PD List Colleagues,

 

So far, this is what I'm hearing about benefits and drawbacks of
standards, using subscribers' words. Let's keep adding to this list - so
please reply to this message with your thoughts. 

 

Fyi -- I'm also archiving our Quality PD discussions in the PD Area of
the ALE Wiki:

 

http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Quality_Professional_Development


 

Thanks in advance for your important contributions to this
collaborative, volunteer effort.

 

Jackie Taylor, List Moderator, jataylor at utk.edu 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

What are the benefits of having PD Standards?

 

*	Standards provide a target to plan, implement and evaluate
professional development in a systemic and meaningful way.
*	They 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. 
*	The AALPD standards...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.  
*	If...they help us to remember what it is we believe to be
important and necessary to good educational practice, then they can be
useful to us over the long term. 
*	... the development of PD standards in and of itself could
present useful opportunities for ongoing professional development
through a thoughtful, probably long-term(ish) process. 

 

 

What are the drawbacks?

 

*         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.

*         Ultimately, these standards will only be useful or meaningful
if they serve to help us continue our own ongoing learning and
development. If they become mere competencies, things we demonstrate and
tick off as having "done," we really gain nothing. 

 

-- Overly-broad or too prescriptive

*         Sometimes standards are so general and loose that they hardly
serve any purpose despite a lot of time and money spent on developing
them.

*         Standards can be too prescriptive, limiting creative
approaches to a highly fluid, very human process.
By their nature, standards would have to either be the consolidated
ideas of some group assigned to write them, or a compromise between
those wanting nothing and those wanting rules and guidelines, which
could mean the standards cannot really meet the needs of those who will
provide PD and those who will be recipients of it.

 

-- Regulatory

*         I would worry about legislating or too-tightly regulating PD
standards, 

 

-- Other

*         Hard to know in the abstract whether standards help or not.

 

 

 

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