Let’s admit that there is a problem with our professional learning.
Regardless of what we call our adult learning activities- workshops, conferences, webinars, inservices, training, professional development, or professional learning– we are conditioned to accept subpar experiences.
Professional learning can be boring when an “expert” reads to the audience from an endless slide deck full of bullet points.
Professional learning can be ineffective when the objective is to check a box that says the staff were trained, rather than focusing on actual professional growth.
Professional can be hypocritical when trainers fail to use the engaging instructional strategies that they teach about in their sessions.
Let’s look at 3 great ways to make professional learning exciting, meaningful, & effective!
Action Oriented Professional Learning
Get your audience up and moving! Forget the lecture and offer an immersive and interactive learning experience. You should provide an interactive opportunity every 10 minutes. This may sound like a lot, but consider the implications. Would you rather give your audience a large amount of information that will be neither remembered nor implemented? Or would you prefer to offer a moderate amount of information that will be both retained and implemented?
Interactive learning opportunities with hands-on experiences have been associated with improved teaching practices (Chen & McCray, 2012; Hunzicker, 2011). When we encourage physical movement, we increase the likelihood that learners will retain new information. Action-oriented learning lends itself well to audiences of teachers. As the trainer, you would do well to model the engaging teaching strategies that you want your audience to implement in their own classrooms.
Action oriented learning opportunities can be used at any point in your session. It is always great to begin with an interactive opening activity. You will also want to have action oriented opportunities after breaks. Keep your presentation moving and you will be amazed at how your audience remains engaged throughout.
We have previously explored some great instructional activities that encourage learners to leave their chairs and move around the room. Check out Think-Pair-Share-Pair-Share and Ice Breaker BINGO.
Encourage Collaboration
Teaching is a social and collaborative profession, yet our professional learning opportunities tend to be quite the opposite. We sit and listen to a single speaker share her/his thoughts and ideas. Shouldn’t we be able to benefit form the collective experiences and ideas of a room full of educators?
Collaborative learning activities are important to the successful implementation and maintenance of newly acquired instructional skills (Blank & de las Alas, 2009; Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Dunst et al., 2015). Examples of collaboration include cooperative learning activities or opportunities for discussion and reflection with co-participants.
Groups of teachers and administrators who dedicate time to learn together have more successful professional learning outcomes (Chen & McCray, 2012; Peppers, 2015; Willis & Templeton, 2017). Specifically, there is evidence suggesting that administrators learning and collaborating alongside teachers they supervise increases the effectiveness of professional learning activities (Peppers, 2015).
Consider Duration
Duration of Professional Development
Please resist the urge to cram stand-alone trainings into short periods of time. One-off trainings are rarely effective. Duration is important to continued learning and successful implementation of new practices.
Duration can be interpreted in two ways: contact hours of professional development or a span of time over which professional development is to be implemented. Longer duration of professional learning activities allows time for participant discussion and reflection. Additionally, professional learning over time allows time for teachers to implement, receive feedback, adjust, and reevaluate their instructional practices, therefore increasing the effectiveness of the implementation.
Professional Learning Communities (PLC) are an effective means of providing sustained professional development to teachers (Dickinson, Freiberg, & Barnes, 2011; Schachter, 2015). PLCs meet regularly and often have built-in opportunities for members to collaborate between meetings (Carpenter, 2015). Learning activities are typically designed to continually refresh or update teachers’ learning over a period of time.
The best advice I can offer for your professional learning is to be the teacher that you want your audience members to be. If you want your teachers to be engaging, you must work hard to gain/maintain their attention during training. If you want your teachers to be organized, then you must show up well-prepared for your professional learning events.
Professional learning is not just about the content that we are sharing. The “how” is just as important as the “what.” You may be teaching your audience about a given topic, but the way that you present will also resonate.
Finally, don’t be afraid to be fun. If you are enjoying the presentation, it is more likely that your audience will remain engaged. Happy teaching!
