Keasha Grant, an Instructional Technology Specialist for Sumter County School District, discusses how the utilization of learner profiles for teachers can revolutionize the traditional format of professional development.
Over the years, I can recall homogeneous training that was often as boring and flat as expired Coca-Cola. When our district rolled out Google, the process was staggered. Middle school students were the first to receive their Chromebooks. The other grade levels were added on annually,yielding different experience levels with Google as the one-to-one program as it continued. Five years later, the proficiency levels are all over the place, ranging from beginner to expert. As a result of this experience, I began researching personalized learning, and started my research by reading the text Flip Your PD (Cruz, 2017). After looking at South Carolina’s Framework for Personalized Learning, I went on to build a learner profile framework that I could use to personalize my PD opportunities for the teachers I support.
The Learner Profile
The same key components that are necessary for building a student profile can easily be applied to teachers. Important information to consider includes knowing how teachers learn best, as well as their strengths, weaknesses, passions, and skills. When you think about your teacher population, you may want to add additional questions that you deem important. Using a Google form, I entered questions for teachers to share details about their learning styles and preferences. In my experience, I found two web assessments are vital to this questionnaire: The 16 Personalities Test and the Learning Styles Assessment. The combined power of these assessments give detailed insight into work preferences and identifying one’s primary learning style. After completing the web assessments, teachers complete the included self-reflection questions. Those questions include identifying strengths and weaknesses, along with an opportunity to share what they are interested in learning about. Once the profile questions are complete, the results are displayed in a spreadsheet. My preference is to sort the spreadsheet by school and look at each school’s staff individually.
The Professional Development
Now that you have the data, teachers can be placed in groups. The groups are flexible in the sense that teachers could start in one group and move to another over time. When creating teacher groups, consider similar characteristics and learning styles. For example, in my work as an instructional technology coach, teachers that are early adopters can work with others that are moving quickly with technology. Early adopters are typically technology-savvy and interested in the newest and the latest whereas other teachers may be interested in the most practical technology tools first. There are several ways to plan the meeting times of these groups, including after school, planning, or PLCs.
Choice boards were another unique option that allowed teachers to choose an area to grow in. For example, the Google Choice Board lists all the applications allowing teachers to choose two to work on during training. Click here to view the Planning with 4.0 Choice Board.
The learning styles indicated on the profile allow for planning materials for the professional development sessions. When I analyzed the data from my teachers’ learner profiles, I realized a large percentage of teachers are visual learners. Therefore, I created step by step directions with screenshots, which are now made available as a reference for each professional development meeting. The information in the profile provides useful information about how teachers view themselves as learners and can help improve professional development. Personalized learning takes a great deal of planning, but has the impact needed to move your teachers from their individual levels along their personalized pathway to mastery.
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