It was a joy and a privilege to co-author an article with Debbie Bogard for BERA Research Intelligence (Issue 163, Summer 2025), titled “Guerrilla CPD” (Gilbert & Bogard, 2025). The piece explores how a grassroots, teacher-led collaboration between a Further Education (FE) and a Higher Education (HE) institution during the pandemic sparked meaningful pedagogical change.
Our article tells the story of how informal, values-driven professional development can revitalise teaching and learning—and why this might just be the model we need in these hyper-surveilled, data-obsessed times.
Here are three key takeaways from our work:
1. Informal networks foster authentic professional growth.
Too often, CPD is delivered in a top-down, compliance-heavy way. But when professional learning emerges from friendship, shared values, and curiosity, something different happens. Our “guerrilla” CPD approach—playful, improvised, and deeply reflective—helped educators rediscover their agency. From Mary Poppins-themed workshops to late-night idea swaps, we created spaces that encouraged experimentation and dialogue over dogma.
2. Creative techniques can unlock deep reflection.
We drew on techniques like Peter Elbow-inspired freewriting and my own method of diagrarting (a blend of diagrams, art, and conversation) to help teachers explore and express their thinking. These methods gave participants permission to be messy, critical, and creative—qualities rarely welcomed in traditional CPD formats.
3. Decolonising the curriculum is a shared, ongoing practice.
Inspired by the radical pedagogies of Freire, hooks, and Fanon, we centred our workshops around decolonisation. Crucially, this wasn’t about imposing a fixed idea—it was about opening up collective inquiry. One of the most exciting outcomes was seeing teachers begin to research, write, and publish their own work, demonstrating the power of the ‘teacher as researcher’ model.
Collaborating with Debbie—an exceptional, research-informed FE teacher—has been one of the most enriching professional experiences of my career. She embodies the kind of educator we need now: grounded in classroom realities, but always reaching outwards into theory, justice, and innovation.
In a profession increasingly dominated by metrics and monitoring, our work argues for something else: trust, collaboration, and creativity. Guerrilla CPD is more than a title—it’s a call to arms.
📖 Read the full article here:
Gilbert, Francis and Bogard, Debbie. 2025. Guerrilla CPD. BERA Research Intelligence (163), p. 26. ISSN 0307-9023. Available via Goldsmiths Research Online or through the BERA website.