The Professional Development We Deserve
As a veteran educator I have some strong beliefs about what professional development for me and my colleagues across the education sector deserve. This might be my first manifesto.
- Educators deserve professional development that acknowledges their full humanity in the learning process.
- Educators deserve professional development that is thoughtful, structured and participatory.
- Educators deserve professional development that is responsive to their articulated needs in the short, medium and long term.
- Educators deserve professional development that is wisely scheduled, appropriately differentiated and designed for engagement that extends beyond the initial workshop or learning event.
- Educators deserve professional development that sparks curiosity, collegiality and a deeper commitment to student welfare and growth.
- Educators deserve professional development that activates their sense of agency and builds individual and group efficacy.
- Educators deserve professional development that deliberately integrates their expertise and creatively stretches their thinking.
- Educators deserve professional development that is expertly facilitated and applies multiple engagement modalities.
When educators gather to pursue professional learning, whether by choice or mandate, participant experience must be a central consideration in measuring success. All the ways in which audience members feel addressed, respected and supported add up to determine whether the ideas shared in the conference hall or auditorium travel back in positive fashion to classrooms and team meetings after the fact. As both attendees and deliverers of professional learning I believe educators know this intuitively. Particularly at conferences we find evidence of creative planning and implementation of learning sessions that may charm or challenge us, or both. On the other hand, we also tend to have far more stories of disappointing events which left us cold, confused or irritated.
One of my animating questions as both participant and facilitator is: how do we (educators) get the professional learning experiences we deserve? Consistently? Badly received professional learning events tend to share at least some of these characteristics:
- They are mandated yet undifferentiated.
- They are scheduled at a time that poses a significant mismatch with teacher priorities at that moment.
- They are poorly facilitated and either lack active participation, or fail to provide sufficient structure to enable productive conversations.
- Announced time boundaries are not respected.
- The topic lacks relevance for a significant portion of the audience.
- The location and surrounding effects (i.e., catering, heating/cooling) illustrate a lack of planning or full consideration.
I’m sure the list could be longer. The point I want to make is that in order for adults (or anyone) to learn, they need to feel respected. Each of the listed shortcomings, in my view, demonstrates a lack of respect for the participant: for their time, energy and talents. I do not believe that organizers willingly ignore participant priorities, it’s more likely that they simply have not thought through the wide-ranging implications of their design and planning choices. That said, we certainly have cause to wonder why that might be the case.
In order for educators to consistently be on the receiving end of excellent professional learning, I think a few things need to become more widely applied practice:
Recognition of what counts as professional learning needs to be broadened.
So many educators pursue professional learning on their own time and terms. Plenty join book groups and subject matter networks in order to stay in contact with colleagues in the field and locate resources of interest. Others attend conferences, blog and make TikTok videos about their insights. Rather than get nervous about what teachers may or may not be sharing, administrators can ask themselves: How am I contributing to a culture of continuous learning and what can I do to support teachers in their desired professional development pursuits?
Professional learning can happen in a variety of modalities and contexts and not all of them necessarily need to be declared. But the more open administrators become to alternative forms of professional learning, the better the whole culture around adult development within and outside our institutions will be. Finding brief and authentic ways on site for educators to share their progress builds an atmosphere that says yes to community learning.
Professional development planning needs to account for long and short term goals while also widening the circle of who shares in that task.
Strong planning yields better results. When schools plan their professional development events, there should be evidence of: responsiveness to teacher-articulated needs, differentiated plans for varied groupings, consideration of previous successes and sustained efforts in recognizable directions. Based on a strategic or other long range plan, institutions may lay out plans for major areas of construction while including sufficient flexibility to respond to sudden priorities that may arise.
I want to explicitly endorse educator input in all stages of PD planning. Listen when teachers explain why a particular training might be ill-timed or that a group that may have been previously excluded from an opportunity absolutely needs to have access in the next iteration. Consider also hearing from students what they hope their teachers are learning. Look for chances to let students lead sessions for teachers. I hope that these are not radical ideas to your ears. As we’ve seen with movements towards improved equity and inclusion in schools, it is often our students who push us forward. The professional development arena is definitely a space where greater student influence needs to be incorporated.
We need to prioritize facilitation before content.
I feel very strongly about this one. Educators are rarely ones to sit back and rest on our laurels. Many of us are active learners, readers, researchers, writers, conveners, allies and accomplices. Something I’ve observed during several educator-specific professional development events over the years is a process by which several highly intelligent, interesting and caring people become surprisingly passive and disengaged over the course of a 90 minute presentation. Often the presenter was a well-regarded expert with loads of content knowledge who unfortunately showed very little interest in the specific context of the audience before them.
As a seasoned facilitator, I find this an unbearable waste. It doesn’t have to be this way! We know all the reasons a one-way delivery mode does not work for our students, so why do we put up with it during our scheduled PD? (A rhetorical question because I really want to stay focused on the more effective alternative.) If we truly want professional learning delivered to groups to have legs strong enough to make it past the next refreshment break, we have to tap into the expertise and experience in the room. And generously!
So much active learning among colleagues happens when they talk to and reason with each other! Yes, the presenter provides a focal point and container for the interactions that follow but in order to enliven and bolster participants, we have to get them purposefully engaged. Which requires thought and attention to contextual factors. It demands deep wells of facilitation expertise that enable a presenter to adapt the ‘best laid plan’ to better accommodate an immediate need.
Professional development planners need to hire folks who have a track record of exceptional facilitation skills coupled with the necessary content knowledge participants will explore. Of course, this means that planners need to research well and book early. Between big events planners also need to schedule smaller, targeted options for educators to build on what was discussed to further their understanding.
Facilitator-presenters come and go. Our colleagues are the ones with whom we need to build efficacy towards better outcomes. Our students are the ones who directly benefit when their teachers have a habit of learning together through dialogue. For me this is the fundamental purpose of professional development: to promote and sustain shared learning in service of the communities we serve. The routes we can take to do that are many and we should use plenty of options.
How do we as educators get the professional learning experiences we deserve on a consistent basis?
A combination of strong content and remarkable facilitation should not come as a surprise to us when we leave a session. Engaging in follow-up discussion with our colleagues a week or a month after a learning event should become commonplace. Being invited to share our reflections and insights from personal or professional learning happening outside of school hours could develop into an appealing social opportunity. Being an engaged audience member in a student-led professional learning session is something I will continue to support and look forward to.
The solutions we choose will require unique approaches where grassroots generated and top down mandated approaches inform each other. More of us educators will need to step up, step forward or in some cases, step aside to enable shifts in practice that demonstrate more inclusion, equity and diversity. The ways we allocate time for professional dialogue will require fresh thinking. How we trust teachers to take the lead in pursuing relevant learning and sharing their outcomes will have to expand. Above all, it’s time for us to create the professional development we deserve wherever and whenever we enter the space. That’s a brilliance we absolutely possess.
