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Effective Professional Development for Virtual School Instructors
Written by Jean Halle
Teaching virtual school students provides educators with unique professional development opportunities.
By learning how to support student learning via online tools and resources, educators can step into the student’s digital world and powerfully reach, teach, and engage each student. Consequently, effective online professional development ensures each student reaches their full academic potential.
Several components inherent to effective professional development and supported by the National Staff Development Council include:- A collaborative community of learners amongst educators
- Opportunities for ongoing professional development support
- Principles of adult learning
- Research-based instructional strategies
- Data-driven to evaluate and sustain improvement
Incorporating specific principles of adult learning ensures that educators learn and practice what is taught.
- Explain: How is the information presented both relevant and practical?
- Engage: Self-directed; learner centered. Participants should connect learning to knowledge and life experience.
- Encourage: Respect learner’s knowledge, articulate clear goals for the session and reinforce core principles.
The success of a professional development program may be determined by two factors. First, transference—are teachers effectively using the information in a new setting? And secondly, was the information taught retained?
A model for a specific training session activity might include:
- Case Study
- Participants collaborate to offer professional insights
- Participants connect case study to teaching experiences
- Participants use “Journal” for reflection
- Learner Centered approach supports transference and retention of information
Calvert, the trusted leader in distance education for over a century, delivers its world renowned virtual school curriculum to public, private, virtual charter, and international schools and students in all 50 states and over 60 countries. Our schools throughout the world are known as Calvert Partners. We provide a comprehensive professional development program for teachers in those schools as well as an annual conference, TIDES (Trends in Distance Education Summit). Our professional development program may be conducted both on-site and virtually.
