Professional Growth Pathway
The goal of the professional growth pathway is to develop partnerships that assist teachers in reflecting on their craft, building on their strengths, rewards strategic risk-taking, provides feedback and allows time for practice, while honoring the growth of each staff member and all students.
What the Research Says:
Collective Teacher Efficacy is the collective belief of teachers in their ability to positively affect students. CTE has been found to be strongly, positively correlated with student achievement. A school staff that believes it can collectively accomplish great things is vital for the health of a school. If they believe they can make a positive difference then they very likely will. John Hattie Effect Size: 1.57
Bryk and Schneider found that schools with strong levels of trust at the outset of reforms had a 1-in-2 chance of making significant improvements in student achievement, while those with weak relationships had a 1-in-7 chance of making gains.
According to Gallup Cliftonstrengths research, in order to turn your talents into strengths, you must invest in them -- practice using them and add knowledge and skills to them.
What's the Point?
Professional learning communities (PLCs) or networks (PLNs) are groups of teachers that share and critically interrogate their practices in an ongoing, reflective, collaborative, inclusive, learning-oriented, and growth-promoting way to mutually enhance teacher and student learning (Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, and Thomas, 2006).
Research shows that when professional learning communities demonstrate four key characteristics, they can improve teaching practice and student achievement in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies subject tests (Vescio et al., 2008).
PLCs go a step beyond professional development by providing teachers with not just skills and knowledge to improve their teaching practices but also an ongoing community that values each teacher's experiences in their own classrooms and uses those experiences to guide teaching practices and improve student learning (Vescio et al., 2008).
