At a previous international school that I worked at we had a general lack of professional development. Due to this problem, at least one teacher didn’t receive the renewal points he needed and lost his certificate and other teachers left to schools with professional development programs so that they wouldn’t lose their certificates. To avoid the problems other teachers were having, my wife and I took advantage of a Master’s program that was being offered through the public school system. In many ways, on the international scene, teachers need to be more responsible for their own professional development, because many international schools, fail to meet the professional development needs of their faculty. Often the reasons are expense and access, but in today’s world both of these problems can be overcome easily. There are several small and inexpensive things that every school can do to support professional development.
Every school can offer self-directed professional development programs. These require teachers to establish their own goals and then achieve them. In theory this is the type of program that the international school I worked at had in place, but it failed to work because the administration was not requiring any level of accountability. These types of programs must have an administration that is willing to meet with teachers and discuss their short-term and long-term goals.
Action Research is another avenue for a school with a tight budget. Administrators and teachers working in groups identify problems the school is facing. After identifying the trouble areas, they gather research about how the problem was dealt with in other schools, or theoretical solutions to the problem that haven’t been tested in a real school as of yet. This allows all the members to have buy-in to the process and the new approaches that come out of the process. It also helps develop that elusive place called a learning community that some many schools are trying to build these days.
Lastly, a school membership is ASCD is not very expensive, yet provides low-cost professional development for all faculty members. A basic membership is around 1000 USD, a price tag that all schools can afford. The membership allows access to professional development programs that are 99 USD each; again, in the affordable range for most schools and teachers.
The fact that some many schools fail at providing meaningful professional development for their faculties is not only troubling — it is criminal. How can we afford to short change the very people who are in charge of education our children who make up our future. It is not an investment we can afford to neglect.
For more information on Action Research, I recommend Dr. Larry Creedon’s website at http://www.larrycreedon.info/.
For more information on ASCD, please go to their site at http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/index.jsp/.
