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Creating A Culture Of Quality Professional Growth And Development

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Creating a Culture of Quality Professional Growth and Development

The 21st century has brought about many changes to our daily lives as educators. One of the largest and often contentious issues in 21st century education is how we determine the quality of professional growth. The use of professional will be used throughout the entire article, but relevant and thought-provoking is a better suited substitute in this situation. Every regional service center has workshops and trainings developed for professional development. School districts and principals cram teachers lives with seminars, webinars and conferences believing that this type of professional development is often the best option in creating quality teachers, then are …show more content…

While anyone in education could tell you the easiest way to measure student outcomes are through standardized exams, and maybe that is why we have fallen prey to its allure; accountability tests are the least effective measurement for any student population. “...School systems focus on rote memorization and measurable, predictable results” (Struss, 2006). Education is the preparation of young citizens for a world that has not been created, thus there needs to be flexibility in the designed measures. If that is true for our students, then it must be also true for our teachers. The future of teacher development is slowly becoming based a standardized testing system that is completely irrelevant to our student populations and rarely take into account the real world. In order for teachers to shift their developmental thinking about students, administrators and supervisors needs to shift their perspectives on teacher evaluations and continuous growth that takes into account creativity, curiosity, collaborative behaviors and immeasurable results.

Effective educators should consider a very hard look at what they do to provide teachers with the knowledge and understanding of teaching effectiveness, but also the time to analyze and reflect on past experiences to provide perspective and then plan for future growth. Legal jargon is often a deterrent in creating these types of environments because of the dreaded “Growth Plan.”

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