Description

Ensuring that well-qualified personnel exist in every classroom is a guiding principle in the life of a school and the purpose of staff development. This course module focuses on the contemporary view of staff development as a component of continuous school improvement.

The Standard:

Education leaders support the professional learning of effective, caring teachers and leaders who are able to work with students productively in the classroom and who can collaboratively lead a school or district. Building an effective staff takes careful personnel recruitment, selection, assignment of responsibilities, support, evaluation and retention. Developing the professional skills of educators involves such activities as coaching, creating supportive conditions and fostering a learning community.”

The importance of human capital and the context, process, and content necessary for continuous professional staff development are stressed.

In the role of leading human resource development, you are required to foster on-going school improvement, centered on student learning, through building human capital. Human resource leadership roles and responsibilities for principals and assistant principals include recruiting, selecting, nurturing and retaining personnel.

The definition of and reason for staff development is becoming increasingly clear from the results of ongoing school improvement research. It has moved from a focus on individual teacher requirements to staff requirements, with emphasis on the learning needs of students. Staff development approaches have become learner-centered and results-driven, taking place inside the learning environment as a routine systematic process, rather than one-shot professional activity centered on information acquisition from outside experts.

Modules contain pre- and post-tests for self assessment. Feedback from each test identifies chapters where additional review is required.

Each chapter contains a workbook with exercises that you will be asked to complete, and resources you can use for continuous learning.