Week Four - Tony

Some our PD feels like this, but not all of it!

What PD happens in your workplace?

PD is a large focus of my organisation. The most common type of PD still tends to be whole school focus but there is opportunity for teachers to attend PD they identify as useful. 

Our PD takes a number of forms:

Curriculum Meetings

In a year we usually have one day of curriculum group meetings where teachers from all ESF school in a particular curriculum area will get together to recieve subject specific PD. 

School Focus PD

We then have two days of school based PD that usually takes the form of whole school focus training. This is, in my opinion, a less effective use of my PD time as it has all teachers doing basically the same thing. This is fundamentally flawed. One of the reasons this occurs is that organising good PD is very hard. Peer teaching is difficult as teachers are busy and few are happy to add on more jobs such as creating and delivering PD.

School-based Selective PD

One day sees teachers in school, but selecting from a variety or PD sorkshops and training session that they feel best fit their developmental needs. Again this is often not very successful as the workshops are usually offered by other teachers in the school and are limited in number. It also means that if you are running a workshop, you miss out on PD.

Disaggregated PD day

One day is given over to teacher to explore their own PD needs. The expectation is that teachers will undertake at least 6 hours of PD on their own in an area of interest to them (This MSc course should see me sorted for this this year!).

What strategies does your organisation have in place to encourage development, change and innovation?

My organisation has come a long way in the last few with regards to PD.The company puts quite a bit of money into PD and, at times, uses the economy of scale to bring in some big names to train teachers. 

Looking at the standards below from 'Learning Forward' I think my company is on the right track for PD in such a large organisation.

Learning Communities:

Our curriculum groups are effective learning communities that allow ideas and inforamtion to be spread effectively across schools.

Leadership:

Leadership is trying to develop capacity in the organisation but they need to me more mindful of time taken to develop and present effective PD. They must alos allow time to follow up informal PD to ensure new ideas are embedded.

Resources:

We are a well-resourced organisation that distributed an effective amount of money towards PD each year. As a teacher I feel their is a long standing commitment to my PD and I am given opportunities to explore my own PD needs.

Data:

I think on this we are a little weak. I'm not aware of any formal tracking systems in palce for PD and I've never seen any data that analysis the type, timing, outcomes of PD in my organisation.

Learning Designs:

Again on this one I'm not sure how highly we'd rate. there are pockets of PD that have overtly stated research backing up the learning, but this tends to take a backseat to what the teachers actually want and need. I think most teachers are able to identify pretty quickly if the PD they are receiving is theoretically sound.

Implementation:

We certainly have a long term strategy - assuming that putting money to PD each year is a strategy. Again there are pockets of change that have direction and long term vision, and my school has tries to incorporate a longer term commitment o an inquiry based model. I  think our big mistake was the selection of trainer.

Outcomes:

Most of our PD is closely aligned to teaching and learning. The company offers a wide range of different workshops and the school based CPD is almost always student based.

We do have a good PD structure in my organisation. It;s not perfect but it is a lot better than the total lack of formalised PD we had years ago. The model needs work and I'm specificaly interested in teachers creating Personal Learning Networks (PLN) through new tool like twitter, blogs and groups. I think that is a way to move forward for us next. But will management feel comfortable devolving the PD responsibility to us?

References:

Standards Reference Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved February 19, 2012, from http://www.learning forward.org/standards/StandardsReferenceGuide.pdf