Course Profile
Course Overview & Description
This course is designed to promote Collective Teacher Efficacy through professional development. The aim is to empower adult learners to enact complex change and educational reform to create equitable conditions for student learning. While this course is curated to address learning opportunities at the local level, it may easily be adapted to other settings.
Throughout the course, the learner will build knowledge of best practice in education with regards to complex change and educational reform, as well as key provincial and local learning improvement frameworks. Through collaboration with a professional learning community, the learner will construct two professional growth goals applicable to their context to implement at the school and/or classroom level. At the conclusion of the course, the learner will reflect on the effect of the goals and report back to the school learning improvement plan.
It is important in this course that the learners co-construct the improvement direction and that it is applicable to their setting. Educational reform is not imposed, but rather explored by the learner so that its implementation is informed, intentional and personal.
Source: Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice. 2016.
Target Student Population and Demographic
This course is designed for school employees that work directly with students. Learners participating in the course are self-driven and responsible adults who may have education levels ranging from Grade 12 Diplomas to Masters of Education. The course meets the needs of busy employees, parents, grandparents and community members who require flexibility in their schedules. Motivation to complete the course includes professional ethics obligations for teachers, additional paid time for support staff and the professional growth requirements of the employee appraisal process for all participants.
Course Format
This course is a blended course for Teacher and School Employee Professional Development with 10 synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities to take place monthly from September through June.
Course Content, Instruction & Assessment
Students will participate in professional learning to meet the following outcomes:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Learners will participate in a Google Classroom LMS and instruction will be delivered in a blended format with flexibility and choice due to asynchronous and synchronous learning opportunities. Learners will complete assignments and submit required documentation in the Google Classroom.
Students will use a variety of instructional technology tools to participate in learning as well as for formative assessment including:
- Multimeter
- Kahoot
- Padlet
- Edsby
- Google Jamboard
- Google Docs
- Flipgrid
- Teams
Throughout the course learners will also engage in readings, storytelling, project-based learning, brainstorming/concept mapping, field trips, service learning, games, debates, fish-bowls, group discussions, journaling, jigsaws and more!
Assessment throughout the course will be primarily formative as the goal of the course is to co-construct relevant, personalized learning improvement goals specific to a complex setting. Formative assessment such as games, surveys or anecdotal documentation will be used to adjust goals and respond to arising areas of passion or concerns.
Summative assessments utilized are individualized Teacher Professional Growth Plan and Employee Professional Growth Plans, Professional Learning Committee Communication Forms and the co-constructed Learning Improvement Plan final report.
Considerations for Common Concerns
Staff Mental Health and Well-being remains on the top of the list as a major ongoing concern in the profession. The entire course outcomes are laid out in advance to support long term scheduling. However, while the entire course outcomes are laid out in advance, half of the sessions are flexible to meet the needs of busy participant schedules and the synchronous sessions are able to be adjusted in response to the demands of the building. Learners may choose more collaborative or more individual styles of task completion as well to meet their professional growth needs.
While access to technology is not a concern due to being provided by the school division, staff must know how to utilize it effectively. Additional one-on-one or small group training is available to support staff who need help utilizing technology.
Source: Critical Path Learning Centre: Mental Health. 2023.
Rationale for Choices Made in the Design of the Course Prototype
The rationale for choices made in the design of the course is ultimately to better meet the need of the learners. School employees in our school teach across a broad range of curricula and plan for predominantly triple grade splits. The school has a vulnerable designation and many students come from low SES backgrounds and suffer from trauma and opportunity gaps. There are few services available to students, so quite often the staff fill those gaps through volunteer hours. As such, staff often do not have time to positively network with staff, keep up with best practice in education or build skills required to meet the needs of increasingly complex classrooms. This results in frustration and hopelessness.
To help with this issue there needs to be a change from the practice of long monthly meetings. Instead, meetings must be purposeful, concise and flexible. The course is designed to have both synchronous and asynchronous options for participation to promote flexibility and allow staff to work on professional learning when they have time. Topics are relevant and pre-planned so that they support staff in understanding policy and vision rationale, allow for co-construction of continued goals, as well as provide relational opportunities to network, collaborate and find hope. Google Classroom was chosen as the LMS due to staff familiarity with the platform with the intention that this will reduce time required for learners to access the content.
Collective Teacher Efficacy has been proven to have a more profound impact on on student achievement than Socioeconomic Level. (Owens & Valesky, 2021, p. 143). Therefore, this blended, intentional approach to professional development not only provides flexibility in scheduling, but also addresses an important need for continued growth in our building to positively impact more equitable student learning and to reform education.
Link to DRAFT Course Prototype
References
Owens, R.G., & Valesky, T.C. (2021). Organizational Behavior in Education: Leadership and School Reform. (12th edition). Pearson Education, Inc.
Hi Miranda. I really appreciate your work. Your words beautifully encapsulate the essence and purpose of the course designed to promote Collective Teacher Efficacy through professional development. The clarity and conviction with which you have articulated the objectives and outcomes of the course are truly commendable.
