Professional Development Thoughts
Being an educator, I sometimes marvel at the lack of “professional development” time or dollars that are spent in other professions. I have a close friend, who over the past 3 years at one job, has not once been sent for training of any type. No on-site mentoring. Nothing, save, for a book or two, and permission to attend a conference (where, I might add, the emphasis was placed on him winning an award).
I think any one who we expect to be on top of their game ought to undergo regular “PD.” Sylvia at “Generation Yes” spoke recently about PD concluding that, according to S. Papert, a project-based approach where PD was happening in the classroom live with students was the best approach. One commenter called this method guide on the side.
We have that model here in Virginia, although it works differently among schools and school divisions. ITRTs are crucial “guides” on the side. No doubt, this model isn’t ideal for 100% of our teachers and administrators, but it likely is one of the better approaches.
Time and money (economics) dictate workshops. Do we have 20 trainers/guides? No! But we can teach a skill to 20 teachers in one session. If they’re motivated (and lucky) enough, they might get to use what they learn. Or, try it, and fail, and never attempt it again. It’s no wonder some teachers have a bitter reflection of using tech in the classroom.
But reading Sylvia’s post also reminded me of the Google model, which isn’t precisely professional development, but could be. Their “20%” rule has been described as an incentive to work on “personal projects” in the workplace, among a creative (read: non-constrained) environment.
Today at work I checked out some new Web 2.0 websites for about 30 minutes. I felt guilty doing so, to be honest. But that should count as my own PD. Explore new tools, consider the possibilities; educate myself.
No doubt, we’d likely have better schools if we granted teachers professional time that allowed them to network and self-discover new approaches to pedagogy.
May 11th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
John, this is a particular (empirical) interest of mine. As all the chatter about PLEs or PLNs happens, I wonder how that might work with/for educators who can’t be in front of a screen for any length of time during a school day. I think that’s a real issue, and when I speak about new learning paradigms and PLE/PLNs, inevitably, I get the “we don’t have time for that…” line. But, at the same time, I think many educators need to reframe their thinking about “time.” We shouldn’t have to build so much professional learning time into the school day; we should trust that educators are using “non-instructional” time to learn and advance themselves professionally. I know, I know…teachers don’t get paid enough, yada, yada, yada. In New York, lots of teachers got that mentality from their unions. In Virginia, there are no real unions telling teachers that they shouldn’t be working beyond “contract hours.” So, for me, the question is how do we get teachers to be learners before, during and after school.