The quality of education students get is directly tied to the amount of time and effort teachers put into their own PD (professional development). Teachers can significantly alter their impact on student learning through participation in high-quality professional development opportunities. Professional development for educators should be grounded in teachers’ everyday experiences, continue over time and foster collaboration between colleagues. As it is widely accepted that teachers cannot improve their craft by working alone, modern professional development approaches focus on fostering environments where educators can work together on meaningful projects and share their insights on how to improve the teaching and learning process with one another (Stoll & Louis, 2007). This paper underlines two distinct approaches or models of professional development and discusses the school leader’s role in facilitating such models.
A Path Model Approach
This approach relies on an operational understanding of how training and education for professionals might affect results. The idea pinpoints the primary causes and consequences that define professional growth results. It also explains and modifies the impacts of professional development by pinpointing the factors involved. The approach theorizes how PD operates to produce desired results and permits an analysis of the assumptions underlying the operational theory’s sequence of phases (Coldwell, 2017). Based on this preliminary framework, it appears that PD interventions can influence the outcomes of career advancement and retention through enhanced practice and increased professional knowledge. Taken as a whole, these effects can have a bearing on the decision to stay in a profession, future career goals, and job happiness, all of which, in turn, can affect the decision to stay in a profession or move up the professional ladder. However, two major classes of elements affect the prospective effects of one’s career. For instance, prior skills, career potential, and instructor motivation are identified as the core individual determinants (Coldwell, 2017). The second group of variables entail “contexts.” This element plays a significant role in increasing or decreasing the impact of professional development on an individual’s career path.
Participatory (Collaborative) Professional Development Approach
This approach entails a professional co-learning framework in which professional autonomy is enhanced by limiting the boundaries between the trainer and trainee. It advocates for autonomy as a mode of freedom for choosing and acting in accordance with individual volition. In this approach, the policymaking process gives top priority to the requirement for a culture of collective participation and collaboration. For instance, the education department should foster a more cooperative, friendly, and goal-oriented atmosphere in the classroom (Saphier, 2017). In order to meet the demands of the modern classroom, teachers must be made more accountable, responsible, and trained as per emerging needs. Besides, participation by educators in the shared creation of curricula is increasingly seen as an opportunity for growth among educators. Therefore, a teacher’s education is not confined to just formal professional development but spans the teacher community, the school, and the classroom. Teachers work together to ensure that the materials they use in the classroom meet the needs of their students and the goals of the curriculum’s authors. External specialists are frequently brought in to give the teams with the most recent insights a rationale for the comprehensive modifications. Teachers can think critically about the reform’s goals and consequences as they participate in its creation process. Each educator’s beliefs, experiences, and aspirations contribute to the team’s collective reflections on student learning (Vincente, 2017). Lastly, the approach ensures teacher reflections are enriched and challenged through dialogue with colleagues and subject matter experts.
The Role of a School Leader in Supporting Professional Development Approaches
Leaders at schools are tasked with ensuring their instructors receive ongoing professional development because of their sway over the institution’s ethos and structure. The quality of professional development opportunities for teachers is directly related to the school’s leadership. Successful schools share a common thread: an emphasis on teachers’ ongoing professional development (Taylor, Yates, Meyer & Kinsella, 2011). However, many educational institutions consistently overlook the significance of giving teachers more autonomy. Leaders in schools should work to create an environment where teachers feel supported in their efforts to improve their craft. Creating a setting where educators are encouraged to reach their maximum potential can be aided by offering one-on-one coaching and targeted PD programs.
The school’s leadership team bears the ultimate responsibility for the quality of education provided therein. As such, it must foster an environment where instructors feel supported in their pursuit of lifelong learning. Achieving this goal can be accomplished through leading, supporting, and guiding the teaching staff’s learning process and making learning enjoyable for students of all ages and abilities (Taylor et al., 2011). To ensure effective teacher development, the team leaders need to promote innovative pedagogy, learn from the best approaches, and encourage the staff to stay current on new ideologies and tools.
Conclusion
From this critical review, it can be ascertained that the quality of professional development among adult educators can be enhanced by taking into account the underlined approaches. When it comes to bettering one’s career, there is no silver bullet. Rather, it is desirable to integrate multiple methodologies in order to address the dynamic and complicated nature of particular program contents and student needs. The key to success is figuring out which combinations of strategies work best in various contexts. There is a common perception that professional development is strongly linked to high-quality instructional programs, although this is not supported by the data. Besides, it is presumed that the quality of professional development opportunities for teachers is directly related to the underlying leadership team.
References
Coldwell, M. (2017). Exploring the influence of professional development on teacher careers: A path model approach. Teaching and Teacher Education, 61, 189-198. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2016.10.015
Saphier, J. (2017). Made for Transfer: The collaboration teacher model. The Learning Professional, 38(4), 66-68. Available in Trident Online Library
Stoll, L., & Louis, K. S. (2007). Professional learning communities: Divergence, depth and dilemmas. GB: Open University Press. Parts 1-3
Taylor, M., Yates, A., Meyer, L. H., & Kinsella, P. (2011). Teacher professional leadership in support of teacher professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(1), 85-94. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.07.005
Vincente, J. (2017). What teacher collaboration looks like. The Education Digest, 83(4), 33-37. Available in Trident Online Library
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