The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov> on Monday, November 26, 2007 at 1:12 PM -0500 wrote:

>Good day or evening, all!

>

>Today begins Week Three in our discussion of Quality Professional Development. Based on this month’s discussions, AALPD (www.aalpd.org) will finalize a draft set of quality standards for providing professional development in our field. To pick back

>up with our discussions, please post your responses to one or more of the questions below:



Hello everyone,

>

>

>A.	What are the benefits and drawbacks of having quality professional development standards? 


My perspective for the importance of adult education professional development standards comes from a statewide perspective.  I see the benefits of standards from this perspective as the following:
1.  Standards provide a target to plan, implement and evaluate professional development in a systemic and meaningful way.
2.  The provide a common target to plan statewide professional development.  One need I have experienced over and over when planning professional development was the need for a framework to offer and define quality professional development.  
3.  The AALPD standards, Jackie provides a link for you all to review, offers us the target to provide quality professional development.  In each state we do not have to reinvent the wheel to define quality professional development, we can proceed
to plan, implement and evaluate the content for professional development to meet the needs of our state.  

The drawback of adult education professional development standards is that it is a relatively new concept for our field and the need for learning what standards are, the importance of the standards, and the place to use standards is in the early
stages. It certainly is a discussion I look forward to with my colleagues.  I want to thank Jackie for providing us this opportunity to begin this conversation.  

I would like to ask my colleagues who are involved in planning statewide professional development, how do you see yourself using the adult education professional development standards to plan, implement and evaluate your professional development?  

>

>B.	Will standards help PD staff to provide -- or practitioners to identify -- quality professional development? 

> 


Here I would like to address Robin's question in an earlier posting of the need for professional development to help teachers meet the individual needs of students.  
One of the first steps in planning professional development using a standards framework is to review your data to identify the needs of your students and programs to best serve adult learners.  
Once professional development is implemented, then part of the professional development is to provide participants the tools they need to go back to their content areas to best serve their learners.  

>

>C.	How well does the AALPD draft measure up with what subscribers have indicated is quality professional development? 


I like the draft framework because it began with a national set of professional development standards, (NSDC) and the field has this great opportunity to provide input into the question, "Does this document work for us in adult education
professional development?"  

Yours in learning about standards in adult education, Evelyn

Evelyn Beaulieu, Director
Center for Adult Learning and Literacy
5749 Merrill Hall, UM
Orono, ME  04469
(207) 581-2413
evelyn.beaulieu at umit.maine.edu
http://www.umaine.edu/call/