There are many ways to offer professional learning including face-to-face, group, and on-line. Professional learning can be focused on an individual (coaching) or a team (adoption of a new content-specific curriculum) or an entire school or system which has decided to implement a new “best practice” across the curriculum. It can be formal or informal, structured or fluid, synchronous or asynchronous, job-embedded or after school. Facilitators may offer any of these approaches or may adopt a hybrid approach to try to reach the needs of all teachers. Designers need to consider the goal of the professional learning, the needs of the learners, the resources available, and the scope of the learning that needs to occur before they make final decisions on what direction or directions to take when planning professional learning. Once the learning needs are established then structuring a good learning design specific for the teacher’s needs will be successful. Some of the learning designs that have been used by our group were both individual and collective. For instance, one member read leadership books as a member of the School Improvement Team which helped her school collectively establish goals such as test score and SWD improvement. When creating a learning design for teachers, it's very important to talk with teachers about their learning goals. Once those goals are established the basic skill is taught, opportunities to practice the new skill, coaching on the new skill and assessment on how the new skill is affecting student learning. Within this design it's important to continue the coaching until this new practice, if successful, is fully integrated into the classroom routine.
The benefits of offering professional development choices to teachers are numerous. If teachers feel they have a choice as to whether or not to adopt a new strategy into their instruction they feel their expertise is valued and they still make decisions as to what is best for their classrooms. It encourages active engagement on the part of the professional learning designer and the learner. The partnership approach uses dialog, equality, choice, voice, reflection, praxis, and reciprocity to build relationships that encourage innovation and increase the chance that teachers will adopt new practices willingly. Another benefit of allowing professional development choices is that teachers can choose the method that they feel most benefits them in achieving their individual, team, or school goals. The likelihood that teachers will embrace and adopt new ideas is greater if different types of choices are given. For example you may provide different types of professional development that is offered during the school day, with the possibility of a substitute filling in or even snippet learning during a “lunch and learn”. You could also offer summer learning, weeklong conferences, online training or even before and after training.
Concerns arise when professional learning is mandated by a higher agency, but teachers do not buy in because it is not their choice. Resentment and innovation overload can create resistance to professional learning. Other areas of concern include content teachers choosing not to attend their content PD and missing out on collaborating with stronger teachers, faculty members having too many choices and not making a choice at all or making the wrong choice for their needs. We have all attended boring, monotonous training that did not pertain to our content area.
The benefits of offering professional development choices to teachers are numerous. If teachers feel they have a choice as to whether or not to adopt a new strategy into their instruction they feel their expertise is valued and they still make decisions as to what is best for their classrooms. It encourages active engagement on the part of the professional learning designer and the learner. The partnership approach uses dialog, equality, choice, voice, reflection, praxis, and reciprocity to build relationships that encourage innovation and increase the chance that teachers will adopt new practices willingly. Another benefit of allowing professional development choices is that teachers can choose the method that they feel most benefits them in achieving their individual, team, or school goals. The likelihood that teachers will embrace and adopt new ideas is greater if different types of choices are given. For example you may provide different types of professional development that is offered during the school day, with the possibility of a substitute filling in or even snippet learning during a “lunch and learn”. You could also offer summer learning, weeklong conferences, online training or even before and after training.
Concerns arise when professional learning is mandated by a higher agency, but teachers do not buy in because it is not their choice. Resentment and innovation overload can create resistance to professional learning. Other areas of concern include content teachers choosing not to attend their content PD and missing out on collaborating with stronger teachers, faculty members having too many choices and not making a choice at all or making the wrong choice for their needs. We have all attended boring, monotonous training that did not pertain to our content area.