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:
Effective educational leaders develop the professional capacity and practice of school personnel to promote each student’s academic success and well-being.”
Standard 6: Professional Capacity of School Personnel, Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (NPBEA, 2015)
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 ongoing 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.