Our approach to professional development does not rely on consultant trainers or workshops as the primary means of promoting growth among teachers and administrators. Rather, we encourage local collaborative learning teams--small groups of practitioners who team up to manage their own learning--using a comprehensive set of training materials specifically designed for use in this context.
Local learning teams are the most powerful and economical means of completing a professional development program in classroom assessment. Learning teams provide for the infusion of new assessment ideas and strategies in a way that permits each teacher to work with those ideas in the classroom.
This combination of learning and application, conducted in a context where each teacher or administrator works with a group for ongoing collaboration, is an effective method to learn about sound assessment practices. Such practices are strongly supported in the professional development literature, and can be implemented by your own professional development staff who have completed ATI's training program.
Leading Learning Team Training
ATI offers two-day workshops for 50 participants to guide them through the process of setting up and facilitating assessment literacy learning teams. It is not our primary goal to train them to be classroom assessment experts, workshop presenters or consultants, although some assessment content will be included. Rather, there are three goals for the training:
Participants will:
Conduct workshops that will help teachers and administrators understand why leadership planning and assessment literacy development are critically important
Assist faculties in setting up, managing and facilitating local learning teams
Learn assessment content that is most critical for understanding in developing assessment literacy
Content Participants in learning team sessions need to be familiar with ATI training materials.
The usefulness of these workshops depends upon trainers arriving already understanding the ATI philosophy, classroom assessment concepts, and materials. The reason this familiarity is important is that the learning team sessions deliver some assessment content knowledge but by itself cannot, in two days, provide all the instruction needed on these topics.
Selecting Trainers
We recommend that participants have job responsibilities that include professional development. We will help them develop the assessment expertise they need, although it is helpful for participants to already value the role of assessment in improving student achievement.
Follow-up for Trainers
After trainers have had some experience in offering their workshops and facilitating the formation of at least some learning teams, we provide a follow-up one-day meeting to review and discuss:
Successes, detailing what they did that worked, why it worked and how to expand on that success,
Challenges, examining what did not work, why it didn't work and what specific actions might be taken to improve effectiveness, and
Additional materials and strategies they might use to expand their ability to facilitate assessment literacy development.
"I am not just changing my teaching, but I have to change my thinking about teaching."Teacher,Illinois Professional Development Evaluation comments, 2001
http://www.assessmentinst.com/professionaldev-TOT.htm
posted by AcrosticGuy @ 6:36 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home