Personalized Professional Learning
Research clearly tells us that every learner is different, whether they are adults or children. While there has been a lot of focus on personalizing student instruction, professional learning for educators often remains stuck in one-size-fits-all training. How can we reimagine professional learning to improve educator agency, choice, and voice?
In previous modules, you have already examined effective skills and dispositions for working with colleagues as adult learners. You have also begun examining coaching and instructional partnership as an effective strategy for both improving educator practice and student learning outcomes. This section will provide additional research and effective practices which support instructional partnership and educator learner agency. To help you consolidate and apply your learning in this module, you will review and critique a professional learning class, activity, or event with the goal of developing a critical framework for your own practice.
Building Instructional Partnerships
Instructional Coaching Playbook: Develop Effective Coach-Teacher Collaboration
Part of the Instructional Coaching Playbook introduced earlier in this module, this resource focuses on key considerations for implementing instructional partnerships in your school or system.
Activity Directions
Learning outcomes
Explore components of effective instructional coaching and partnership
Identify areas for personal professional focus and growth
Activities
Explore the resource, Develop Effective Coach-Teacher Collaboration.
Discuss these questions with your learning partner.
Which of the four principles resonates most with you as you think about coaching and instructional partnership in your own practice?
Select one of the four principles listed in the resource and read the related article.
Respond to the following prompts in your LIFT Portfolio.
What is the principle that you selected? Why did you select this principle?
Which of the research-based recommendations are you most interested in?
Professional Learner Agency
Moving from Compliance to Agency: What Teachers Need to Make Professional Learning Work
This detailed report from Learning Forward examines teacher agency as a necessary component of effective professional learning.
Activity Directions
Learning outcomes
Examine learner agency as a component of professional development and training for educators
Explore ways to increase educator agency in professional learning
Activities
Review the resource Moving from Compliance to Agency: What Teachers Need to Make Professional Learning Work with a focus on the following sections
Introduction (p.2) [using document pagination]
What Is Teacher Agency? (p.4)
Conditions that do and do not support teacher agency (p.5)
Discuss with your learning partner the following prompts
As you think about your own experiences with professional development and learning, how does the idea of teacher agency resonate with you?
Is agency for student learners different from agency for adult learners? If so, how?
Looking at the diagram for Conditions that do and do not support teacher agency on page 5, which of the 'System Conditions' are most important to you in your own professional learning?
Remixing Professional Learning
In this activity, you and your learning partner will identify an existing training or professional development activity, critically examine it, and then annotate suggested changes based on what you've learned in this module. Using an After Action Review strategy, you will identify both strengths and areas for improvement.
Activity Directions
Learning outcomes
Critically examine and assess a specific example of professional training using an AAR method
Discuss and explore examples of professional learning with a critical lens
Activities
Identify a training or professional development class you've recently taken. If you and your learning partner can use the same experience, that's ideal, but you can also each identify your own training for review.
Complete the LIFT Training AAR for the class or training you've identified. Save the results in your LIFT Folder and/or include a link in your LIFT Portfolio. Also, share a link to your responses with your learning partner.
Discuss these questions with your partner. Take turns sharing and discussing each example using the LIFT Training AAR as a guide.
What happened? Pose questions and/or provide additional detail as needed.
What actually occurred? Pose questions and/or provide additional detail as needed.
What could be better? Consider the following resources you've examined so far:
Reflect | Review | Revise | Recognize
Activity Directions
Learning outcomes
Reflect and review learning to identify new questions, ideas, and goals
Reflect
Discuss the following questions with your learning partner and
Respond to the following in your LIFT Portfolio.
What was the one idea from this module that resonated most with you as an educator?
How do you feel about your knowledge and skills connected to working with adult learners, instructional partnership and coaching?
What are some needs and challenges within your school, team, or context specific to instructional collaboration and coaching?
In the area of instructional coaching and partnership, who leads this work in your school?
Who leads this work in your district or system?
Who are experts or thought leaders on this topic in your school and/or district?
Review / Revise
Review the following areas of your LIFT Portfolio
Golden Circle
and these documents as necessary:
LIFT Ideas and Questions
What new questions, ideas, inputs or insights have I added?
LIFT Bookmarks (or your own bookmarks document)
What new resources have I found?
LIFT Folder
Are all the necessary documents in your LIFT Folder?
Record
Revisit your work in this module with your learning partner using the following checklist. Check each other's portfolio to ensure the following have been completed. Your learning partner is not expected to review for content, only that you've completed the tasks.
Do you have responses to all the questions in your LIFT Portfolio?
Have you completed all the activities?
Have you added any resources to your LIFT Bookmarks Form or curation tool?
Are necessary documents in your LIFT Folder?
Once all the work has been completed, you can
Recognize/Reward your learning partner and move on to the next module.