Professional Development Information
Submitted by Lynn Monson, Arizona
The National Staff Development Council:
The National Staff Development Council's revised Standards for Staff Development reflect what NSDC and the broader staff development community have learned about professional learning since the creation of the original standards in 1995.
The revision of the standards was guided by three questions:
- What are all students expected to know and be able to do?
- What must teachers know and do in order to ensure student success?
- Where must staff development focus to meet both goals?
Staff development standards provide direction for designing a professional development experience that ensures educators acquire the necessary knowledge and skills. Staff development must be results-driven, standards-based, and job-embedded.
What is Staff Development?
Staff development is the term that educators use to describe the continuing education of teachers, administrators, and other school employees.
Teachers need a wide variety of staff development opportunities. For example, a science teacher might need to attend classes to learn more about the content of the science she's teaching. In addition, she might need other types of staff development to learn better ways to teach that new science material. She might also need to learn more about classroom management techniques, how to incorporate technology into her instruction, and how to better address the needs of language minority students in her classroom.
The terms in-service education, teacher training, staff development, professional development, and human resource development are often used interchangeably. But some of these terms may have special meaning to particular groups or individuals.
Attending classes, workshops, or conferences is one way that teachers – and other school employees – learn some of what they need to know. But other types of staff development are just as important and, often, more effective than traditional sit-and-get sessions.
For example, when teachers plan lessons together or study a subject together, that's a form of staff development. A teacher who observes another teacher teach is also participating in a form of staff development. If a teacher is being coached by another teacher, that's staff development. Visiting model schools, participating in a school improvement committee, writing curriculum, keeping a journal about teaching practices – all of those can be staff development activities. And for dance, performing in a dance company (Lynn’s comment).
National Dance Education Organization (NDEO):
Professional Teaching Standards For Dance in the Arts
Teachers Demonstrate a Command of the Content, Process, and Methodology of Dance as an Art Form.
Accomplished teachers:
• immerse themselves in the artistic process of creating, performing, and responding to dance
through the demonstration of mastery in the studio/classroom
• incorporate personal experience into the pedagogy of dance technique while creating,
choreographing, analyzing, critiquing, and facilitating student mastery
• integrate the artistic processes of dance supporting the development of understanding and
enjoyment of dance as an art form
Teachers Contribute to the Stature and Growth of the Dance Education Profession.
Accomplished teachers:
• commit to the continuing growth and developmentof students, themselves, colleagues, their school, and their discipline
understand that collaborations with peers and external community resources effectively cross pollinate the dance, arts, and education communities
• regularly participate in professional involvement to expand the knowledge of students, strengthen their understanding of dance and its connection to other disciplines, and contribute knowledge and skills to the general quality of education
Standard III: The Content of Dance
Personal reflection on your personal growth as a dancer and how you can use this to assist the student artist.
Surdna Foundation:
The Surdna Foundation supports fellowships for arts teachers and believes this about professional development.
Surdna recognizes that arts teachers often lack the time and resources to reconnect with other arts professionals and with the artistic processes they teach. Through the Surdna Arts Teachers Fellowship Program, Fellows will design individualized courses of study that will provide both immersion in their own creative work and the opportunity to interact with other professional artists in their fields. Surdna believes that this approach to professional development will enhance the effectiveness of arts teachers and will directly benefit the young people they teach.
Teachers will be expected to design a fellowship program that provides opportunities to interact with professional artists and enhances their understanding of current techniques, activity, and thinking in their artistic domain(s). It may include: study in arts courses; attendance at advanced art-making workshops, festivals or institutes; residencies at artists’ colonies; formal mentor relationships with recognized professional artists; independent study towards the completion of an artistic project (which includes interaction with other professionals), or other artistic entities.* (See Resource List on the website for examples of possible sites and previous fellowship projects. Feel free to explore other options.)