II. Participant will distinguish between effective and ineffective training practices

2. Effective Training Practices - Current Perspectives

During the past 20 years staff development too often consisted of participants sitting while an "expert" exposed them to new ideas or trained them in new practices. The success of training was typically measured by the participant's satisfaction with their experience, not necessarily what they learned. More recently there has been a shift in staff development as a result of 3 powerful ideas:

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1. Results driven education  
2. Systems thinking  
3. Constructivism  

There have been changes that have occurred in the field of professional development over the last several years because of the three ideas described above. These changes include:

• A move from individual development to individual and organizational development.
  Too often we expect dramatic changes in programs based solely on staff development programs intended to help individual staff and administrators do their jobs more effectively. Improvements in individual performance alone are insufficient to produce the desired results. Success for all students depends upon both the learning of individual employees and improvements in the capacity of the organization to solve problems and renew itself. W. Edwards Deming estimates that 85% of the barriers to improvements reside in the organization's structure and processes, not in the performance of individuals. Unless individual learning and organizational changes are addressed simultaneously and support one another, the gains made in one area may be canceled by continuing problems in the other.
• A move from fragmented, piecemeal improvement efforts to staff development that is driven by a clear strategic plan for the agency.
  Improvement is too often based on fad rather than on a clear, compelling vision of the agency's/program's future. This in turn has lead to one-shot staff development workshops with no thought given to follow-up or how the new technique fits in with those that were taught in previous years. Clear, compelling mission statements and measurable objectives expressed in terms of child outcomes gives guidance to the type of staff development activities that would best serve agency goals.
• A move from district-focused to school focused approaches to staff development.
  There is a move from district-wide programs to directing help to schools to meet their improvement goals. School improvement efforts in which the entire staff seeks incremental annual improvements related to a set of common objectives over a 3-5 year span are viewed as the key to significant reform. More learning activities are designed and implemented by school faculties, with the district's staff development department providing technical assistance and resources.
• A move from a focus on adult needs to a focus on child needs and learning outcomes.
  Rather than basing staff development solely upon the perception of educators regarding what they need, staff development planning processes are more often beginning by determining the things children need to know and be able to do and working backward to the knowledge, skills and attitudes required of educators if those child outcomes are to be realized.
• A move from training that one attends away from the job as the primary delivery system for staff development to multiple forms of job-embedded learning.
  Much of staff development is where the participant is passive. The move now is toward action research, participating in study groups or small group problem solving, observing peers and becoming involved in the improvement process.
• A move from an orientation toward the transmission of knowledge and skills by "experts" to the study by teachers of the teaching and learning processes.
  In many districts, professional development activities have consisted of hiring an outside content "expert" to deliver training to staff in a new practice, procedure or approach. The shift now is toward using "facilitators" to assist the participants in the teaching and learning process.
• A move from teachers as the main recipients of staff development efforts to providing staff development opportunities to all personnel who affect the learning of the student.
  This idea recognizes the fact that everyone who has contact with the student has an impact on the student's learning. Including paraeducators, cooks, bus drivers, custodians and others who have interactions with students in staff development activities will have a greater impact on students.
• A move from a focus on generic instructional skills to a combination of generic and content-specific skills.
  More staff development is focused on specific content, not on general instructional techniques. Instruction in specific content is more likely to result in change in teacher and child learning.
• A move from viewing staff development as a "frill" to viewing staff development as essential and indispensable.
  In many school districts, staff development and inservice days are not seen as a high priority. When budgets are tight, professional development activities are often the first area to be cut. Now, more districts see that purposeful professional development activities can have a direct positive impact on student behavior and learning.