1. Alignment to school goals. What are you looking to accomplish, and how does professional development align with that?
3. Emphasise competency. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all professional development. Professional development should empower teachers to identify where they are, what their target is, and what steps they should take to progress to the target.
4. Ensure professional development is ongoing and sustained.
It can’t be just one shot in the arm. “How do you build ongoing systemic professional development with sustainability built in?” Job-embedded support must exist, including working side-by-side with teachers and supporting them in trial and error, especially as it pertains to incorporating digital technologies into instruction.
It can’t be just one shot in the arm. “How do you build ongoing systemic professional development with sustainability built in?” Job-embedded support must exist, including working side-by-side with teachers and supporting them in trial and error, especially as it pertains to incorporating digital technologies into instruction.
5. Make sure professional development is grounded in research-based practices. This is particularly important when it comes to digital technologies, which can be simply a shiny new toy if they aren’t backed by research. For instance, Beerer said, virtual reality is one of the latest educational technologies to spring up in classrooms. It would be tempting to dive in, but it’s essential that research proves how this technology influences learning. And as it happens, there is research proving that virtual reality can close learning gaps and help students build background knowledge. The next step, then, would be to focus professional learning on the best instructional practices using virtual reality.
6. Use reflection. Digital technologies, platforms and online communities of practice make it even easier for teachers to reflect with their colleagues. School leaders and professional development directors should be able to identify what learning looks like in their professional learning programs.
7. Don’t forget about collaboration. How is the professional learning engaging teachers with collaboration? And collaboration means not just subject-area or grade-level colleagues, but also whole-school collaboration or even K-12 collaboration. “Digital technologies give us the opportunity to collaborate beyond school walls,” Beerer said.
BY LAURA DEVANEY, DIRECTOR OF NEWS, October 13th, 2016 www.eschoolnews.com