Professional Development for Remote Learning
Report: Low-Cost, Microcredential-Based PD Can Improve Expertise in Student-Centered Learning
COVID-19
is making new kinds of demands on educators to become proficient at
meeting the needs of individual students, whether they're in the
classroom or learning from home. A new report
from the Christensen
Institute
has suggested that low-cost, microcredential-based professional
development could help those teachers become expert in
student-centered learning at a time when budget is tight and
traditional PD resources are scarce.
The
40-page report has four parts:
-
Part
1 discusses a framework for analyzing the solutions for
student-centered PD, including microcredentials. As the report
noted, "To the extent that micro-credentials are specifiable,
verifiable, and predictable, then they are modular in nature and
overcome many of the challenges inherent in PD solutions with
interdependent architecture. They could be the solution for making
student-centered PD adaptable to a variety of models, affordable,
easy to set up, and customizable."
-
Part
2 lists 66 educator microcredentials for student-centered teaching.
The idea is to enable teachers, coaches and administrators to
"stack" the specific ones their student-centered learning
model requires.
-
Part
3 offers the "playlists" of microcredentials shared by 14
experts, based on various roles: teachers, coaches, design teams and
school leaders.
-
Part
4 provides recommendations for moving into the "micro-credentialing
ecosystem."
"One
step toward creating the preconditions for modularity is to specify
the competencies that student-centered educators need," the
report's authors concluded. "We hope that the micro-credentials
identified in this report offer a starting point for specifying a
starter list."
"Educator
competences for student-centered teaching" is openly available
on
the Christensen Institute website.