Making professional development work
Monday 10 February 2020
What makes professional development effective?
A new report has been released looking at international trends on teacher professional development. In this blog I summarise its key messages as well as providing links to a rich resource of material on this website to help you design your own professional development.
Research pinpoints that some of the most effective professional development and growth occurs ‘on-the-job’ and in schools. (see Personalised PD - a note from the US & Making PD Days work
Why not plan your own in-house PD on core themes that cross all sections and subjects (e.g. embedding the learner profile, approaches to teaching and learning, what makes an IB education?).
Use the many workshops contained in this website. For example: 10 slides series - introduction to IB big ideas What is our Global Context? | International Mindedness | IB Approaches to Teaching | IB Approaches to Learning
Specialist subject-specific PD is also identified as powerful.
Are your staff signed up for IB subject-specific workshops | are they involved in IB forums and community blogs / networks? Reflect on the challenges of indirectly cascading learning gained at off-site workshops.
Use the links to free workshops: FREE IB Workshops | MYP & DP
PD is most effective when:
- it is practical: expert teachers coach other teachers in classroom-based relationships
- teachers collaborate to process new professional learning
- teachers reflect over time
- it is informed by student data – grounded in challenges students are having (i.e. how do we better teach … so students more effectively learn?)
- it is subject-specific - i.e. how to teach a specific aspect of a subject
- it considers the different starting points and needs of individual teachers
- it is based on sound principles of adult learning
- it has teacher buy-in
- it is on-going, not one-off
This website contains many pages that will help you design your own professional development opportunities. You may like to look up the following:
- Adult Learning How to facilitate adult learning
- How do you plan professional development? Evaluating Professional Learning
- Professional Learning : Characteristics of effective professional development | learning | What does professional learning look like in your school? | Developing our professional learning culture | Developing collaboration |
- Professional Inquiry: research engaged schools
- The IB Network (community) | IB Educator Network
- Toolkit of collaborative activities : this is a rich resource of activities amd protocols that you can use when designing your own professional development in school.