What is it about a mandated, contractually obligated, professional development conference that inspires some teachers and completely turns off many others? Why do some teachers glow with excitement at conferences and many others complain as they go through the motions? Is it the conference itself, or the attitude of the educators attending, or a combination of both?
When it comes to professional development for educators, conferences are believed to offer a great deal of choice with usually a seemingly wide array of sessions and workshops for educators to choose from to fill their blank schedules for a full day of learning. That is at least what is in the minds of the conference planners as they spend a huge amount of time planning these events. They seem to concentrate on the how and what of education, but fall short of the why.
The why refers to why we do things in the first place? Without at least discussions on that subject of why we should, or should not do certain things in order to examine their relevance, we might find we are doing things just because that’s the way they have always been done. To simplify an example: that is why we teach keyboarding and not typing. There are no longer any typewriters, but keyboards abound. Of course all of that goes out the window with mobile devices where thumbs and pointer fingers rule the keys. The point is that we examined why we were teaching typing, and found that we needed to teach something else to stay relevant, keyboarding.
We need more sessions in conferences that use panels to examine why we do the things that we do and engage educators in that discussion. We need more individuals leading discussions to explore and to challenge various things that we do in education. These panels and discussions should be sprinkled through conferences and repeated at least once, so that schedule conflicts will be less conflicted.
CHOICE in professional development is one of the biggest deterrents to learning. Yes, I said it. I know we are adults, and we are capable of making choices and we will all fight to the death to maintain that right of choice, but in most cases it doesn’t work. People do not know what they do not know; yet they will still make choices without sufficient information to do so. Why would an Administrator choose to attend a session on Blogging when he/she has no interest? That Admin might get a better understanding of why he/she should be blogging, as well as the need for their staff and students to blog, if they attended such a session. Again, this will be a selection that will probably not be made, because that admin did not have enough information to make an informed choice. The same applies to teachers choosing not to attend certain sessions based, not on their knowledge of a subject, but rather their lack of knowledge. I know we can’t know everything, but we need to recognize and admit to that. Maybe we are not capable of free choice 100% of the time in professional development.
Another question is how many people will choose to attend a session that takes them out of their comfort zone? Admittedly, some do make that hard choice, but the majority of folks in attendance will not make that uncomfortable choice unless they are attending the conference with a friend who drags them into such a session. These conferences need to find a way to allow for some choice while limiting it in other ways. Maybe a “Chinese menu style” conference with two choices from Column A and three from Column B for every attendee might be a solution. Column A would be pedagogy, methodology, and education philosophy sessions with panels and discussions, and Column B would be the how to sessions.
My final critique on these conferences is one I have made in the past. Most of the sessions in these conferences are conducted by teachers who are presenting to attendees on how they teach in class with specific tools. This is usually an explanation with a PowerPoint presentation. It is a reasonable assumption that they run these sessions based on their experience as a teacher teaching children. Their methodology becomes flawed because adults do not benefit from pedagogy. Adults learn differently. Andragogy is adult learning. Conversation and collaboration work best for adults, not sit and get while sitting in rows. This is why the sessions that usually get the highest ratings from participants are the sessions that addressed the participants as adults to meet their needs.
None of this is new. I have addressed these issues many times since I began as an education blogger. I think the term “yelling into the wind’ comes to mind whenever I cover this topic. If we prioritize professional development as a continuing need in education, eventually someone might listen to these suggestions. When that happens in whatever decade it does, please remember you heard it here first.
I must add to this that the people who plan these conferences are hard-working, dedicated individuals who do their best to provide the conferences with which they have been entrusted with the best presentations available. They do the best they can based on what they have experienced from other conferences.
Maybe we need apply that “why” question here. Why are we doing this conference? If it is to get educators to learn more about their profession and teach more efficiently and effectively with purpose and understanding, then maybe we need to change things up. Let’s teach teachers in ways that they learn best. If we are still teaching for the typewriter in this age of computers, we have it all wrong. We need to re-examine, re-evaluate, and re-vamp what we do with education conferences and professional development. To better educate our kids, we need to first better educate their educators.
This is a terrific post. You ask some very important questions and lead me to wonder what is the best PD structure for real learning and effect. I’ll leave this post with greater attention to adult learning theory and practice, attention to prioritizing our learning needs via coaching and collaborating with leaders and colleagues, and thinking about how to create professional learning structures that truly make a difference for the children we serve. Great questions and information. Thanks Tom!
Thanks for this post Tom,
Professional learning has long been an interest of mine, what I kept thinking as I read your post was whether conferences should look at anything but the “why”? We know from research that the most effective professional learning is job embedded and context specific and that attending an hour long session or workshop is unlikely to meet the needs of the learners. Conferences could provide that opportunity to develop a strong understanding of any intervention or strategy and then leave it to the teacher to consider how this may live within their own context.
