Wisdom in Professional Development
I’ve always been overly-analytical about professional development - about specific PD I participate in, and PD I happen to deliver. I believe really good professional development is the key (probably one of many) in any effort at reform in the educational system. I don’t know about most of you, but virtually all of the professional development I am on the receiving end of—is poor. It usually consists of a presenter who lectures, with feeble attempts at engaging his/her audience. Once the session is over, most of us who have been subjected to this, breathe a sigh of relief and go on with our day to day lives, making no changes and having very little recollection of what we were just subjected to. Doesn’t this sound incredibly like what we put our students through on a day to day basis? So after complaining about the pedagogy and content of PD, we turn around and do the same thing to our students! Well that’s real effective…
Other flawed factors behind PD are that it is usually determined by someone else that a certain PD workshop is “just what you need!” There is never any input from us, the professionals, or consideration for what we think we might like to experience in terms of professional development. But perhaps the most egregious blunder of professional developers is to never get beyond the data and information related to the topic at hand. We get the facts and the theory behind things such as brain-based learning or Understanding by Design unit planning, but we never get the chance during or after the work session to apply this knowledge to our own classrooms - in other words generate our own understandings and make our own connections. If it’s a technology workshop, do we get beyond the “here’s how to use this,” and into “here’s when and when not to use it?” --- or better yet, guide them toward figuring that out? If we want teachers to use technology effectively, as Kathy Sierra suggests in her post Moving Up The Wisdom Hierarchy, we have to go beyond data, information and knowledge and into understanding and wisdom!
Teaching truly is an art—no matter what the topic at hand. It takes time, excellent materials, and a lot of thinking to craft a lesson that engages learners. And this goes for professional development. We who run professional development for teachers and administrators can start by modeling what we want in the classroom by working with teachers in an effective way outside the classroom - in professional develpment environments.
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