going?”, “How am I going?”, and “Where to next?” While learning goals help
students answer the question “Where am I going?”, success criteria help students
answer the question “How am I going?” Both teachers and students benefit from a
clear understanding of what constitutes success. Students use success criteria to make
judgements about the quality of their performance. Criteria describe what success
“looks like”, and allow the teacher and student to gather information about the quality
of student learning.
Lecture 15
Teacher professional development
1.
Professional education and research findings.
2.
Dimensions of teacher professional development.
85
1.
Professional education and research findings
Educators must understand the concepts in processing professional development
and what it means to education. The standards of professional development should
include content knowledge and quality teaching, research-basis, collaboration,
diverse learning needs, student learning environments, family involvement,
evaluation, data-driven design, and teacher learning.
Professional development refers to the development of a person in his or her
professional role. By gaining increased experience in one’s teaching role they
systematically gain increased experience in their professional growth through
examination of their teaching ability. Professional workshops and other formally
related meetings are a part of the professional development experience.
Much broader in scope than career development, professional development is
defined as a growth that occurs through the professional cycle of a teacher.
Moreover, professional development and other organized in-service programs are
designed to foster the growth of teachers that can be used for their further
development.
This perspective, in a way, is new to teaching in that professional development
and in-service training simply consisted of workshops or short term courses that
offered teachers new information on specific aspects of their work. Regular
opportunities and experiences for professional development over the past few years
had yielded systematic growth and development in the teaching profession.
Many have referred to this dramatic shift as a new image or a new module of
teacher education for professional development. In the past 15 years there have been
standards-based movements for reform. The key component of this reform effort has
been that effective professional development has created a knowledge base that has
helped to transform and restructure quality schools.
Much of the available research on professional development involves its
relationship to student achievement. Researchers differ on the degree of this
relationship. Variables are the school, teacher, student level related to the level of
learning within the classroom, parent and community involvement, instructional
strategies, classroom management, curriculum design, student background
knowledge, and student motivation. Based upon a review of several studies, Marzano
(2003) concluded that the professional development activities experienced by
teachers have a similar impact on student achievement to those of the aforementioned
variables.
Opportunities for active learning, content knowledge, and the overall coherence
of staff development are the top three characteristics of professional development.
Opportunities for active learning and content specific strategies for staff development
refer to a focus on teacher application of learned material. Overall coherence refers to
the staff development program perceived as an integrated whole and development
activities building upon each other in a consecutive fashion. Marzano (2003) warned,
however, that standardized staff development activities which do not allow for
effective application would be ineffective in changing teacher behavior.
86
Richardson, (2003) published a list of characteristics associated with effective
professional development, stating that such programs would optimally be:
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: |