Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Concerning Professional Development of Trainers...
If you are an early childhood and school aged care trainer in Minnesota, you may find the following interesting. From the Minnesota Professional Development Council...
Moving Towards Excellence in Training: A Dialogue on Critical Questions in Professional Development.
We in the field of early childhood and school aged care and education work hard to help all children to learn, grow and reach their full potential. As we do this, we also need to help those who work with children and youth gain the skills they need to support all children in these important tasks. All of us want the best for all of the children we serve, but like children, we have a wide variety of perspectives that inform our ideas about what is best. Like children, we have often had life experiences that allow us to understand one part of the task at hand more fully than the rest. We all want what’s best for the children, but our different perspectives and experiences often lead us to see different priorities and different ways to achieve our goal. Especially as we learn to work together in communities that cross racial boundaries, and include a wide range of communities and issues, it is critical that we learn to build systems and make decisions that take many voices into account. We need all of those perspectives in our discussions of how to best train and support those who work with children and youth. The best path for a great professional development system for those who serve children and youth may well lay somewhere between all of the paths each of us so passionately advocate for. But when we are working on specific projects with tight deadlines and concrete details, it’s hard to take the time to look at all the paths each of us feel so strongly about. This is quite understandable. Sometimes we just need to get things done. But somewhere in there we need to take the time to look at all of our passionately held beliefs and see if that new path none of us have thought of yet really is the right one.
This winter, the practitioner professional development and delivery workgroup (formerly known as the training and trainers workgroup) began to discuss some of these key questions that come up over and over again in our work to move the professional development system forward. We realized that we could not go further with our own work without extensive discussion of these questions. As we talked further, we realized that many people were in our shoes. Lack of resolution on complicated key questions was holding many critical professional development efforts back. We decided we should invite others to join our discussions.
The practitioner professional development and delivery workgroup is proposing a series of public forums to discuss a few of the issues in professional development we have found to be critical in our own work. Some of the forums would be aimed at those who have the power to make decisions about these questions. Other forums would be aimed at those who are passionately interested in these issues, regardless of the decision making power of their jobs.
In these forums, we hope to really look at these questions and come to agreement on some clear directions for moving forward. We hope to bring a broad range of representatives to the table to move forward together for the good of all children. The information shared can shed light on much of the work of the professional development system.
Here are the questions we have identified as critical to our work;
1. How do we create a training model that meets the needs of all practitioners –by improving their knowledge and skills - and guides them smoothly through a variety of ways of gaining knowledge- while also honoring the knowledge and perspectives that each of various groups brings to our work?
An effective training model would ensure that all practitioners had:
Related to this how do we create a system where people can convert in-service hours to credit hours and in-service while still retaining and strengthening the diversity and concrete experience that our current pool of trainers has? In order to strengthen the link between in-service hours and college credits, we need a pool of trainers with specific kinds of formal education. In order to train teachers who have all the skills and experience needed to effectively care for an increasingly diverse group of children; we need a pool of trainers with knowledge about all of the communities Minnesota’s children come from. Often this pool of trainers has more experience than formal education or has formal education in areas not related to education. How do we meet both of these critical needs?
We hope you can join us for this discussion of these questions at this fall’s SuperConference. Or, if these are questions you are really eager to wrestle with, join us at the PPD&D workgroup and help shape the dialogue. Contact us at professionaldevelopment@mnaeyc.org if you have questions or would like to add to the discussion.
If you are an early childhood and school aged care trainer in Minnesota, you may find the following interesting. From the Minnesota Professional Development Council...
Moving Towards Excellence in Training: A Dialogue on Critical Questions in Professional Development.
We in the field of early childhood and school aged care and education work hard to help all children to learn, grow and reach their full potential. As we do this, we also need to help those who work with children and youth gain the skills they need to support all children in these important tasks. All of us want the best for all of the children we serve, but like children, we have a wide variety of perspectives that inform our ideas about what is best. Like children, we have often had life experiences that allow us to understand one part of the task at hand more fully than the rest. We all want what’s best for the children, but our different perspectives and experiences often lead us to see different priorities and different ways to achieve our goal. Especially as we learn to work together in communities that cross racial boundaries, and include a wide range of communities and issues, it is critical that we learn to build systems and make decisions that take many voices into account. We need all of those perspectives in our discussions of how to best train and support those who work with children and youth. The best path for a great professional development system for those who serve children and youth may well lay somewhere between all of the paths each of us so passionately advocate for. But when we are working on specific projects with tight deadlines and concrete details, it’s hard to take the time to look at all the paths each of us feel so strongly about. This is quite understandable. Sometimes we just need to get things done. But somewhere in there we need to take the time to look at all of our passionately held beliefs and see if that new path none of us have thought of yet really is the right one.
This winter, the practitioner professional development and delivery workgroup (formerly known as the training and trainers workgroup) began to discuss some of these key questions that come up over and over again in our work to move the professional development system forward. We realized that we could not go further with our own work without extensive discussion of these questions. As we talked further, we realized that many people were in our shoes. Lack of resolution on complicated key questions was holding many critical professional development efforts back. We decided we should invite others to join our discussions.
The practitioner professional development and delivery workgroup is proposing a series of public forums to discuss a few of the issues in professional development we have found to be critical in our own work. Some of the forums would be aimed at those who have the power to make decisions about these questions. Other forums would be aimed at those who are passionately interested in these issues, regardless of the decision making power of their jobs.
In these forums, we hope to really look at these questions and come to agreement on some clear directions for moving forward. We hope to bring a broad range of representatives to the table to move forward together for the good of all children. The information shared can shed light on much of the work of the professional development system.
Here are the questions we have identified as critical to our work;
1. How do we create a training model that meets the needs of all practitioners –by improving their knowledge and skills - and guides them smoothly through a variety of ways of gaining knowledge- while also honoring the knowledge and perspectives that each of various groups brings to our work?
An effective training model would ensure that all practitioners had:
- Knowledge of child development,
- Technical skills as a teacher and
- Knowledge and skills needed to adapt to a variety of cultures and to teach effectively in all of them (or at least to know which communities they are qualified to teach in).
An effective model would honor the knowledge brought to our field by:
- Family child care,
- School aged care,
- Center based care,
- Private care,
- Publicly sponsored care,
- Parents.
- Family, friend and neighbor care,
- Those who serve children with special needs,
- Communities of color,
- Academic research,
- And many others.
Related to this how do we create a system where people can convert in-service hours to credit hours and in-service while still retaining and strengthening the diversity and concrete experience that our current pool of trainers has? In order to strengthen the link between in-service hours and college credits, we need a pool of trainers with specific kinds of formal education. In order to train teachers who have all the skills and experience needed to effectively care for an increasingly diverse group of children; we need a pool of trainers with knowledge about all of the communities Minnesota’s children come from. Often this pool of trainers has more experience than formal education or has formal education in areas not related to education. How do we meet both of these critical needs?
We hope you can join us for this discussion of these questions at this fall’s SuperConference. Or, if these are questions you are really eager to wrestle with, join us at the PPD&D workgroup and help shape the dialogue. Contact us at professionaldevelopment@mnaeyc.org if you have questions or would like to add to the discussion.
// posted by Tammy Wachter @ 6:19 PM 
