Professional Development

Abstract

For many experienced teachers professional development invokes mixed feelings of hours or days spent at workshops, in-service courses experienced as part of (the usually mandated) professional development they are required to do at certain point in their careers. One of the reasons for the negative feelings that teachers experience with some professional development courses is because they have usually been mandated by the administration and the topics of these courses have also been decided by the same administrators. Many times, the teachers who are in the front lines of these institutions have not been consulted and as a result do not have any real commitment beyond attending. This type of professional development has often been called top-down professional development because it comes from above by the administrator, and its opposite if bottom-up professional development. Bottom-up professional development comes from below in that teachers are consulted and many times decide how and what they want to develop (Richards and Farrell, 2005). This bottom-up approach sees teachers are voluntary attendees and engage in professional development because they want to reflect on their practice in order to better serve their students. Teachers who engage in such professional development must also realize that to be successful they must also consider where they are in their overall career development or where they and what stage they are at on the teacher career cycle because teachers have different needs as they progress through the different career stages.