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Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 1343] PD Research Discussion - What stands out to you?
From: Taylor, Jackie jataylor at utk.edu
Date: Mon Jul 9 10:30:41 EDT 2007
PD List Colleagues:
I am pleased to announce that this week, Cristine Smith and Marilyn Gillespie are joining us to discuss their chapter on "Research on Professional Development and Teacher Change: Implications for Adult Basic Education."
To start our discussion, I invite our guests to briefly introduce
themselves, and to share what they are looking forward to exploring in
our discussions this week.
Additionally, I also have a few questions for subscribers and guests
(and I hope you'll take it from here!):
- 1. What aspects of the chapter on professional development research stood out to you most? Why?
- 2. From your experience, what has been the most effective professional development in which you have participated? What factors made it most valuable for your professional growth and learning?
- 3. What are the similarities and notable differences between K-12 and adult literacy education professional development?
Please feel free to explore the questions above, or to pose questions of
your own.
I look forward to learning from you and with you in dialogues this week.
Best wishes, Jackie Taylor, Adult Literacy Professional Development List Moderator, jataylor at utk.edu
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 1344] Re: PD Research Discussion - What stands out to you?
From: Marilyn Gillespie marilyn.gillespie at sri.com
Date: Mon Jul 9 12:00:04 EDT 2007
Hello everyone. Sorry to start this a little late-I'm sending from the
Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and the Internet was down.
I'm looking forward to our discussion of research on professional
development. As many of you know, I've worked in adult literacy
education most of my career, however, more recently I have begun to work
on several large K-12 projects.. It's been a real education to see what
kind of research can be done when more funding is available. Both of
these are quite large compared to research in adult literacy. The first
is a national evaluation of the Early College High School (ECHS)
initiative funded by the Gates Foundation. The aim of the initiative is
to provide start up funds to allow high schools to build a partnership
with a college (typically a 2-year college) that can help struggling
high school students get a taste for college by taking college courses
while in high school.The second project is a 5 year evaluation of the
professional development model of the National Writing Project. In this
case sites around the country are just now being selected. We will
identify 40 schools who would like to start-up a professional
development network based on the NWP model and then randomly select 20
schools to be a control group and 20 schools will get professional
development.
In both cases, we use multiple measures. We looking at students
achievement scores, conduct site visits where we interview teachers and
administrators and, in the case of the NWP, also collect and analyze
logs of what teachers do in their classrooms, and examples of teachers'
assignments and student work. All this data is analyzed and triangulated
and helps us to arrive at a "big picture" understanding of what happens
in schools and why. In comparison, in adult education we often have very
small sample sizes and/or have funds to use only 1 or 2 methods. I would
be interested in discussing with others how we might fund larger-scale
research to give us a fuller picture of teacher professional
development. Could a group of large urban (or rural) programs with
similar profiles work together? The National Writing Project has been
particularly effective in creating networks of similar kinds of programs
(rural, urban, English language leaner) who share resources and research
designs. What would it take to get such networks started in our own field?
A second issue I would be interested in discussing is professional
development for program administrators. In my K-12 work, as well as in
the NCSALL staff development study, we found that program administrators
can have a major impact, both on getting teachers involved in
professional development and in allowing teachers the ability to
implement what they learn in professional development. Yet we don't know
much about the kinds of professional development program directors get
or about exactly what they do to help teachers grow and change.(Do they,
for example, observe teachers, participate in curriculum development? Do
any of you know of efforts to train and evaluate program leaders in your
state or at your site? I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on
"what works" and why.
A third issue we might discuss has to do with the importance of
site-based professional development. Since we all know one-size-doesn't
fit all in adult literacy and adult ESL education, what can we do to
learn about what combinations of on and off-site training work best for
teachers, given the limited time and funding they have for any kind of
professional development?
I'll look forward to discussing these or other issues of interest to you
as the week progress, I'll be back in the office and online after I put
my daughter on her ship for science camp.
Marilyn
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 1346] from Cris, job-embedded professional development
From: Taylor, Jackie jataylor at utk.edu
Date: Mon Jul 9 14:48:57 EDT 2007
Cristine Smith here. Glad to join the discussion this week. Like
Marilyn, I'm also interested in site-based professional development, or,
as we called it in our article, "job-embedded professional development".
The idea is that teachers from the same program come together in a group
and look at a particular topic of interest over time. The difference is
that, rather than getting trained "from the outside", the teachers look
at what are called "student artifacts": student writings, student
answers on assessments, students diagnostic evaluation of reading
skills, etc. The point is first to focus on student learning, not on
teachers' teaching. What can a group of teachers learn from each other
and from looking at student work that will give them ideas and
strategies for improving instruction? Then, the teachers may go to the
research, may call in an outside advisory to give them information about
new approaches, may go on the internet, may read books or articles and
then may decide on trying out a new plan of action. Teachers try it out
in their classes, and then come back to the group with more student
artifacts of how it worked.
This type of professional development is called "job-embedded" because
it is literally part of the job of figuring out how to do instruction.
It happens right in the program, so teachers don't have to travel, and
it involves extensive teacher sharing. It is becoming more and more
common in K-12 but is fairly uncommon in adult education (although I
know CalPRO in California has done some innovative work around
job-embedded professional development...could someone involved in that
let us know what you did and how you thought it worked?)
My question is: how viable is this for adult basic education, adult
literacy, adult ESOL and GED practitioner professional development (both
teachers and administrators)? Would it work with tutors? Generally, it
helps if there is a facilitator to get the group started, to help set up
mechanisms for sharing work (which can be kinda scary) and teaching
approaches. But it's meant to be teacher controlled. What do you think
would stand in the way of more adult ed programs using this type of
professional development?
Looking forward to more discussion... Cris
