INTRODUCTION

For Monday and Tuesday, we are covering Chapter 11 - Supervision as Professional Development and Renewal

These are the major topics that we will look at in this chapter:

• Frameworks for Growth.
• Technical Competencies in Teaching.
• Clinical, Personal and Critical Teaching Competencies

Again we need to review the purpose of supervision. The major purpose centers around several issues. The first point is to help teachers improve and develop their teaching skills, their ability to make more informed professional decisions and to become better problem solvers. Why is this so important? Because it benefits children in all classrooms, which is the essence of the educational experience.

Among teachers today there is growing interest in Professional Growth Plans. It is assumed that teacher professional growth planning is a career-long learning process whereby a teacher annually develops and implements planning designed to foster improvement of instruction and professional growth.

According to the thesaurus of the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database, professional development refers to "activities to enhance professional career growth." Such activities may include individual development, continuing education, and inservice education, as well as curriculum writing, peer collaboration, study groups, and peer coaching or mentoring.

Fullan (1991) expands the definition to include "the sum total of formal and informal learning experiences throughout one's career from preservice teacher education to retirement" (p. 326). Considering the meaning of professional development in the technological age, Grant (n.d.) suggests a broader definition of professional development that includes the use of technology to foster teacher growth:

"Professional development ... goes beyond the term 'training' with its implications of learning skills, and encompasses a definition that includes formal and informal means of helping teachers not only learn new skills but also develop new insights into pedagogy and their own practice, and explore new or advanced understandings of content and resources. [This] definition of professional development includes support for teachers as they encounter the challenges that come with putting into practice their evolving understandings about the use of technology to support inquiry-based learning.... Current technologies offer resources to meet these challenges and provide teachers with a cluster of supports that help them continue to grow in their professional skills, understandings, and interests." http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/profdevl/pd2prof.htm

Annual teacher professional growth planning is a collegial process among professional educators. In many of these plans, the teacher is responsible for completing during each school year an annual teacher professional growth plan that:

• reflects goals and objectives based on an assessment of learning needs by the individual teacher.
• shows a demonstrable relationship to the teacher quality standard.
• takes into consideration the education plans of the school, the school authority, and the government.

Here are some examples of teachers assuming a greater role in their own professional development and that of their colleagues. Why? Because enhancing student learning entails constant improvement in teaching and expanded roles for all teachers, and includes peer assistance and review.

Here is an excellent article on the need for Professional DevelopmentA National Plan for Improving Professional Development by Dennis Sparks and Stephanie Hirsh http://www.nsdc.org/library/NSDCPlan.html

Other material on Professionla Development include these sites:

• Ongoing Reflective Professional Development http://www.schoolstowatch.org/barrencounty/borg.htm
• Professional Growth Plan from Henrico County. This is a revolutionary new Professional Growth Plan that replaces the standard performance checklist used for many years. The new plan allows teachers and staff to: Evaluate themselves, Plan challenging projects, Exert control over their work environment and career destinies. Each employee of Henrico Schools, from the superintendent to the custodial staff, participates in the professional growth plan by setting and trying to reach professional goals each year. School divisions across the country have adopted our model.
• Here is their Professional Growth Plan that I would encourage you to download. It is 19 pages and you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to access this. Adobe is a free program which can be downloaded from here..http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html
• Here then is the Henrico County Public Schools Professional Growth Plan.http://www.co.henrico.va.us/schools/pdfdocs/TeachPGP.pdf