriately using trauma-informed practices and policies.
Through this free online CPD for teachers, you will understand what complex trauma is, its effect on student’s performance, and how to apply trauma-informed practices and policies to reduce the risk to students.
The Online Educator: People and Pedagogy
Online learning is becoming increasingly useful and almost every school (secondary and post-secondary) are utilizing the innovation to carry out learning practices. As a teacher, you have to enhance your online teaching experience, be capable of designing engaging courses to meet the need of every diverse learner, and shape your digital identity.
How do you achieve all of these?
Easy-peasy. Enroll in this free online CPD for teachers and gain skills and understanding of online teaching and enhance yourself professionally.
Accessibility of e-Learning
As a teacher, you have to understand the needs of a diverse population of students and in this free online CPD for teachers, you will explore the challenges faced by disabled students who may use computers in different ways when partaking in online learning.
This online course will equip teachers with the technology and techniques used by disabled students, the adjustments to teaching techniques, and design decisions that affect the accessibility of online learning tools.
Why Teach Art?
Why teach art? What value does art possess in the school curriculum?
These questions and more are answered in this free online CPD for teachers where you will be exploring the benefits of including art in the school curriculum along with some of the common criticisms.
Introduction to Cybersecurity for Teachers
This is a free online course for teachers delivered online by FutureLearn and it is designed for teachers. Equipping them with key concepts of cybersecurity knowledge to teach students aged 14-16 years old.
Teaching kids this course will help them learn how to stay safe while using technology, the different cyber-attacks and how to prevent them, and explore malware, malicious bots, and physical data threat.
Understanding Computer Systems
You’re probably reading this post with an article, it’s fine if you aren’t, someone else is, that is to say, computers are in almost every home, schools, offices, etc. it is one of the biggest trends of the tech world and students need to become computer literates as well.
In this free online CPD for teachers, Understanding Computer Systems, you will explore how a computer works, what happens inside, and the software and hardware aspects. With this knowledge, you can then impart them to students and help kick start an interesting career in computing.
Foundations of Teaching for Learning: Developing Relationships
The course, Foundations of Teaching for Learning: Developing Relationships, is one of the free online CPD for teachers delivered online via Coursera.
The course is designed for those already teaching or aspiring to be teachers in any subject and context and instills high-quality teaching skills, professionalism, and assessment in them to become professional teachers.
Diploma in Education Psychology
Understanding the psychology of education will help you perform better in the classroom as a teacher, you will be able to understand your students easily but you have to gain the skill.
How do you do that?
By enrolling in this program you can gain knowledge of educational psychology which will help in improving your teaching, instructional, and training methods among students.
These are the free online CPD for teachers and you may enroll in as much as you want, it’s not like you have anything to lose, they are free, and also, the more classes you join and complete the more knowledge and skills you possess and becoming more professional among colleagues.
Teaching assistants to aren’t left out, we have prepared some free one CPD for teaching assistants to enroll in and gain professional knowledge as well.
The following are the top 3 free online CPD for teaching assistants:
- Supporting Successful Learning in Primary School
- Supporting Successful Learning in Secondary School
- Teaching Assistants: Support in Action
Supporting Successful Learning in Primary School
Supporting children in primary school is vital and in this course, you develop your understanding of learning and teaching to gain confidence in supporting children in school as a teaching assistant.
This free online CPD for teaching assistants is offered by the University of Reading and delivered online by FutureLearn, requiring only 4 weeks and 3 hours of weekly study.
Supporting Successful Learning in Secondary School
This is almost like the course above but this time you’ll be learning and teaching how to support secondary school students. It is also offered by the same university and online learning platform.
Teaching Assistants: Support in Action
This free online CPD for teaching assistants is offered by the Open University and delivered via its online learning platform, OpenLearn. The online course is designed to build you into a highly skilled teaching assistant that can work effectively with children and adolescents from all walks of life.
Unfortunately, there aren’t many of these free online CPD for teaching assistants, but these three should serve you well and equip you with skills to become a highly skilled teaching assistant.
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