Time for a Paradigm Shift for Professional Learning

The field of professional development has a profound need. It isn’t time or money (though both are welcome). What we need is a new paradigm.ﾠ 
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Many people think about professional development in excessively narrow terms. Educators view it as an episodic add-on to the school year. School systems treat it as a service peripheral to student achievement. Education organizations don’t question its quality or results. Policymakers are not sure what to do with it.
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True professional learning is much more than an exercise in knowledge and skill building. It is a philosophy, a belief system, that to succeed in complex and changing education environments, educators must constantly seek, master, and apply new knowledge. Under this paradigm of professional development, no active educator ever exhausts the need for learning, nor is that need satisfied by intermittent educational experiences. There is always a need for more learning because the context and dynamics of public schooling change almost daily. An educator who doesn’t continue to learn what is necessary to be effective soon falls out of sync with her environment, or is overwhelmed by it. We all know these educators.
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In principle, most education officials probably agree with this concept of professional development. On occasion, they may articulate it. But this approach to professional learning is rarely manifest in the day-to-day expectations and operations of school systems and schools. School systems passively yield to a professional development paradigm defined by the number of days prescribed by legislatures. New hires don’t forcefully and consistently get the message that an important part of their job is continuous learning to improve their performance. Too often, a smattering of learning and no evidence of its use is an acceptable standard for what passes as professional development.
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The field of professional development must become much more vocal and aggressive in describing and explaining its new paradigm. More importantly, it must work harder to ensure that school systems and schools change what they do, not just what they say. NSDC points the way with its vision that every educator engages in effective professional learning every day so every student achieves. That is the most straightforward description of the essential elements of the new paradigm: professional development must be inclusive, constant, deep and productive.

Hayes Mizell is NSDC’s distinguished senior fellow.

http://www.nsdc.org/learningBlog/post.cfm/time-for-a-paradigm-shift-for-professional-learning