What does it mean to rethink adult learning? As Melissa Katz, Director of the Collaborative for Inclusive Education explains, “It’s about rethinking how schools do professional development. One of the biggest problems we hear about in professional development is that there is an “implementation gap,” i.e. supervisors give a training on a certain topic, yet they don’t see their teachers implementing it.”
Personalized professional development, or adult learning, promotes long lasting and more impactful learning. This is important for both teachers, coaches and school leaders in ensuring that a received training was indeed implemented in the classroom. Our recent national speaker, Allison Rodman from the Learning Loop, suggested conducting a staff PD needs survey and organizing staff responses by high interest/low interest and high need/low need to help prioritize a school’s PD focus areas.
The Collaborative helps lead conversations like these by promoting nationally renowned adult learning speakers as part of their PD offerings. Learn more about the Collaborative’s upcoming National Speaker Series events here.
