Every educator has at least one professional development horror story, and those make it hard to imagine advocating FOR more professional learning. That’s why it’s important to build your case for what high-quality, effective learning opportunities should look like.
“Enable professional development for all literacy educators, including teachers of all subjects and school principals, so that they understand characteristics of literacy development and literacy learners, are knowledgeable about effective curricula and pedagogies, share effective practices, and create strategies for addressing challenges as they arise.” — 2015 NCTE Education Policy Platform
The best professional learning happens when teachers are able to collaborate in meaningful ways and have some agency in decision making and problem solving. Here are some resources you can use to make the case for that kind of learning experience in your context.
- These findings from a recent study by the National Center for Literacy Education show that collaboration and deprivatizing practice are critical to moving literacy learning forward.
- This blog post offers a compelling case for the value of teacher research in professional learning.
- If educators are going to be evaluated on performance, NCTE has outlined some criteria for what such evaluations should look like.