What PD happens in your workplace? What strategies does your organization have in place to encourage development, change and innovation?
Professional development refers to skills and knowledge attained for both personal development and career advancement. Professional development encompasses all types of facilitated learning opportunities, ranging from college degrees to formal coursework, conferences and informal learning opportunities situated in practice. It has been described as intensive and collaborative, ideally incorporating an evaluative stage. There are a variety of approaches to professional development, including consultation, coaching, communities of practice, lesson study, mentoring, reflective supervision and technical assistance.
I have been a student for more than 10 years and just did some part-time jobs. So I just can offer the idea about my understanding professional development happens in my school. I think my undergraduate college is a special school with unique university-school relationships that can change a school culture and add value to students and the community. The DP in my organization is difficult to isolate but include the impact of the school initiative, the time teacher candidates spend in a school or classroom, the quality of teachers in the school, the leadership of the administrators, and external pressures of accountability. In addition, there are some other problems, such as how the university defines PD, the time professors are engaged in the school, and the quality of the resources they bring to the school.
In the organization, the professors and coordinators work together as a team to prepare the teacher candidates each year, to provide PD for classroom teachers, to engage in the reform of curriculum and instruction, and to conduct research or inquiry, all with a focus on the improvement of student learning. I think the PD can provide school leadership teams with ways of thinking about the partnership that will promote the partnership within the community for sustainability, create systems that utilize the partnership resources for meeting school goals, and find opportunities to continue professional learning and increasing instructional quality.
The strategies that my organization have in place to encourage development, change and innovation is about the leaderships' perspective and the teachers' training. I will explain it with the ACOT model.
1. Entry
My organization offers training lessons in many areas, such as the basic knowledge of using ICT, foreign languages learning. The lessons can help teachers to improve themselves. As students get in touch with teachers the most directly, the quality of the teachers is important to the organization.
2. Adoption
Teachers were used to teach with blackboard and some easy multimedia such as PPT. Then after some training lessons and practices, the ICT is used by teachers in their class. The organization gives the PD and the teachers seem to accept the change.
3. Adaption
The organization is changing all the time to keep the pace with the progressing society. After introducing the ICT in the class, educators then think about how to use the ICT more effectively to improve the students' studying.
4. Appropriation
When the ICT is widely used by educators inside or outside class, more effort will be made to meet the improving social needs. The whole organization is ready to learn new technologies and make progress.
5. Invention
Educators begin to develop a new thoughts and change their old pedagogy. They not only teach with ICT but also lead the students to get the idea of learning with ICT. The organization is always ready to get PD, to develop new environment that treat ICT implementation as a teaching, learning and organizing tool. This is the stage that my undergraduate college is trying to reach.
Finally, I want to introduce a video about teacher professional development training workshops. It covers what the teachers really want: immediate solutions for classroom management and behavior problems. We're Youth Change Workshops and you've never seen professional development inservices like this before. Your staff name the problem areas, then we deliver hundreds of innovative, powerful strategies to turnaround school violence, ADHD, Asperger's issues, work refusal, truancy, bullying, gangs, depression, withdrawal, and family problems. Working with difficult students doesn't have to be so difficult.
P.S. My idea and example about PD may be wrong because of little experience, feel free to give me suggestion, thank you!!!
Ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_development
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