Brian Mitchell EDTECH 501 Professional Development Evaluation

Teacher Professional Development, or TPD, has become a very commonly used phrase. However, there arent many who truly grasp what effective TPD really is. Many use that term to refer simply to general meetings and teacher gatherings. Certainly that is a part of TPD, but what is it exactly? In simple terms, TPD is a tool. It is mainly a communications tool. Gaible and Burns describe it as the tool by which policymakers convey broad visions, disseminate critical information, and provide guidance to teachers. In other words, TPD is a tool for a school or district administration to communicate relevant information to its teaching staff. That information might deal with procedural or logistical policies, support, or it may include actual continuing education of a faculty. The important key to good TPD is to meet teachers where they are, but in the end, to improve the learning environment for the student. According to Gaible and Burns, there are three models of professional development: standardized, site-based, and self-directed. Standardized TPD is a way to distribute general information to a large group of people. One might say that it is the mass communication of professional development. Standardized TPD is the typical conference or workshop type of development. Generally, a few select individuals will be given the information, through conference attendance or some similar method, and then pass that information on to their colleagues. Site-based TPD is where a group of teachers gather within a school or district to be taught by certain master teachers, who guide them in the desired course of training. Generally, site-based is much more specific to an institutions or groups needs, addressing certain areas that are deficient or targeted for improvement. Self-directed TPD is exactly what it sounds like, where teachers are left to determine their own goals and then come up with steps to achieve those goals through self-improvement of some sort. Selfdirected is the most individualized of the three models. At Saint Xavier High School, in Louisville, Kentucky, professional development is achieved through a combination of all three of the above models. There are certain individual teachers who go to conferences and bring back information to pass on to the rest of the faculty. Generally this will be an administrator and the development deals with some sort of new organizational tool. Standardized TPD has brought the school new tools like Edline, Turnitin.com, Strengthsfinders, and now Curriculum Mapping.

Once certain individuals have become educated in the use of the new tool or resource, they pass that information on to the rest of the faculty. It is through this Cascade Effect that site-based TPD comes into play. All of the aforementioned tools and resources have been dissiminated to the faculty through in-house workshops. While the above two models are used for the development of new administrative tools or resources, most of the TPD at St. X takes place through the use of self-directed TPD. At the start of each school year, every faculty member is required to complete a goal sheet, outlining two goals they wish to accomplish that year, the ways in which the person will make that happen, and how the skills acquired will be passed to or benefit the student body. Sometimes one of the goals will be a pre-determined school or departmental goal that is carried out by that individual teacher. Once a teachers goals are laid out, it is up to them to find ways to carry out those goals. Some choose to go to workshops, some choose to meet in peer groups, and others just study on their own. In recent years, there has been a significant investment in classroom technology at St. X. As a result of this expenditure, it is expected that teachers will develop their own personal technology skills and use them in the classroom. This expectation is not always met. In fact, there seems to be a huge technology gap between the faculty and their students. Of course, the age difference between the two naturally creates a gap such as this. However, at St. X, there seems to be an extra deficiency in the skills of many faculty members. In my opinion, this needs to be the primary focus of any professional development activities. In order to accomplish the goal of improving faculty technology skills, there should be a twopart use of the TPD models. The first needs to be self-directed. There is a huge difference among the technology skills of various faculty members. So a one-size-fits all approach will not work. There needs to be some online workshops that cover the very basic concepts of technology. These will allow the faculty members to start at an appropriate level for them and to proceed at their own pace. For those who need more help, some sort of mentoring program would be effective. Hopefully this would get everyone to a baseline level, so that more group-oriented development can take place. The one area where the entire faculty needs work is in the implementation of technology in the classroom. Even those who have good technology skills dont seem to know how to use it effectively. That is one point that Gaible and Burns make: that professional development should model classroom use. In other words, teachers cant just be taught how to use technology, they need to be taught how to execute its use in the classroom. This is best done by modeling the TPD sessions in the way that it should be done in practice. If this key step is not done, it doesnt matter how much technology is in place. Saint Xavier is lucky to have the resources to provide lots of technology to its students. However, unless that technology is effectively used in the classroom, there is no point in even having it. Such use has been sorely lacking in PD efforts in our school. It should be the primary focus of all TPD efforts.