"Professional Development in the 21st Century" - notes

I've heard this term for some time, in conversation with Konrad Glogowski, Sharon Peters, and other similarly well-connected educators with broad technological background. I had this conception that like a blog/facebook page / moodle there would be some kind of 'main page' where all of one person's resources would be collected.



Konrad, in the presentation above (part of the K-12 Online Conference, happening right now!) talks about learning WITH as a part of a personal learning network. Blogs, twitter, etc - these allow us to learn FROM. To learn WITH, we must work alongside other educators.

He also focuses on the importance of learning from the classroom. Simple, yet profound - becoming aware of what happens day-to-day is the best way to become a more empowered professional. He suggests that we ask: am I an 'implementer' of strategies from other classrooms/environments? Or am I a 'designer and maker' of my own tools? If anything, I'd say I focus on the latter, and would like to incorporate more of the former. We want our students to be enquirers, and perpetual learners; therefore we ourselves must be inquiring, and constantly learning.

We want to: connect with our colleagues, through our networks, in conversations that grow our of our classroom - YES!

1) classroom-based teacher development. Learning from our context; this is about focusing who we are, what we do, and why we do it in our classrooms. This is based on the idea that we have a lot to learn from our classrooms & our students.
- Involves students AND teachers working together... the primary relationship is student-teacher. Students need to be involved in choosing content, evaluation & environment.
- Engages us in the process of learning & reflection
- Reflection leads to transformative practise, leads to meaningful action
2) Reflective Practice - practice that leads to professional growth & meaningful action
- Requires that we look critically at our classroom practise, and make decisions regarding our professional growth
"Active consistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed knowledge" (Dewey)

Reflection CONTENT:
- physical presence, preparation, kinds of learning opportunities, homework, instructional practise, goals and values, evaluation/assessment, assumptions about teaching & learning, why choose some topics and avoid others? Questions that involve us as individuals, with our own set of values & beliefs

Reflection PROCESS:
1. Describing ourselves. What we do & how we do it?
- "problem-setting" (Schon). Biggest challenge is not solving problems - it is identifying areas in need of improvement. Hardest part of the process - to find our weaknesses!
- is this working, is it working for everyone, am I pleased/proud/concerned?
2. Questioning our practise OR "informing". Why do we do the things we do? What else could we be doing?
- We try to unpack our classroom practise & see the forces that cause us to teach the way we do. Why have I organised things this way? Identify limitations of our own point of view; question long-held practises or assumptions.
3. Confronting our long-held assumptions / Critical reflection
- Our classroom is a deeply personal construct. What does this reveal about my values or beliefs?

some way we should also have 4: Reconstructing our Practises
Having observed ourselves & reflected on our practises, we should reconstruct our practise.

And this is where the video cut out for me, unfortunately...! Excellent reminder of the importance of what I'm doing right now - professional development, on my own schedule :)