Professional Development Musings

David Thornburg has said that "If you bring in these (new) technologies and don't think ahead to how they'll be used to promote learning and the acquisition of skills, then the only thing that will change in school is the electric bill’. A school district knowing how to use new technologies to promote learning is not enough. The transference of this knowledge to teachers who daily struggle to implement the district’s educational mission is essential.

Teachers are always on the lookout for teaching ideas to improve the ways they are doing things. The ‘just in time, not just in case’ adage applies not only to student learners but also to adult learners. If teachers see professional development as filling a need, they are much more likely to buy into the process. In my experiences there are two approaches to professional development which are particularly effective in serving the needs of teachers. Both approaches tend to use a sustained approach to professional development, which is better than the one-time workshop route.

In the first approach, some school districts such as District U-46 are employing an on-site professional development using the position of Instructional Technology Facilitator. This person is a teacher who holds a regular teaching position in the school but who also consults with the school’s faculty in developing instructional uses of technologies. The person holding the Instructional Technology Facilitator’s position generally receives a very modest stipend which, if the job is done right, is a great bargain. The strengths of this professional development approach are that the Instructional Technology Facilitator:
--is frequently available for assistance, instruction and reteaching;
--knows the people they work with and therefore is approachable;
--understands the technology availability and basics of the school’s equipment, network, applications, etc. in relation to what is educationally feasible;
--knows what fellow staff members will be teaching and therefore is in a position to address the ‘just in time’ aspect;
--knows the expertise of fellow staff members in using technology to improve learning;
can help individual teachers ‘take the next step’

Another approach to professional development is using a strategy such as Aurora University’s Collaborating Academic Partnership Program (CAP), which works closely with school districts to establish professional development partnerships. As stated by Aurora University ‘Through this collaboration, the College of Education strives in cooperation with partner staff to address the unique staff development needs of its partner affiliates." Even a one hour graduate credit course tenders fifteen hours of sustained professional development. In my experiences, teachers welcome beneficial professional development associated with the opportunity to get graduate credit.

The graduate courses I have taught in the Aurora University CAP program in partnership with School District U-46 required participants to make a teaching unit as a final product that can be used in the teacher’s classroom to help student learning. In one respect teachers appreciate the time, new resources and mentoring made available to them during the graduate course as they work on developing new ways to teach. In another respect, new ways of teaching can be thought of as adding another component to the pressure of high stakes testing. Teachers are very concerned with the coverage of curriculum. I try to alleviate the misgivings of trying something new by beginning my courses with a review of research dealing with engaged learning using technology and other related educational theories. A discussion in my courses that seems to recurrently arise focuses on the ‘coverage vs. learning-in-depth’ issue. When teachers realize that their students learn and retain more, and teachers therefore realize test scores should increase with these new ways of teaching, then many apprehensions are diminished. At the end of the course participants have indicated that they are very happy with this form of professional development during which they created an instrument to help their students learn in a better way.

In both types of professional development mentioned above, I think that the dissemination of learning activities is extremely important. Sharing helps build a culture of collegiality necessary for healthy educational environments. My hope is that individual schools as well as districts would make available a database of the products created during professional development activities for the rest of the teachers in the district. Perhaps they can also develop a regular process of sharing ideas, such as during a portion of faculty meetings.

As important as professional development is, we must not forget that the process of professional development is systemically entwined with timely access to appropriate technology as well as prompt tech support when glitches happen. Because teachers as a group are extremely pressed for time, they tend to be very pragmatic. They do not to want to experience frustration and waste time on developing teaching methods that won’t be used because of a lack of availability of reliable resources.

Technorati Tags: professional development education school technology learning teaching