10-second review: Professional development requires a philosophical base, a research base and illustrative good practices.
Title: “Support, Resources, and Challenges for Teachers in Forming Professional Communities of Inquiry.” J. Avila. Language arts (March 2009), 311. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
Comment: Thoughts on professional development. Workshops begin with a problem. Participants read theoretical, practical and research reports in professional journals and in books dealing with the problem. The resulting curriculum should contain lesson plans that reveal in detail the solution to the problem.
Example.
1. Problem: Teaching fifth-and sixth-grade students to write exposition.
2. Research: Participants read articles and books, including research, on teaching the writing process.
3. Lesson Plans: The members of the workshop plan and teach to the group illustrative practices, including brainstorming, models of the expository format, main idea, middle paragraphs with topic sentences, summary paragraph, introductory paragraph, revision and editing.
The problem with most summer workshops is that the participants produce the curriculum but the teachers who did not participate do not understand how to use the information. Providing model lesson plans explains how to resolve the problem to those other teachers, who can try the lesson plans in their classes and provide evaluative information. RayS.
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