Personalized Professional Learning – Staging
(80-100%)
Element: Shared Ownership and Responsibility for Professional Growth
Description: Teachers, administrators, and other education professionals actively support their own professional practices by using technology, eLearning, and social media to optimize learning and teaching. They are actively taking responsibility for their own professional growth through professional learning networks (PLNs), online communities of practice, eLearning, and social media (e.g., Twitter feeds, EdCamps, blogging and following bloggers, on-demand videos, etc.). Educators have access to collaborative tools and digital environments that break down classroom, school, and district walls. Professional development encourages, facilitates, and often requires that they individually and collaboratively create, join, and sustain professional networks both within and outside of the district, frequently leveraging the latest in social media. The district has established flexible policies and practices that encourage and credit the personalization of professional learning for teachers, administrators and other education professionals.
Possible Next Step: District leaders model the innovative use of technology, eLearning, and social media in the professional learning offered through the district. They do the same as they take ownership of their own professional growth, in part by engaging in self-directed professional learning networks on a daily basis. They formally adopt policies and procedures and set expectations for shared ownership and responsibility of professional learning among all education professionals in the district and build the capacity of all leaders in the district to implement the plan using established policies and procedures.
Element: 21st Century Skill Set
Description: Educators have the opportunity to expand their knowledge and skills to address a 21st Century focus (e.g., critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, communication, technology competencies, self-direction, information literacy, etc.). Professional learning includes immersion in the learning sciences research to provide support and insights into more student-centered instructional practices and for the purposeful promotion of deeper learning/21st Century skills in all students. Educators master a variety of new, research-based instructional strategies to better engage students and prepare them for college and beyond. In doing so they broaden their own 21st Century skill set.
Possible Next Step: District leaders assign roles and responsibilities for the implementation of the plan. They formally adopt expectations for education professionals to acquire such competencies within a specified timeframe, offering diverse pathways for staff to acquire such competencies. They establish sets of metrics to gauge progress. Plans include competency-based skill assessment for 21st Century learning and technology-enabled learning in professional learning that are designed to lead to integration in classroom practices and professional practices.
Element: Diverse Opportunities for Professional Learning Through Technology
Description: Digital leaders model new types of professional learning and ensure that educators have access to (and the technology savvy necessary to leverage) professional development opportunities that are diverse, customizable, and often supported by the latest technologies. Professional learning is available anytime in a variety of modes. Alternative models are supported through coherent policies and practices in the district.
Possible Next Step: District leaders have shared their plan for professional learning, being transparent about the link between the professional learning in the district and recent research. They encourage, model, and provide opportunities for a broad spectrum of professional learning. That spectrum ranges from series of face-to-face professional learning, to professional learning through social media. There is access to required technologies, and opportunities to develop the skills that enable the use of those technologies. Education professionals are expected to choose options that meet their needs and to participate fully in the professional learning District policies are revised to ensure coherence.
Element: Broad-Based, Participative Evaluation
Description: In order to promote goal-oriented, self-regulated professional behaviors, evaluation is participative (i.e., the educator who is the subject of evaluation is actively involved in goal-setting, collecting indicators of progress, and self-evaluative behaviors). Professional evaluation uses a broad set of indicators that includes student achievement, evidence of improved instructional practice, student engagement, and 21st Century skill attainment.
Possible Next Step: District and school leaders make initial changes that will lead to a more collaborative evaluation process. Multiple and diverse sources of data related to student learning and twenty-first-century skill development are made priorities in plans and budgets.