Article Review 1
AR4
John Fry
Supporting quality staff development with best-practice aligned policies
Summary/Implications
For the fourth article review I chose to review an article called Supporting quality staff development with best-practice aligned policies written by Edwin Church, Paul Bland, and Bret Church. This article focuses on past professional development techniques applied by schools and organizations while analyzing those techniques and suggesting modifications. This article provided a lot of content in its three pages but can be broken up into what hasn’t worked in the past, and their five professional development principals for effective professional development moving forward.
In the first part of the article the authors point out that many professional development practices within organizations do not occur on a regular basis. Instead, the professional development process ends up being a one-time instruction and thus leads to them being ineffective. The authors also go on to note that professional development training is usually delivered by individuals outside of the organization and are conducted in a passive learning environment. This has led to less than favorable results as professionals, just like students, need to be engaged in order to learn the content effectively. They also need reoccurring training to reinforce this information over time.
Next they outline the professional development research findings of (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin; Little; Harrison & Killian; Sparks & Hirsh). They are as follows:
Professional development (PD) should allow opportunities for coaching and collaboration
Participants should be actively engaged in research and problem solving
PD should be in the individuals content area
PD should be ongoing and job embedded
Participants should have the necessary resources to grow and learn
Reaction
After reading the article I would say I have to agree with the author’s view that professional development
John Fry
Supporting quality staff development with best-practice aligned policies
Summary/Implications
For the fourth article review I chose to review an article called Supporting quality staff development with best-practice aligned policies written by Edwin Church, Paul Bland, and Bret Church. This article focuses on past professional development techniques applied by schools and organizations while analyzing those techniques and suggesting modifications. This article provided a lot of content in its three pages but can be broken up into what hasn’t worked in the past, and their five professional development principals for effective professional development moving forward.
In the first part of the article the authors point out that many professional development practices within organizations do not occur on a regular basis. Instead, the professional development process ends up being a one-time instruction and thus leads to them being ineffective. The authors also go on to note that professional development training is usually delivered by individuals outside of the organization and are conducted in a passive learning environment. This has led to less than favorable results as professionals, just like students, need to be engaged in order to learn the content effectively. They also need reoccurring training to reinforce this information over time.
Next they outline the professional development research findings of (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin; Little; Harrison & Killian; Sparks & Hirsh). They are as follows:
Professional development (PD) should allow opportunities for coaching and collaboration
Participants should be actively engaged in research and problem solving
PD should be in the individuals content area
PD should be ongoing and job embedded
Participants should have the necessary resources to grow and learn
Reaction
After reading the article I would say I have to agree with the author’s view that professional development