A recipe for success: designing flexible professional learning for foundational skills

Abstract

This Executive Leadership Portfolio (ELP) seeks to address the problem of how to design a flexible baseline professional learning architecture which both fits in the Professional Development Center for Educator’s (PDCE) 1:1 preparation model and allows for specialist customization that maintains quality and meets the unique professional learning needs of PDCE’s partners. To determine a potential solution to this problem, a professional learning design project was developed and built, along with accompanying implementation tools, to support teacher implementation of the differentiated instruction model as presented in How to Plan Differentiated Reading Instruction: Resources for Grades K-3 (Walpole & McKenna, 2017). The professional learning design was informed through an iterative try/fail/redesign process within five successive professional learning partnerships. The final professional learning design and implementation tools were then tested to determine their feasibility for addressing the problem by implementing them in a sixth partnership. ☐ Results from the sixth professional learning partnership suggest that, if implemented as designed, the flexible baseline professional learning architecture can feasibly allow PDCE’s Literacy Instructional Specialists to provide synchronous, customized, differentiated professional learning sessions which fit the Center’s 1:1 preparation model, maintain quality, and meet the unique professional learning needs of each partnership. An unforeseen outcome of the partnership was that with additional revisions, the professional learning architecture was also able to provide asynchronous professional learning support. While those initial revisions to the professional learning architecture and accompanying implementation tools extended the preparation time beyond the 1:1 ratio, once completed, feasibility for 1:1 preparation can likely be realized for asynchronous applications as well.