The Changing Nature of Professional Development In Education

Read an interesting article in the blog: Educational Paradigms, authored by Andrew T. Garcia, Music/Technology teacher in the Central Berkshire Schools.  He is talking about training/professional development as it is often delivered.

The problem with this mass approach was that topics had to be general enough for teachers of all subject areas. How to go about implementing the initiative was up to the teacher which usually meant a low adoption rate. Surveys of teachers about professional development offered by districts paints dismal pictures about the relevance of in-service in schools. 

A serious problem that certainly isn't unique to education. 

 It will require a leap of faith for school districts to 'trust' staff members to independently pursue their own relevant professional development but that's exactly what's necessary now. Imagine a professional development day where the in-service memo indicates that "all teachers will independently find, read, investigate, and synthesize any information they may find relevant to their classroom teaching assignment and share that information on the school professional development network. PDP's will be issued once a reflective essay is published on the school's server indicating the learning you achieved and how you will apply it to classroom teaching."

That would be meaningful Professional Development, 21st century style.

We definitely need to pursue this.   How do we manage it?   What would be the standards?   While this is certainly do-able, is it scalable for 3,300 employees?   Fortunately, the repository can handle it easily.