Week 4 – Professional Development

What Personal Development happens in your workplace?

What strategies does your organization have in place to encourage development, change and innovation?

Our college is a community college of a local university and we adopt the university’s Blackboard e-Learning in our college system.  One of the online functions at the blackboard is called AIMS.  AIMS stands for Administrative Information Management System at university.  It is a suite of university information systems allowing staff, students and alumni access to a variety of essential academic support and administrative services.  All IMS functions are web-based and primarily developed for self-service purposes.

Staff can access with AIMS to information related to their employment such as appointments, payroll, benefits, etc.  They can also online update their contact information, submit leave applications, apply for staff development courses, etc.

Referring to ERIC* database, professional development refers to “activities to enhance professional career growth.”  The activities will include individual development, continuing education, and in house service education, as well as curriculum writing, peer collaboration, study groups, and peer coaching or mentoring.

Fullan (1991) also defined professional development to include “the sum total of formal and informal learning experiences throughout one’s career from preservice teacher education to retirement”

* Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)

Grant (n.d) suggests a broader definition of professional development as follows:

Professional development includes support for teachers as they face the challenges that come with putting into practice their evolving understandings about the use of technology to support inquiry-based learning…. Current technologies offer resources to meet these challenges and provide teachers with lots of supports that help them continue to grow in their professional skills, understandings, and interests.”

Our college does offer various staff professional development opportunities for staff like the in-house staff development courses, the University’s credit-bearing courses, financial sponsorship for postgraduate programs, conference, seminar/workshops activities for updating teaching and industry knowledge.   

Professional development helps teachers to build new insights and new practices.  Referring to Shirky (2003), “we have to learn to embrace change in all forms and at all levels that we have to take advantage of new opportunities.”  “We have to work and learn together in organizations that learn.  Fullan (2002) also stated that “it is not good enough to have vision…and built-in professional development, partnerships and collaboration”, “what is needed it a very strong underlying conception of the change process”.  As a professional teacher, we have to learn how to deal with resistance to change more effectively and I do agree professional development is how about staff making changes and managing the changes.

Recently, our college faces the change of course curriculum by restructuring our program curriculum in which general education courses will become core and dominant.  New general education courses will be developed at coming new academic year.  Teachers are invited to develop new GE course curriculum.  Workshops/seminars/conferences are held to equip teachers with the general education knowledge and teaching skills.  Fulbright GE scholars have been invited to deliver seminar talks, workshops and conference at semester B and semester break at June.  Teachers will face a new challenge of change to teach general education courses at coming new academic year.  Referring to Newhouse’s change model summarized as follows:

The top management should well consider the various factors like vision, incentives, resources and collegiality in implementing the change of new program curriculum.  Otherwise, it will have the demerit effects as follows:

1.        Lack of vision, staff in the organization will end up with confusion.

2.        No planning for new skills made by the organization, staff will become anxious.

3.        No incentives given to staff, staff will have resistance of change.

4.        Not provide resources properly, staff frustration will occur.

5.        No sense of collegiality, staff isolation will be resulted.

     

The above effects may more or less reflect our current situation.