Now What? Recommendations - Part 1

I have spent the entire month writing about all of the barriers to art educators receiving good professional development. It’s about time I make some recommendations and wrap up this month’s blog posts with some helpful tips for teachers who know the difficulty of getting quality professional development all too well.

Art educators need to explore supportive spaces in which they can investigate their problems of practice. I have argued that art educators rarely find these spaces in school-based professional development, and run into obstacles that discourage them from participating in off-site opportunities. This may seem like an inevitable dead end, but I see possibilities beyond what we have experienced as “professional development.” 

In my view, surveys that report the amount of time art educators spend in professional development grossly underestimate the time we spend learning. Those seeking professional development opportunities will benefit from problematizing their practice in order to figure out what they would like to learn. What do you need to learn? How can you best learn it?

Valuable learning that happens when art teachers collaborate (Lind, 2007). I recommend that art educators consider what they want to learn and with whom they can learn it. Art educators who value the rich learning that takes place when they collaborate with others must work to initiate shared professional learning experiences. Teacher-created collaborative spaces are free from standardization and allow for sustained inquiry over time.

Recently, while supervising student teachers, I ran into a county art supervisor. After a discussion about the struggle to authentically assess student learning in the arts, I shared my love for assessment-related issues and some names of colleagues with whom I have learned much about assessment. She immediately asked if I thought one of those people would be willing to come speak at a county-wide in-service day. It struck me as odd that she hadn’t considered offering a book study for some interested teachers, or using teachers in her county who do assessment well to mentor other teachers in that area. 

The predominant professional development model involves an expert coming and passing knowledge to teachers who do not yet have that knowledge. However, I believe teachers have a wealth of knowledge, and given the chance to collaborate, create rich learning opportunities. I recommend ways to create these opportunities in my next post.

-Leslie Gates

References
Lind, V. (2007). High quality professional development: an investigation of the supports for and barriers to professional development in arts education. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 8(2).