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A fresh look at follow-upBy Pat Roy Results, February 2005 Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2005. All rights reserved. Follow-up has been a tenet of professional development for over 20 years since Joyce and Showers (1983) found that purposeful follow-up was a necessary component of professional development design. Most articles about follow-up accurately decry the lack of follow-up in school or district-based staff development planning. One dictionary defines follow-up as "the act of repeating or adding to previous action so as to increase effectiveness." Many activities designated as follow-up are just events that provide additional information. The purpose of follow-up is to reinforce learning about the critical attributes of the new practice. So, designers of staff development must first clearly delineate the expected changes in practice as well as specify the conceptual understandings that need to be acquired through professional development. For example, in cooperative learning, understanding the concept of positive interdependence is more importan than learning 12 ways to group students. The focus, therefore, of the follow-up would target understanding the critical concept of positive interdependence along with implementation strategies. A second consideration when designing follow-up activities is the idea of conceptual redundancy. According to Cohen (1991), conceptual redundancy means offering individuals multiple opportunities to grapple with essential concepts through a variety of learning strategies. In other words, we need to do more than just repeat information; we need to approach the concept in a new manner. If initial training was conducted with a PowerPoint presentation, then subsequent follow-up sessions would use a different delivery mode. For example, once initial knowledge about a new instructional practice has been provided, follow-up might include:
Each activity addresses the same concepts but from different points of view and using different methods. This variety of activities allows educators, with different learning styles, to examine the same critical concepts about new classroom practices in different ways. We know that not all adults learn in the same way. Some require reading about a new practice while others learn best when they can see the new practices in action. Follow-up should provide a variety of approaches in order to maximize the number of people who understand and use new strategies. A third consideration for follow-up planning is engaging colleagues in the work of understanding and implementing new practices. The kind of follow-up needed to support the use of new practices can be handled by school staff. Such professional work is a building block of a learning community. Mere repetition does not increase conceptual understanding or use of new classroom practices. A variety of strategies and approaches must be used if follow-up is going to increase teachers' conceptual understanding, the use of new strategies in the classroom, and increased achievement of all students. Note: Thanks to Parker McMullen for his insight into this issue and his assistance in writing this column. REFERENCESAmerican Heritage Dictionary of the American Language (4th ed.). (2000). Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin. Cohen. E. (1991). Program for complex instruction. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University. Joyce, B. & Showers, B. (1983). Power in staff development through research on training. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. About the authorPat Roy is co-author of Moving NSDC's staff development standards into practice: Innovation configurations (NSDC, 2003). |
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