Quality Professional Development

Professional Development is everywhere. Social media groups, conversations in the hallway between classes, PLC meetings, lunch and learns, books, podcasts, blogs, coursework, conferences, and more I’m sure. There is no shortage on people’s ideas on how to improve.

Educational research is wonderful, and decisions about what and how to teach must be grounded in fact. The primary source research is often behind a paywall or difficult to directly apply. So we rely on secondary or further sources, who interpret what they want to from the research and might accurately reflect the true findings. This causes the full impact and possible professional development to be stilted or skewed. But once someone has read the wrong interpretation and the information spreads, it is believed to be true.

Educators are also never short on thoughts and feelings about what works. These lively discussions are great, and nuggets of knowledge can be taken from them. But often what works for a teacher has been honed through their own trial and error and works with their personality. What works like magic for one teacher or with one class of students can be a calamity for different people.

High quality professional development starts with a topic people are interested in learning about. When anyone, but especially adult learners, are made to endure a training about something that does not interest them, they are not developing professionally. In the Academic Mindsets posts, one of the resilience beliefs for students to persevere is they see the work having value to them. This is even more critical for adults when the consequence of a poor grade doesn’t act as an extrinsic motivator.

It then needs to be applicable to the learner. A school wide professional development on a specific topic is challenging to do well when the staff all have different backgrounds, experiences, and classroom needs. Reading strategies are crucial, but how does one strategy relate to kindergarten and 5th grade teachers. Or social studies, math, and physical education?

Finally, the professional development must be small in scope. The more complex the topic is to understand, the less likely the person is to use it. And the bigger the change from someone’s current practice the less likely they are to implement. The “experts” delivering the training need to remember how far their own journey has taken them, and dial it back to step one. Bite size chunks that a teacher can immediately try with confidence will make faster and farther growth then trying to learn and apply everything at once.

Few good teachers think they have it all figured out, and most are hungry for ways to improve. It is incumbent on coaches and leaders to give the teachers what they want and need. In ways they can easily practice and get support through their growth.