The Use Culturally Proficient Professional Development to Enhance Learning Transfer

The National Staff Development Council recommends that principals devote 10% of the school budget and 25% of teacher time to professional development (PD). While PD requires time, it is crucial that the time be organized, carefully structured, and purposefully led to avoid the waste of human and financial resources. Despite the millions of dollars spent on professional development nationally, student learning outcomes continue to stagnate or dwindle, discipline issues continue to skyrocket, and teacher moral plummets. This may be due, in part, to leaders paying little attention to learning transfer. Culture plays a key role in one’s ability to learn because learning is a social endeavor. Because our schools worldwide are more and more diverse, professional development that is grounded in culture is paramount for educators whose goal is to improve learning outcomes for all students. Because attending professional development does not necessarily equate to the implementation of knowledge or skills, this conceptual paper proposes a Culturally Proficient Professional Development (CPPD) framework that includes a Multidimensional Model of Learning Transfer (MMLT). The MMLT and its rubrics aim to be culturally responsive tools that school leaders in PK-12 schools can use to organize, deliver, and assess professional development offerings while also enhancing learning transfer and improve educators’ cultural proficiency. Considering culture as the main enhancer or inhibitor to transfer is innovative and useful because schools spend large amounts of money and resources on PD, yet the money invested does not often produce the desired outcomes.

Personalizing Professional Development Through the Unconference

This chapter shares a framework for personalizing professional development through which adult learners' needs are determined in real time and discussed and investigated at the time of need for educators. The model, referred to as an unconference or EdCamp, brings educators together, either physically on the same site or electronically, where needs are identified at the start of the meeting, then shared and addressed by those with similar needs. This chapter traces a brief history of professional development (PD) in P-12 schools from the emergence of the National Staff Development Council, now called Learning Forward, and reviews the evolution of evaluation models. It then traces a brief history of learning theory from Behaviorism to Constructivism, and the impact of the evolving understanding of how we learn on changing professional development delivery. The authors share advances from the sciences that have influenced the design and delivery of learning and offer a brain-based approach for delivering PD.

The Unconference

This chapter traces a brief history of professional development (PD) in P-12 schools from the emergence of the National Staff Development Council (1978), now called Learning Forward, and reviews the evolution of evaluation models from Kirkpatrick (1959) to Guskey (2000). It then traces a brief history of learning theory from Behaviorism to Constructivism, and the impact of the evolving understanding of how we learn on changing professional development delivery. The authors share technological advances from the sciences that have influenced the design and delivery of learning and offer a brain-based approach for delivering PD. A recent phenomenon, the unconference, or EdCamp as some have been called, represents a constructivist approach to professional development which is more closely aligned with brain-based principles of how we learn. (Both authors planned, administered, and evaluated an EdCamp Professional Development day for a program of aspiring high school principals in the spring of 2015.)