Teacher Professional Development and Student Achievement Gains

Over the years, I feel I have been guided by God to pursue Elementary Education, which narrows my focus to the kindergarten classroom. I will clearly define the most helpful theories that may be implemented throughout the kindergarten learning environment. Effective teacher characteristics will be identified and why they are imperative for this particular age group. Young children have different learning characteristics and it is important for teachers to recognize and accommodate to the needs of their students. Throughout this course, I have discovered certain characteristics about myself and I will elaborate on my unique learning styles.

Teaching is an extremely important profession as we are responsible for training up the future generations of our community, country and in effect, the world. In order to be a successful and effective teacher there are some basic skills and competencies that one must possess. The experiences that students have inside (and outside) our classrooms, schools and various other institutes will shape and mould their approach to our subjects and to life in general. Therefore, it requires a certain level of skill and training to be deemed professionally fit to enter into this career path and even then, continuous

Professional Development measures the degree to which teachers value continuous personal development and school-wide improvement.

Using Glickman (2014) as a reference point, there are two types of opportunity for learning that could be used to make staff development meaningful to teachers: integrated school-wide staff development and individual professional development. When using an integrated school-wide professional development, "it is critical that all members of the school community provide input into the school wide professional development goals” (Glickman, Gordon and Ross-Gordon, 2014). Moreover, the administration must provide an expansive objective for professional development so that all participants can adopt it and stay consistent with the school’s objective. A perfect example of a school-wide professional development would be addressing student discipline (Glickman et al., 2014). While certain groups of teachers might want to compare their decision with other schools, other groups could choose ”to attend a training program on effective discipline” (Glickman et al., 2014). When using individual professional development as an opportunity for learning, it is significant to consider the teacher’s personal input to the school-wide

Unfortunately, thorough research on the impact of professional development on student achievement is limited because it is challenging, complex and expensive to study. Nonetheless, Hoaglund, Birkenfeld, and Box, (2015), conducted a study that illustrated that learning communities are viable tools for providing professional development to both pre-service teachers and current teachers. Their study showed how a group of pre-service teachers and their supervisors participated in a professional experience learning community for two terms prior to the pre-service teacher’s junior year at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Questionnaires and interviews were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. The results of the study indicated that all participants valued the experience and consequently were able to gain and identify some benefits of a professional learning community (PLC). Participants specifically reported a greater appreciation of collaboration with more experienced educators as a practical way of solving issues and implementing processes and procedures for increasing student achievement. The activities incorporated within the

This paper explores the Professional Development System of the Volusia County School Districts and how they are implemented. It addresses the unique contributions of Charlotte Danielson and how her Framework for Teachers influenced and aided the Florida Educator Accomplished Practices (FEAPs). This paper also addresses Assessment, Volusia Proficiency Model (VPM) and Problem solving techniques currently used in Volusia County Schools. It concludes with the author’s thoughts on how he would implement the knowledge and skills in each of these areas of Professional Development in the teaching and learning process.

Students will respond to the lesson in different ways and often there are “teachable moments” that were not included in the original lesson. The effective teacher can incorporate various instructional strategies to fit the moment and the individual student’s needs at that moment.

The Framework for Teaching by Charlotte Danielson has been developed through research as a guideline for current and future teacher’s professional responsibilities in and out of the classroom. Districts throughout the country are using this framework to assess and guide their teachers to build successful methods of planning and preparations, setting up the classroom environment, instruction and professional responsibilities. Each of these domains builds off of each other to form a successful learning environment. Domain 3 focuses more specifically on instruction using communication, discussions, engagement, assessments and flexibility.

Traditionally, teacher development typically occurs through trial and error in the isolated confinements of each teacher’s classroom with some periodic whole-group professional development (Goddard & Goddard, 2007). Within the past few decades, many schools and districts, including ours, have considered and experimented with Professional Learning Communities (PLC) as an alternative framework in guiding a more efficient development program for their teachers. PLCs are focused on enhancing student learning through developing teacher practices. The concept of PLC relies on using structured collaborative sessions amongst teachers within the school to build internal capacity. Through PLCs, teachers critically reflect on current

Within this project the teacher candidate was able to interact with a peer teacher candidate and communicate effectively about personal experiences within the field. The teacher candidate was able to implement the knowledge and skills learned in professional development in the teaching and learning process. The teacher candidate made reflective implications of behavior management strategies and formal pedagogical practices of the professional teacher she observed, and touched on future use in her own classroom.

The authors’ collaborative research began by exploring the future of education and the teaching profession. Through their research, they swiftly concluded a vast majority of people shared the notion that the most important factor that effects student learning is the quality of the teacher. Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan continued to take a closer look at how one can maximize the cumulative effect of many quality teachers over time, and the favorable lasting impact this would have on the education of students for many years to come. The ultimate goal of Professional Capital is to increase human capital or the individual teacher’s talents, skills, and capabilities. However, this human capital needs to be distributed and

There is a usual but important cliché for a teacher´s career: a teacher has to be a life-long learner to be an effective teacher. Research on effective teaching over the past two decades has proved that effective practice is related to questioning, reflection and continuous professional development. Reflective practice can be a satisfying experience for a teacher evolution. It covers self-analysis, questioning one owns methods, assumptions about learning, theories as well as one´s attitudes and behaviour as a facilitator and communicator, in short making a deep analysis of the actions. Reflecting on teaching includes the teacher´s thoughts on the successfulness of the lesson planning and the implementation used to teach. Within the time progression the teacher´s reflection should be more precise and he or she could

The focus of this paper is to analyze the supervision and evaluation of teachers at my Catholic school, and suggest a model program that better meets the needs of all teachers, regardless of their years in service. My experience teaching at the same school over the last 15 years indicates that supervision and evaluation of teachers is either a perfunctory task, or designed as a “gotcha” activity. In either case, there is never the expectation that the teacher and the administrator will collaborate to ensure teacher professional development, and no one would call it a meaningful process. Research shows that teachers do not become better teachers based on passive participation in an evaluation process they do not value. Charlotte Danielson (2010) argues that professional growth occurs only when teachers engage in “self-assessment, reflection on practice and professional conversation.” (p. 38).

One of the most essential exercises when in comes to professional development as an instructor is to continuously reflect on your perspective, methodology, instruction and behavior within your profession. Doing so ensure that you a growing and improving on teaching skills and building on old strengths to benefit you as an instructor but especially the students that you serve.

Being a teacher is not an easy task as many people could think. To be a teacher does not only imply to know the subject to be taught, it also includes being willing to constantly improve oneself integrally, as much as updating the resources and materials one uses in teaching. Reflecting and analyzing over and over again the best way to teach to learn and how to make students to extend what has been learned. The many hours spend in the classroom will never be enough to plan lessons, prepare materials, review pupils tasks and exams, as well, all the administrative requirements one has to cover for whatever institution we work. Besides all this a good teacher, a professional one, will have to find the time to keep preparing to improve