Steve Dill, EdD, has served at Delaware County Christian School in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, since 1973. He has filled the roles of teacher, coach, counselor, principal, and development director. Dr. Dill became the head of school in 2002.
There is a significant difference between faculty discussions of effective pedagogy that are based on personal classroom experience and discussions based on documented best practices. The latter discussion is more likely to be found in a school that has successfully built a professional growth culture. Online professional development (OPD) has come of age, and it provides significant potential in helping Christian schools develop a culture of professional growth.
OPD is available for professional educators at multiple levels and in ever-expanding formats. The most basic form is evidenced when a faculty member searches the Internet for sample lessons, illustrations, or sources for students. A more-structured format is a webinar or an online workshop, often offering continuing education units. Through a newer development, educators are collaborating with others in sophisticated, face-to-face virtual worlds; one example is a virtual world known as Second Life. The range of full-credit courses and complete degree programs delivered online has geometrically increased in recent years.
A simple Google search of “online professional development for teachers” generates literally millions of possibilities. For example, Public Broadcasting System (PBS) is one of several well-known organizations offering resources to teachers (www.pbs.org/teacherline/catalog). Most of the major professional associations, such as ASCD (ASCD.org) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM.org), provide multiple online professional development opportunities. ACSI has developed online resources, and many of the regional ACSI offices provide webinars on a variety of topics for member schools, particularly webinars not found elsewhere that address biblical-worldview perspectives. Teachers seeking to explore online credit opportunities can use an online education database (http://oedb.org) that provides a complete listing of institutions, including some Christian colleges, that provide online course work or degree programs.
It is not difficult to generate a list of online professional development opportunities. The larger challenge is moving educators from the sidelines onto the playing field. Professional development is an ongoing conversation at good schools. As is clear from reading various issues of its advisory letter Ideas and Perspectives, Independent School Management (ISM) has concluded, after years of research among various types of independent schools, that one of the most important indicators of successful schools is whether the school has created a professional growth culture (see, for example, vol. 33, no. 4; vol. 31, no. 10; and vol. 26, no. 10). A school that creates an environment in which professional growth is highly valued—a part of the normal conversation among faculty—is more likely to have greater impact on students than the school that does not value professional growth.
Effective OPD must reflect principles that are the same as those for effective professional development in traditional settings. Multiple studies have indicated that the following characterize effective professional development (Russell et al. 2009):
- fosters deeper subject-matter knowledge, a greater understanding of learning, and a greater appreciation of student needs
- centers on the essential activities of teaching and learning—planning lessons, evaluating student work, developing curriculum, improving classroom practices, and increasing student learning—instead of abstractions and generalities
- builds on investigations that include specific problems, relevant questions, analysis, reflection, and substantial professional discourse
- values and fosters a culture of collegiality in which educators share their knowledge and experience
- is sustained, intensive, and woven into the day-to-day fabric of the teaching profession through modeling and coaching
Just as our personal checkbooks reveal our true priorities, institutional budgets provide specific evidence of institutional values. Nearly every Christian school struggles with needs greater than available resources. But schools typically come up with enough resources to fund the essentials. It is clear from the offerings of many professional organizations such as ACSI, ASCD, ISM, and NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) that they believe that effective schools support professional development in their operating budgets. In other words, professional development is not an extra—it is an essential.
In the fall of 2008, I had the opportunity to meet Stephen Harris, the principal of Northern Beaches Christian School outside Sydney, Australia. Mr. Harris was on a professional development trip to the United States with two of his key administrators. Northern Beaches Christian School is so deeply committed to professional development that the school sends and funds small teams of faculty or administrators to go all over the world to learn about best practices. On this particular two-week trip, the team attended two international conferences focused on technology and learning and visited six schools that were implementing best practices in educational technology. Although there is an occasional Christian school in their visits, most of those visits were to public and independent schools that were exploring new frontiers in the use of technology to improve student learning. The entire faculty at Northern Beaches participate regularly in online professional development opportunities. Faculty members share with colleagues the lessons learned, and the professional goals and evaluations for the coming year incorporate some components of those lessons.
A comprehensive plan for professional development will allow teachers to pursue OPD as well as traditional professional development opportunities. To develop a true professional growth culture, teachers must collaborate. An isolated all-star teacher may deliver excellence to the students within that classroom, but a school in which faculty share in professional growth lessons and opportunities will deliver excellence throughout the school. OPD also broadens collaboration opportunities by enabling educators to connect to different networks of educators throughout the world.
Collaboration with “anyone, anywhere” is one of many reasons why online professional development is attractive. The world of online resources gives teachers increased access to achieving individual learning goals. This is a world of “anytime, anyplace learning” that is not only customized to individual goals but is also customized to the schedule and lifestyle of the individual educator. The biggest obstacle to ongoing professional growth is often that of busy schedules and family responsibilities.
Online professional development opportunities provide other significant benefits. Teachers gain experience using technology in the learning process, and this practice will help them use technology to assist in their students’ learning. Online resources often incorporate a rich mix of multimedia resources and new technologies. Collaboration is no longer limited to teachers in the same building.
At Delaware County Christian School, faculty members develop a written, annual professional development plan (PDP). The PDP includes specific goals and action steps to reach those goals in the coming year. This document becomes a basis of dialogue between teacher and supervisor. The supervisor, which may be a principal, an assistant principal, or a department head, seeks to find ways of helping that faculty member reach those goals. Ideally, dialogue regarding those goals takes place throughout the year, not just at the year-end summary conference. The school has developed a framework for excellence in teaching. The basis for the framework comes from Charlotte Danielson’s Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching (1996), and annual PDPs are tied into that framework. An increasing number of faculty members are incorporating OPD courses or workshops in their action steps.
This article would be incomplete without acknowledging the major problem with online education of all varieties: a low completion rate. There is a higher level of withdrawal from online programs than from traditional classroom settings. The ease of registration is an advantage and a disadvantage since it is also easier to walk away before completion. Deadlines and personal accountability have increased significance in OPD.
A recent study published in the Journal of Research on Technology in Education compared the learning effectiveness between self-paced OPD and cohort-based OPD. Although the study was limited to a group of middle school math teachers, the results indicated similar levels of learning among the teachers participating whether or not they participated in a group or worked on their own (Russell et al. 2009). Effective professional development must incorporate what effective classroom teachers know: learners, whether children or adults, have different learning styles. Highly motivated learners who prefer to work independently may excel in self-paced OPD opportunities, and those who prefer working in a group will be more likely to excel in a cohort-based program.
As is the case with every educational innovation, changes take place in schools when individual teachers become champions of that change. The establishment of a professional growth culture begins with individual faculty members who model professional growth. The use of online professional development tools will begin with a respected champion or two among the faculty. The culture of the school will change more quickly if the members of the administration also model the change by exploring and using online resources for their own professional growth. Excellence should not be optional in our Christian schools—and we cannot achieve excellence without a strong professional growth culture.
References
Danielson, Charlotte. 1996. Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Ideas and Perspectives. Newsletter by Independent School Management, 1316 North Union Street, Wilmington, DE 19806; http://www.isminc.com.
Russell, Michael, Glenn Kleiman, Rebecca Carey, and Joanne Douglas. 2009. Comparing self-paced and cohort-based online courses for teachers. Journal of Research on Technology in Education 41, no. 4 (Summer): 443–66.
Online Resources 13.2