Teacher and Educational Development Essay

Professional development is the strategy used by schools to ensure that educators continue to strengthen their practice throughout their career. The most effective professional development engages teams of teachers to focus on the needs of their students. They learn and problem solve together in order to ensure all students achieve success. Presently, most school systems are using a variety of schedules in providing a collaborative learning as well as, work time for teachers. Professional development in education has gotten a bad reputation, and for good reason. A wide variety of professions such as educators participate in professional development to learn and apply new knowledge and skills that allow them to improve their performance on the job. Therefore, this paper will discuss professional development in education and methods to establish effective teacher growth practices for the learning communities.

Today, everyone talking about education reform agree that teachers receive sporadic professional opportunities that tend to be of little use when it comes to improving teaching.This is because the educators receive training programs which are unlikely to positively influence the teaching and improve student achievement. Research has shown that the students achievements can be raised through teaching quality and school leadership, therefore, educators can only be effective if they continually expand their knowledge as well as, their skills to implement the best educational practices (Mizell, 2010). However, many people may not be aware of the methods their local school systems use to improve teaching and student learning, therefore, the only way to do this is through professional development since this is the only strategy most school systems have used to strengthen the performance level of the educators.

Teachers are the most influential school-based factor on student achievement, although studies have shown that some teachers are more effective than others particularly in helping their students achieve at high levels. Today, there are various….....