This document provides an overview of research being conducted on TeachMeet, an informal model of teacher professional development. TeachMeet began in 2006 in Scotland as teachers organizing face-to-face discussions to continue online conversations. It has since spread worldwide and blended elements of unconference formats with social media tools. The research aims to analyze available information on TeachMeet events and evaluate its effectiveness as CPD. Frameworks will be used to examine TeachMeet's characteristics as models of professional learning and communities of practice.

1. Self-organised CPD - the TeachMeet phenomenon
Ms Mags Amond - PhD year one research
Researchmeet 2017

2. This research seeks to outline the evolution of a recently developed form of self-organised teacher Continuing Professional
Development (CPD), known as TeachMeet. It will report work in progress on the consolidation of various informal sources of
information into a dataset in preparation for further analysis and evaluation.
Defined by Hallinan as “a model of CPD which involves those attending as participants in delivering the training as well as receiving
it”, TeachMeet came into existence in 2006 in Scotland. The first event was organised by three educators who were publishing
online and who wanted to continue discussion face-to- face. The subtitle given to the event by the founders was “teachers sharing
ideas with teachers”. TeachMeet combines the philosophy and practices of three unconference forms - Open Space Technology,
PechaKucha and BarCamp - and is empowered by the communication methods offered by contemporary social media. A major
factor has been the use of tools and practices of online collaboration that have enabled the TeachMeet community to develop and
grow organically, unincorporated, without formal constitution or management structure, in a way that seems at present to be
sustainable.
Although there is a wealth of informal and personal reflection on TeachMeet to be found online, a search in the academic literature
reveals very little direct examination of the phenomenon, although other similar unconference activity has been reported. A first
sweep of data recorded online suggests that in the UK alone there were between 40 and 50 TeachMeets per month in 2016.
Positive reactions from TeachMeet attendees at such meetings have been frequently noted. In ten years since its inception it has
become a worldwide educational movement and recently government agencies are beginning to experiment with the format for
CPD. Taken together these observations would suggest the phenomenon deserves further research to describe its essential
elements and evaluate its effectiveness.
Informal comments and reports by attendees, presenters and organisers constantly refer to TeachMeet as “the best CPD yet” or
more recently as “our COP” (Community of Practice). This paper outlines how TeachMeet characteristics may be mapped to
Kennedy’s models of CPD, and Teachmeet participants identified within the Wenger-Trayner COP Levels of Participation model.
The paper sets out a plan to use CPD / COP evaluation frameworks, such as Kirkpatrick, Kirkpatrick-Millwood, Guskey, Desimone,
Wenger, in order to frame the proposed research. This will help to fill a gap in knowledge concerning a phenomenon that Bennett
(2011), in the only formal academic paper directly related to this subject to date, has entitled “guerilla CPD”. [400].
TeachMeet
evolution
elements
essence
evaluation

3. ‘unconference’ meets social media
Open Space Technology
1980s
Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
wiki blog 1990s
Pecha Kucha 2003
Barcamp 2005
Twitter 2006

5. jan-jun 2016

6. Continuing
Professional Practice
Personal Development
Teacher Learning
Community
or
Network
of Practice
C3 P3 D2
P3 P3 D2
P3 D2
P3 P3
P3 L1
T1 L1
P3 L1 C3
P3 L1 N1
C3
of5 P3
P3 P3

9. personal
learning
network
PLN
community of
practice
CoP
teacher
learning
TL
TeachMeet
‘teachers
sharing ideas
with
teachers’
Professional
Learning
Perspective of
profession

10. Researchmeet 2017