What is Effective PD?

Effective professional development is important for the progression of teachers’ skills and understanding. Often times, professional development happens through local workshops, school based collaboration groups, or formal/informal presentations. In our school board we have a number of professional development days built into our yearly schedule that are solely devoted to improving teacher skills. We worked in horizontal and vertical teams within our school, and had presentations from experienced educators and administration to help guide us through new board initiatives. Each year we also have a PD conference which is mandatory for the entire division that has brought in a number of well-known theorists and presenters, including Mike Mattos and Damien Cooper.

In order for PD to be effective there are a number of guidelines by which it should be run. Firstly, it is imperative that teachers are given choice in the conferences and sessions which they attend. Since teachers are professionals, their choice and interests should be given some consideration as PD is much more engaging and worthwhile if it relates to the content or teaching strategies that a teacher is using. As a high school mathematics and science teacher, I have experienced this first hand, as a number of the PD sessions which I attended at one conference were primarily geared towards elementary and primary teachers, and thus I found it difficult to remain engaged and apply the concepts to my own classroom because they were so unrelated.

It is also important that through PD teachers have an opportunity to reflect on their learning. Often times, teachers attend conferences and pick up great resources, only to have them sit on a USB or on a shelf never to be touched. By having a chance to come back to their place of work, try strategies, and then reflect on their outcomes, teachers can better utilize PD as a learning opportunity that can guide and improve instruction. This process may also involve data collection and reflection, as it is easier to reflect on the effectiveness of your improvements if you have concrete data to analyze. Through programs such as Aimsweb and Key Math, teachers now have a variety of instruments which they could use to test students prior to a PD session in order to use the results to provide a greater understanding of the improvements made or challenges which may have been faced.

We often think of PD as being solely those opportunities when a guest speaker is invited to present a new theory or strategy, when in actuality, PD can be just as effective when it occurs with local teachers and support staff. As educators have such diverse backgrounds and experiences, we all have different strategies for teaching, assessing and reporting. As such, this provides a great opportunity for teachers to learn from one another. Effective PD can occur within our own schools, by taking the time to teach each other about new ideas or strategies that have worked well in our own classroom, and asking questions to one another about how to improve and optimize student learning.

In summary, PD requires work. It requires constant reflection and commitment. As suggested in the document entitled, What is Effective Teacher Professional Development, from the Canadian Education Association, research has confirmed that “teachers need to have the chance to put what they learned into practice and to reflect on how new ideas and teaching approaches work within their classrooms; and that students are more successful when teachers have meaningful, ongoing, PD opportunities.”