What is quality professional development?
Quality professional development is the process of gaining knowledge and understanding of new concepts, developing the skills needed to put those concepts into practice, and making those practices sustainable in the classroom in order to improve student performance. Arkansas offers educators a tremendous range of professional development offerings—through cooperatives, centers, universities, state associations, online, and job-embedded approaches to learning. Quality professional learning that is results-based and sustained can be found in a variety of places and delivered through a variety of methods. With such a range of offerings, it can be challenging to identify the “right” combination of programs and learning for a particular teacher, school or district. The Traditional Approach The traditional model of professional development provides learning through sessions in which educators spend large blocks of time engaged in a workshop or listening to a speaker. Such approaches can be e
