Hi Everyone,

Here is a PD-related piece for this week's FOB article. It is from
Volume 5D, which is about staff development, and discusses a Learning
Organization approach to ABE Professional Development. 

Has anyone used this approach?

All the best,
Julie

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Using a Learning Organization Approach to Enhance ABE Teachers'
Professional Development
by M. Cecil Smith & Amy D. Rose
http://www.ncsall.net/?id=231

I have included the first two paragraphs to get you started:

Professional development is defined as a change process "in which
instructors gradually acquire a body of knowledge and skills to improve
the quality of teaching for learners and, ultimately, to enhance learner
outcomes" (Kutner et al., 1997, p. 1). Most adult basic education (ABE)
teachers do not have degrees or preparation in adult education, so
continuing education and training are deemed essential in the field
(Crandall, 1993; Belzer et al., 2001). Professional development
activities often fall short, however, in meeting practitioners' needs
for training. By extension, they also fail to meet the needs of the ABE
programs that rely upon them to increase teachers' skills and knowledge
and improve performance in the ABE classroom.

We describe here an approach to ABE professional development and
organizational change that can lead to greater alignment between ABE
practitioners' needs and staff development offerings. We believe that
professional development must be grounded in practice to facilitate
teachers' transfer of knowledge learning and skills training to ABE
classrooms. Such grounding is best accomplished through the adoption of
a situated cognition approach to learning. Situated cognition involves
the adaptation of knowledge and thinking skills to solve unique
problems. It is based on the idea that knowledge is influenced by the
activities, context, and culture in which it is used (McLellan, 1996).



Julie McKinney
Discussion List Moderator
World Education/NCSALL
jmckinney at worlded.org