Jan 22 2009
Do you get enough?
credit: Robin Hutton
Thinking aloud about Professional development today and was wondering do we ever really get enough?
Why do I ask?
Well our employer, DET NSW, recently increased School Development Days from 3 to 5 days pa, always good to have more time to reflect, think & plan without the daily hustle and bustle.
I was interested to see this nationwide comparison across our 8 education departments, the range of PD offered had never occured to me before.
The range is 4 (Victoria) to 8 days (Tasmania) which is a 100% difference, (please correct my maths if thats wrong)
How vital do you think having 100% more time is? Does it matter? What is/could be achieved if your school PD was increased? at what cost or trade off?
These questions then got me thinking about our new 12 to 14 hours of extra school PD;
- Do you have school autonomy on PD content or are regional & systemic priorities set?
- Is PD conducted at a time of the year when the best outcomes can be achieved?
- How do larger organisations, who cant do ‘together days’ move staff forward?
- What is the style of PD delivery on offer on your days?
- Do you have personal internal choices that interest you?
- How is PD delivered to you?
- Who runs it? locals or visitors?
- Does the keynoter, if you have one, provide a lasting improvement outcome?
I am not favouring one over the other, I am just curious to learn more about PD in your place.
Should flexible/blended learning on days like these be encouraged more? Should staff take charge and ID there own needs? Could they?
I guess far more importantly how satisfied are you with current PD and how could it be improved if needed?
Hope to hear your views.
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Great topic for this time of the year…
Having experienced PD in a rural Central School and a large Campus of a suburban ‘College’…my experiences have greatly differed in both settings. Some responses to the first questions…
Do you have school autonomy on PD content or are regional & systemic priorities set? As a College, as a Campus, then within individual faculties, we had some autonomy in regards to PD, however, mostly PD was driven by data crunched from regional and state wide treads or PD funds pushed towards DET driven, such as QT or Curriculum Support DET only seminars. Having a College focus and a Campus focus really narrowed and created a feeling of owning the PD directions. I was ‘knocked’ back once for PD, being a teacher at a 7-10 I applied to attend a professional development day run by my subject association, for new developments in Stage Six, I applied explaining the developments in Stage Six will have a flow on effect for Stage Five and Four. I was informed, by the individual who ‘yays’ or ‘nays’ PD at that Campus that I am not a Stage Six teacher so I couldn’t attend (Perhaps this is one reason why I am no longer at that Campus!) To have College, Campus, Regional and State wide goals, yet have an individual sorting through and making decisions for PD seemed strange.
We also started having PD within faculties across the College; these were totally focused on College priorities, yet were linked to the data from things like NAPLAN, SC and HSC, therefore providing a regional and state wide focal point. While PD funds can also mean time to create resources (such as for GAT or ICT or Indigenous Ed focuses), PD content should be linked to data in some way, particularly by classroom teachers considering the data, not just members of executive.
Is PD conducted at a time of the year when the best outcomes can be achieved? The staff development days- those five days Tony mention in NSW- can only be valuable with continual reference and time throughout the year to build on those ‘early days’ PD. At the end last year we started PD for the next year, creating time for planning PD sessions for faculties. As HT teaching and learning, I found it rewarding to lead PD sessions for GAT at the end of Term 4, as we started planning for 2009. We referred back to whole-College PD days and actually applied it to plans for ’09.
I’ll have a closer look at the other questions, now it is time to go off to school!
G’day Troy
That’s a comprehensive look at what your place(s) have done, thanks for sharing. Good stuff to think about, especially your collegiate model experiences of being excluded from stage 6 PD, very interesting. Not an issue for you in 2009 though!
I guess on reflection, I am really looking at how we can do whole school PD days better, what can we do to get more out of the scarce time on offer.
Sometimes I wonder if school development days should emphasis reflective evaluation more? Review the top stuff schools already do and fine tune it rather than layering more on top so we are seen to be “busy productive” and addressing DET newness.
Would that be more beneficial than simply meeting the myriad mandated requirements? Not sure, that’s why I asked I guess.
I like the idea of ‘reflective evaluation’, of bringing together individuals across different faculties and focusing on something like literacy.
We have all had a negative experiences with SDD and PD sessions that have no structure that simple layer on top of what we already do. The best PD I’ve experienced is cross faculty, structured seminars with plenty of time to ’sit and think’ with like minded colleagues (such as across faculty GATS day or the expensive but highly rewarding Langford lectures)…
At the College level I had some repetitive PD with the American Kagan learning tools, with little reflection or analysis of the learning tools.
Classroom teachers and schools should be leading their own PD, sure we work within the system of DET but a high school in SW Sydney has vastly different needs to a central school or a one teacher primary school. We should have diverse and distinctive PD lead by teachers.