Your paragraph demonstrates a deep understanding of the transformative power of education and the crucial role teachers play in enacting complex change and educational reform. By empowering adult learners to embrace their agency and create equitable conditions for student learning, this course holds immense promise for fostering positive and lasting impact in diverse educational settings. Looking forward more from you.
All the best.
Thenmozhi, I want to sincerely thank you for your encouragement and kind words! Your comment more beautifully summarized my core intentions better than I could have stated on my own, and I hope that this intention comes to fruition!
Great work!! A suggestion moving forward is to just hyperlink within your blog as oppose to referencing (if you would like!) It might save you a few extra steps. Further, this is very thorough and well laid out. I appreciate how you provided a rationale and considers for common concerns. Will you have support in the creation of these meetings?
Hello Raegyn,
Thank you for your suggestion! It certainly would have saved me some time, but I do want to make sure I am giving credit where it is due, because I found the authors of that book to be quite brilliant and I enjoyed the entire read!
I believe that I will have support in these meetings because they are not a new creation, but rather a more flexible way for staff to engage in required professional development. One thing that will be new for support staff is that I am now requesting their participation alongside teachers. I am not sure how this will be received, but the difference is that support staff can be paid for their additional time to participate, and I sincerely hope they do as they are valued staff members who make profound impact on student learning and school equity, just as much as teachers!
Miranda, I love this. This is why teachers stay in schools for so long, when they have administration like you, who care. I cannot express how badly I wish a greater number of administrators would dig deeper and start at the roots rather than try to “fill in the cracks” at the surface of educational or school issues. I know the job is demanding but focusing on creating a sturdy, caring, and openly collaborative team builds a strong and caring foundation for the little ones (and big ones) coming into our facility to learn and grow every day.
I notice and appreciate your consideration of the time spent to complete this by your staff. I like the flexible options and consideration for mental health and well-being. How do you go about welcoming your staff to approach you with concerns or feelings of unhappiness in the areas of admin, policies, etc? EX: I attempted to approach a previous admin about feeling as though their comments and feedback to concerns made my feelings invalid (I know others felt this way but I can’t speak for them). The admin requested examples and I gave numerous and their response was “Sorry you feel that way” with no resolution. After 3 years I, and others, have chosen to leave that school and I’m just curious if you have a method or process in place to openly welcome concerns. I have seen some that work better than others but I have yet to see a great one.
Hello RoxAnne,
I am not perfect and we still do have conflicts where I have to apologize to staff and change my approach, or apologize that they feel the way that they do and stick to my approach. I tell staff at the beginning of the year that a good team is one that has conflict, and that dissent is welcomed in meetings. I have had staff approach me after the meeting to tell me that they hated the way it went, or that they disagreed. Disagreeing is safe here, and I find that if I stick to core principles, there is a lot of wiggle room for staff’s diverse ideas/practice to fall along a spectrum of acceptability. “Spectrum of acceptability” does not necessarily sound safe does it though? I know that might sound cold and calculated, but to give an example, we practice inclusion, as do all Saskatchewan schools. We might have different ideas about how this looks in each classroom, and our division might have different policies and procedures that we use to address inclusion in schools, but at the end of the day, kids belong in classrooms with their peers. My approach is to adhere to the core principle, and allow staff to explore different methods within their own classrooms. When disagreements arise, resolution looks like hard conversations and an openness to try new things from me, our staff and the individual teacher. I always make time to talk to staff through their concerns, observe and help in classrooms and co-contact stakeholders to make sure I understand their experience. I also do a couple of anonymous staff surveys per year to provide a platform for teachers to let me know how things are going.
I hope that answers your question!
Hi Miranda. This is such a novel idea. I HATED staff meetings when I was a classroom teacher. People rarely stayed on topic and the would drag on and on. This sentence from your blog really caught my eye ” Instead, meetings must be purposeful, concise and flexible.” YES!!!!!!
I have one question about the course. Is there any push back from the staff about taking the course? Do they complete it on their own time or during work hours? I ask as the Dept of Ed did something similar for EA training. It didn’t go over very well as there was a lot of confusion regarding when the courses were to be completed.
Hello Laura,
I appreciate your feedback and I designed the course for this reason! I am only going into my third year as an admin, and I have had many administrators before me who would call 1-2 meetings after school per month and keep us here for hours!!
There may be some pushback on the proposed content, but I do not believe that we will have much pushback on this course option as it is actually a bit reduced from what we were doing before. Last year, we met monthly to work on learning improvement for an hour. In our division, the administrator can call as many meetings as they wish to work on learning improvement, so each building is different. I would create an agenda, but the outline was largely sporadic, and sometimes I felt, like you did, that the meetings would drag, get off topic or become a session to complain about students and families. What I like about this is that instead of each month having a scheduled portion for PLC time, it is returned to staff to schedule whenever they want. That leaves us 5 sessions as a group, two of which fall on meeting days. In conclusion, over the course of the year, that means that I need to schedule them for 3 meetings, unless of course they complete the activities on their own time.