Summary of “Analyze the Role of Professional Development in Site-Based Initiatives”

Video Transcription

Thanks for joining me for the unit Analyze the role of professional development in site-based initiatives.

The learning objectives in this unit included analyze the various theories that are applicable to a professional development initiative, create a professional development training based on a school or site-based initiative that includes applicable theories, best practices, and standards, design a professional development activity that uses a competency-based approach and a flipped delivery model, and reflect on how the professional development design will improve self-efficacy, build capacity, and lead to increased student achievement.

We began the unit by analyzing the various theories that are applicable to a PD initiative. Not only did we study adult learning theories including andragogy, transformational learning, and self-directed learning, but we also explored some other research-based learning theories that are not necessarily limited to adult learning. These included social learning theory, networked learning theory, and situated learning theory.

After familiarizing ourselves with all of these learning theories, we went through the process of aligning our professional development to the various theories. We learned to make decisions about which theories might be the most applicable in different situations. I encouraged you to take a look at your actual current professional development plan and to check that plan for alignment to some or all of these theories.

Once we were comfortable with using these theories and aligning our professional development to them, we were ready to create a specific professional development training opportunity based on a school or a site-based initiative. And this opportunity included applicable theories, best practices, and standards.

I used a professional development training template that included several different parts that we filled in one by one. I encouraged you to try your hand at designing an activity using this template or potentially even creating your own template with those same elements or similar elements.

We also, as part of this process, reviewed the concept of SMART goals and how important it is to include these SMART goals in our plans to make sure that they are aligned to the Professional Teacher standards and to just make sure that they clearly outline the expectations for teachers that we expect them to attain at the end of the professional development experience.

Finally, we underscored the importance of aligning our professional development to site and district initiatives. I shared with you a diagram that made clear the overall organization, the relationships among district initiatives and site-based initiatives, and site or school professional development goals and personal development plans or goals. There needs to be a certain degree of alignment among all of these elements. And so I hope you found that diagram to be helpful.

After designing an activity in which we focused on alignment to a site-based initiative and in which we wrote those SMART goals, we then designed another activity. But this time, we focused on a competency-based approach and a flipped delivery model. So we began here by just discussing flipped instruction and competency-based instruction in general.

Both of these instructional approaches are very commonly used in classrooms. They're not necessarily as commonly used in the context of professional development. And so we addressed that concern right away.

We talked about how these approaches can be modified a bit to fit the context of professional development. We also talked about what professional development can look like in the digital age and how technology and technology resources can help us to even more effectively implement both a flipped approach and a competency-based approach to our PD.

And finally, after going through the process of designing both of these professional development opportunities and again having focused so much on the adult learning theories and those other research-based learning theories and professional teaching standards, we took an opportunity to just critically reflect on how the design of our professional development can improve self-efficacy, how it can build capacity, and how it can lead to increased student achievement.

Sometimes, it's easy to get very focused on including all of those elements in the professional development, which is, of course, very important. But we don't want to lose sight of what we want to be the end result. We want to have our professional development build capacity and sustain our continuous improvement efforts. We want to be able to monitor and evaluate the impact of our professional development on both teachers and students.

And so considering those adult learning theories as we design our PD and aligning our PD to those professional teacher standards, those steps help us to achieve these goals. Making sure that we are designing effective professional development that incorporates research-based best practices is one of the best ways that we can ensure that our professional development is going to be seen as valuable by teachers.

If we can build capacity, foster teacher self-efficacy, and sustained those continuous improvement efforts, our professional development is going to be much more likely to improve student achievement, which is really what we want to happen as a result of all of our hard work.

So to recap, the learning objectives in this unit included analyze the various theories that are applicable to a professional development initiative, create a professional development training based on a school or site-based initiative that includes applicable theories, best practices, and standards, design a professional development activity that uses a competency-based approach and a flipped delivery model, and reflect on how the professional development design will improve self-efficacy, build capacity, and lead to increased student achievement.

So here's one final chance in this unit for you to stop and reflect. Did you find your professional development activities to be aligned with the research-based learning theories that we learned about in this unit? Were you able to align your professional development to professional teaching standards? Are you confident that your professional development will lead to increased teacher self-efficacy, to sustained continuous improvement efforts, and ultimately to increases in student achievement?

To dive a little deeper and learn how to apply this information, be sure to check out the additional resources section associated with this video. This is where you'll find links targeted toward helping you discover more ways to apply this course material. Thanks for joining me throughout this whole unit. Have a great day.