January 27, 2015: Thinking About Professional Learning

The OSSEMOOC Tuesday Night Open Mic session (January 27, 8 p.m. EST) will focus on some of the key conversations from Educon on the topic of Professional Learning.

Click  [here]  to join the meeting room anytime after 7:30.

If you check the #hackpd hashtag and the #Educon hashtag, you will see some of the rich conversations that happened this past weekend at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.  We want to bring your thoughts on this topic into the conversation.

Here is our key question (originally posed by David Jakes and Kristin Swanson at Educon 2.7):

 “How does a shift occur from a mindset where learning is provided to a culture where learning is sought?”

 

To dig into this, we will focus mainly on the role of the educator.

 

Here are a few of the questions we are posing for this week:

 

1. What do well-designed learning experiences for adults look like?

 

2. Do you believe that all educator professional learning should be directed by what knowledge and skills the data indicate that students need to succeed (i.e., that all professional learning is based on student learning needs)?

 

3.  Should school and system leadership support teachers in the design of their own learning experiences?  If so, how can they do this?

4. Should schools create a culture of teacher-learner agency? (From Wikipedia, “In the social sciences, agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices”.)

5. Do you think that “Professional Development” creates a culture of learned helplessness?

 

6. A conversation around this provocation:

 

 

We hope you will join in the synchronous conversation, and continue to add your thinking to the #hackpd , #ossemooc , and #ontedleaders conversations online. Resources:
1. Solving the Professional Learning Crisis
2. What Counts as Professional Learning?
3. Effective Professional Learning