OTO Journal
Clear thinking for your development.
Practical articles on careers, teaching, leadership and making professional development useful.
Latest · Choosing an assessment
Teacher or Leadership assessment: which to take
How to choose between the Teacher and Leadership development assessments, when both are worth taking, and how access works for now.
Read the articlePersonal goals
Why personal goals fade, and how to keep yours
Why personal goals fade within weeks, how to tell which ones are worth keeping, and how to review progress without guilt or starting over.
Assigned assessments
Assigned an assessment at work? What to do first
How to start an assessment your organisation has assigned, why you do not need to buy it, and how to find out who can see your report.
Deciding on a promotion
Should you take the promotion?
How to tell a real step forward from a sideways move, what to ask before you accept a promotion, and when turning one down is the better career decision.
Leadership development plans
Turn leadership insights into a development plan
How to test leadership insights against real practice, what to set as short-term, medium-term and long-term goals, and how a coach checks your assumptions.
First leadership role
Stepping up to your first leadership role
What changes in your first ninety days as a leader, which old habits hold you back, and how to show you are ready before you have the title.
Teacher development
Turn a training day into a classroom change
How to turn a training day or development reflection into one classroom change, what evidence to gather while you try it, and how to judge whether it helped pupils.
Weekly planning
Why your weekly plan breaks by Wednesday
Why weekly plans fall apart midweek, how much of a week to plan at all, and what to do in the ten minutes after the plan breaks.
Coaching with a report
Use your assessment report in a coaching session
What to bring to a coaching conversation about your assessment report, how to test it against real practice, and how to pick one development priority.
CV writing
Why your CV undersells you
Why capable people write weak CVs, what a recruiter reads first, and how to turn duties into outcomes without exaggerating.
Leadership judgement
Good judgement in school leadership
How school leaders can tell sound judgement from quick decisions, what a strong answer to a hard case contains, and how to practise it.
Career decisions
How to choose your next career move
Most job moves are a change of occupation, not a change of employer. Here is how to test a direction before you commit to it.
Professional learning
Make your CPD record useful
Stop counting hours. Record what changed in your practice, why you chose the activity and what you noticed afterwards.
Career record
Build a career evidence record
Employers increasingly hire on demonstrated skill. A CV lists where you were; an evidence record shows what you did and what changed.
Put it into practice
Start the record these articles describe.
A private career record, a public page you control and a learning log that counts. Free to start.