As far as too many choices, while I agree to a point, I find the biggest issue lies with who is presenting these choices. I have attended many conferences where there are many choices, but they don’t reflect my own interests or professional needs. On the flip side, I have also attended participant driven conferences (EdCamps and other UnConferences) where the schedule is reflective of the needs of the participants. They are often centred around a shared set of questions or problem of practice and the result is a richer discussion around the “why”
Thanks again for sharing, I think we all know professional learning can be improved and perhaps it is incumbent on teachers to make their professional learning needs known to school and district leaders instead of having them come from the top down.
I am a big supporter of the edcamp model I attended the first edcamp and probably 30 or so since. It is all choice. The problem however is that it does not work with those teachers who are totally unaware. It requires a openess to flexibility,conversation,and collaboration. In time it might be a great model for PD but we are not there yet.
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Great article. Many teachers call for a reform of educational systems. But we may not forget to reform the personal development systems as well.
21st competencies are not only for students, they’re also for educators.
A good article Tom- a community of practice in a school could provide more relevant professional learning to teachers I feel
You were not yelling into the wind with me! You have stated something I truly believe: we don’t know what we don’t know, so we can get stuck in a rut – just leaning more about what we already know or are comfortable with. True learning not happens when there is a change in thinking and behavior, and we humans tend to run away from that. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I also love the edcamp model, but that can be the same. That is, depending on who attends, you can end up with some pretty similar choices. So important to have some provocateurs on hand!
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I am in search of an explanation to why I deeply desire a different professional learning experience than I have traditionally been given. I think you are helping me articulate the conflict I am living.
I recently started pondering why “not everyone wants to go to EdCamp,” and I have just lived out an experience of putting on an EdCamp experience at a local leadership conference which curled my hair with the demonstrated ways to avoid meaningful participation.
I had wondered what step I may have missed in building up to this, but maybe I have mis-identified my audience. Maybe they do not desire unguided collaboration with possible ambiguity in general.
Thank you for the thoughts as these help me look at this recent event in a different light.
I enjoyed your post Tom. We are experiencing a similar situation this summer where many teachers are coming to learn about the various creative and innovative ways technology can be infused into the classroom to enhance instruction and the learning experience for students. What I am finding is the how issue exists for so many teachers but underneath the how is the why. We are running a conference this summer that is bridging the two worlds of PD that can make a difference. We have 28 scheduled sessions and many rooms for an edcamp experience. Would love for you to come and add some value to the day as you do so well at every conference I see or have meet you at over the years.
This was a great post! You don’t know what you don’t know…a common thread that I include in my technology newsletter. I have found that teachers avoid PD whenever possible. If it’s required, they will attend, but they will do so grudgingly, and be like the students who come to class prepared to be bored. They need to know why they need to know what you’re going to teach them, and how it’s going to make their lives easier, or how it’s going to make them better at what they do. I’ve seen people at conferences furiously taking notes that will get filed away never to be seen again. If we start with the “why”, the rest falls into place. Capture their attention and make it relevant. If your students (and they might be teachers, administrators, etc.) don’t know why they’re there, they’re still not going to know what they don’t know. They’re only going to know what they wrote down.
I find this post to be disrespectful to teachers. Conferences are just one part of an educators professional development plan. Taking away their choice is like making every single kid read The Scarlett Letter. Sure, a few kids will get a lot out of it, but most of them will just buy the CliffsNotes. I don’t want more CliffsNotes educators.
I think if you reconsider this post you will see I never asked to remove teacher choice. My focus is that not choosing, is not a choice. Many do not make choices that make them uncomfortable or choices about which they are unfamiliar. Choice is a major component of my education philosophy.
Thanks Tom for your post. I have been doing my best to be an active participant recently, although I sometimes fall short. This is a question that is heavily on my mind as I struggle with the best way to implement technology built upon strong pedagogy with adult teachers during PD sessions.
I would agree with you that some learners don’t know what they don’t know and need a more regimented structure. On the other hand, we do have those people that use choice and push themselves. How do we keep open both choice and structure? If we provide too much choice than those who need structure suffer, and vice versa.
Although, I have more questions than answers from reading this blog post, it has sparked some thoughts for me and helps me grow as an educator.
Why not develop an IEP for each faculty member for Professional Development. It would require establishing a baseline for each teacher and individually building up from there. If their is a need to provide or require anything for one member or several, you will see it and may plan accordingly. It may take some time to do, but it will strengthen the overall development of the staff.
Thanks Tom for engaging and thanks for the suggestion!!! I think that is definitely on my list. Any suggestions on templates to use or sources to look at?
Last year in a slightly different position, I didn’t do IEP’s, but as a staff, we did create a reflection matrix for integrating Listening and Speaking into instruction (http://goo.gl/jA3i). Perhaps I could do the same with integrating technology and the IEP goals could be built off of there?