Empower diverse learners* to collaborate in order to develop equitable and inclusive learning environments, which leads to actions that impact student growth and potential.

*A Learner is everyone/anyone

DEFINITION

Professional learning is designed to refine and expand knowledge, skills, attitudes, and practices in order to impact student growth through intentional, continuous, and collaborative engagement.

BELIEFS

• High Expectations: Ambitious goals lead to powerful actions and outcomes.
• Diversity: Diversity and inclusivity strengthen an organization and improve its decisions and outcomes.
• Impact: Evaluation and reflection strengthen performance and results.
• Collaboration: An organization’s culture and climate build shared responsibility for learning that encourages student growth.
• Shared Leadership/ Expertise: As a cooperative wide community we can solve our most complex problems by tapping internal expertise and knowing when to utilize outside resources.
• Empowerment: Learners develop personalized plans that are relevant and meaningful to support their continuous improvement.

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING STANDARDS *

• Learning Communities: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students occurs within learning communities committed to continuous improvement, collective responsibility, and goal alignment.
• Leadership: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students requires skillful leaders who develop capacity, advocate, and create support systems for professional learning.
• Resources: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students requires prioritizing, monitoring, and coordinating resources for educator learning.
• Data: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students uses a variety of sources and types of student, educator, and system data to plan, assess, and evaluate professional learning.
• Learning Designs: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students integrates theories, research, and models of human learning to achieve its intended outcomes.
• Implementation: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students applies research on change and sustains support for implementation of professional learning for long-term change.
• Outcomes: Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students aligns its outcomes with educator performance and student curriculum standards.

*Adopted from Learning Forward's Standards for Professional Learning