Teacher Training: Exploring Professional Development in Education
By Brian Fairbanks
Teachers have always understood the importance of continuing their education. Whether it’s in the classroom or online, professional development for teachers can happen throughout one’s career. Education, after all, is a never-ending process.
Educators who take professional development courses designed for teachers expect and demand immediate benefits that can be immediately applied to their classrooms. They expect to learn new skills that are in demand, hope to compete for new roles in the education workforce, and they can, of course, simply improve their craft.
At the most basic level, teachers expect to become better and more effective educators by continuing their professional development. If you have a licensure renewal or recertification coming up, or if you’re seeking to diversify your education resumé, or if you’re actively seeking to inspire your students anew, teacher professional development, including online education courses for teachers, is one powerful option.
What does professional development for teachers look like?
Generally, professional development (PD) for teachers can constitute any formal or semi-formal learning that educators do to improve their practice. A quick internet search will result in a flood of blogs, podcasts, vlogs, and resources on just about any topic about which a teacher could hope to learn.
However, when teachers want formal validation of learning, that districts and states may accept as recertification evidence, teachers seek courses, workshops, or other educational training. The best part is that many of these types of teacher professional development training are available virtually and can be completed on a more flexible schedule than, say, an in-person weekend workshop.
Educators can get their teacher professional development training completed in several different ways, including online education courses. These classes, which typically offer flexibility (including 24/7/365 access to lecture and course materials), can touch on a variety of topics, including personnel administration, leadership strategy, supervision of curriculum, equity and diversity training, behavioral management and professional communications.
Some classes might offer a broad spectrum-based approach to new learning or a more specialized focus. The beauty and benefit of continuing education for teachers is that it is specialized and often served up in “bite-sized chunks” to meet the educator’s preference.
For example, the recent Pandemic era has highlighted how critical deficiencies exist in digital, equity, and social-emotional proficiencies in P-12 schools. As a result, a flurry of professional development learning opportunities was created in the short-burst learning, district professional development, and continuing education course-offering space. What continuing education offers for teachers is flexible, timely, current, and tailored learning- specific to what the individual educator is seeking to learn.
Benefits of continuing education for teachers
One of the main reasons professional development for teachers is so worthwhile is its effect on not only an educator’s ability to teach more effectively and improved self-efficacy but also a student’s likelihood of increased learning, which is everyone’s goal.
Investing in professional development may help improve students’ educational outcomes. And research backs this up: A report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences indicates that, statistically, students can learn 21% more information when their instructors have undergone successful professional development for teachers.
For example, let’s say a teacher wants to learn how to facilitate virtual classes. (Maybe he or she is planning to teach remotely while living in a different city, or to add pupils to a tutoring business.) That teacher, however, might benefit from a Foundations in Virtual Teaching course, which would address practical questions over how to approach virtual classes as well as enhance their knowledge.
Like most professionals, educators are inspired when they see that they are improving in their craft. Unlike other professions, however, “improving their craft” in education translates into higher academic achievement for kids. One of the ways teachers inspire their students is by first inspiring themselves. “Nothing gets teachers more excited than learning new ways to help students succeed,” said Pam Roggeman, EdD, dean of the College of Education at University of Phoenix.
“Whether this is finding a better way to infuse technology in their teaching, or learning how to create a more student-lead classroom, or creating a more inclusive and empathetic classroom, continuing education for teachers often helps address the specific needs diagnosed by the experienced and talented classroom teacher.”
University of Phoenix continuing education for teachers
Consider taking a self-led course that shows teachers how to utilize education skills and delivers the latest strategies and digital tools to help their students, in turn, learn how to succeed in the classroom and in the real world outside of the classroom.
Online universities open the door to teachers (and anyone else) who may be working full-time or part-time, may have kids or other family responsibilities, who live far from a university campus or who simply cannot commit to in-person classes that operate on a strict time schedule. Virtual schools, in other words, offer enhanced flexibility, allowing round-the-clock access to lectures, course materials and, in some cases, even exams.
At University of Phoenix, online education courses for teachers typically last four to six weeks and can be accessed anytime, day or night, including well after a lecture is posted. Also, courses have multiple start dates because teachers, of course, have demanding work schedules nine or more months out of the year.
If you’re an educator preparing for licensure renewal or recertification, or looking for professional growth opportunities, the University offers a self-paced professional development course in the Foundations of Virtual Learning as well as teacher education courses. These courses include leadership strategies, adult learning theory, instructional techniques and more. For more details, visit phoenix.edu/programs/continuing-education/education.
Read our Want to learn more about how to teach in our increasingly online world? Read how professional development offerings can help prepare you for tomorrow’s classrooms. blog article that explores the future of the education industry through the perspectives of those working in the field.
Originally published at https://www.phoenix.edu on June 11, 2021.
