Educators balance their desire for meaningful professional learning with long-held frustration around traditional “PD” models.
The back-to-school season means many teachers are offered “PD” in their districts and schools. Educators discussed the tension between their identity as lifelong learners and the poor-quality learning experiences to which they’re too often subjected.
Archetypes: Relationships Between Teachers and Administrators, Instructional Planning, Professional Development
Sample Educator Conversations:
- Teachers describe that they’re open to – and eager for – professional learning that equips them with “new ideas, approaches, methods” but that PD often feels “patronizing” or like a “waste of time” and that it’s too often “tailored toward a broad audience” rather than context-specific.
- Teachers decry the structural issue of “trying to offer PD without affording teachers the actual (ongoing!) time and resources to authentically adopt/implement it as practitioners.”
- A teacher shared that introducing new methodology in the fall is the “worst time of the year,” and that “authentic PD happens in continuous small steps based on the work happening in the classroom.”
Conversation volume analysis around professional development from educators on X over the last 12 months (Sep 20, 2023 – Sep 20, 2024)