Professional Development

Tactic One: We will provide high quality ongoing learning opportunities that directly connect to student learning goals. 
This strategy ensures that the goal of every Professional Development activity is to improve learning for adults who teach and support students.  The focus of District Professional Development is centered on what is happening with the learners, both student and adult. Professional Development plays a starring role in the development of quality teachers, administrators and support staff.  As each school targets improved student learning and achievement, it is the major responsibility of our office to provide quality-learning opportunities so that all teachers possess deep content knowledge and use research-based instructional strategies to effectively teach all students.

Tactic Two: We will provide meaningful Professional Development that involves active learning for participants. 
Adults, like students, must find meaning in their learning. Professional Development activities include support for teachers and administrators as they encounter the many challenges that come from putting into practice their evolving understandings about the use of new techniques or strategies.  Research on quality training indicates that hands-on practice is essential for the transfer of new skills to classroom use.  In an optimal adult learning environment learning should be:

• An active process that demands full participant participation;
• Both an individual and a cooperative venture, where participants work at their own pace and performance level and also have a chance to work collaboratively to solve problems;
• Goal oriented and connected to the real world so that adults can apply what they are learning to their daily work;
• Documentable, diagnostic and reflective providing continuous feedback and opportunities to self-evaluate;
• Set in a comfortable and attractive physical environment in an atmosphere of support and respect.

Tactic Three: We will embed Professional Development follow-up opportunities in the context of daily work in departments, schools and classrooms.

Since improving teacher instruction in the classroom is the focal point of most KUSD Professional Development, adult learners find activities worthwhile when they arise from the real work going on in their schools and classrooms.  Staff find it meaningful when they have the support of administrators and can return to their classrooms to test new techniques, receive feedback from students and colleagues, set up action research projects, analyze related data and eventually present data results to others, and reflect on new knowledge acquired in book studies or during discussions held in ongoing support sessions. The overall goal of teacher development is to nurture reflective practice through encouragement of teachers’ ability to think. As teachers are challenged with new and divergent information, possibilities to improve emerge and the classroom becomes a better place for students (Glickman, 2003).  Developing teacher thought should be the aim of staff development in the same manner that Kohlberg and Mayer (1972) argued that developing student thought should be the aim of education.

Tactic Four: We will ensure that Professional Development is continuous and ongoing.

Effective professional development involves offering the learner multiple opportunities to practice new content knowledge and new skills with follow-up guidance and coaching.  The goal of all professional development training is to build district capacity by providing sustained opportunities for teachers, administrators and support staff to learn new skills with the ultimate goal of self-sufficiency.  It is significant to note that District Professional Development planning is guided by this fundamental understanding of how all learners respond to and assimilate new information.  The noted psychologist, Piaget, theorized and recent brain research confirmed that in order to introduce new information to a learner, one must present information over time so that the learner can alter previous ways of thinking and begin to assimilate and accommodate what is novel.  In other words, adults as well as children pass through phases of learning before a new idea is understood or a new skill is developed. Guided by this knowledge, Professional Development personnel use a “trainer of trainers’ model” to move adults along a gradual continuum of learning from awareness of an innovation to mastery of the new knowledge or skill.  The Phases of Adult Learning (See Appendix L) assist us as we strive to sustain professional development over time to ensure teacher and employee competencies.

Tactic Five: We will base Professional Development on ongoing and focused inquiry related to teacher learning, student learning and knowledge about the learning process in general.

The effectiveness of Professional Development involves an assessment of how much participants have changed with respect to their knowledge, skills and dispositions.  District and site data indicates whether or not new ideas are being implemented and are positively affecting learning.  In turn, this information is used to determine the future content of professional development programmatic efforts.  Attached for reader review is the Professional Development Evaluation and Reflection Form (See Appendix M) completed by all participants in KUSD-sponsored staff development activities.  This form is used to assess what participants have learned, how they plan to apply what they have learned and it informs presenters of remaining learner needs.  Also included is a synthesis of two evaluation documents used by Professional Development personnel to assess the efficacy of one of the Making Thinking Visible book studies and a summer workshop related to the Strategy IV Making Thinking Visible initiative.

This process demonstrates how PD personnel use the inquiry process based on data and on teacher reflection to determine what knowledge and skills to emphasize next.