Thoughts on Adult Learning: Maximizing Professional Learning for Long-term Benefits

 Maximizing Professional Learning for Long-term Benefits

Thoughts on Adult Learning

By Nadia Kader

One of our goals in adult education is to enhance our practice through knowledge and skill acquisition. Generally, this translates to attending webinars, conferences, and educators’ institutes. If our professional learning starts with attending conferences or other events, how can we make the most of these opportunities? In this article, I hope to provide a guide on how to choose professional learning to maximize your gains. To start, let’s consider the difference between a professional learning and a professional development mindset. You may find these terms used interchangeably in our field; however, Propel and many other adult educators see them as describing two distinct experiences. Professional learning is centered on accelerating personal and collective learning and closing knowledge gaps for professionals (learningforward.org). Professional learning often takes place over a period of time to allow practitioners to reflect on and integrate new ideas into their practice. This is in contrast to professional development, which is defined as “one-off” events, in-service sessions, and seminars that are typically ‘one-size-fits-all’ (https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/pacific/blogs/blog2_DistinguishingProfLearning.asp). While we are accustomed to professional development, we can really maximize long-term benefits by shifting to a professional learning mindset.

Identifying learning goals

Our first step in identifying learning goals is recognizing immediate needs. Immediate needs tend to arise when issues occur. These issues might include new or unfamiliar topics in the curriculum, new initiatives or priorities from NMHED, or program challenges like a drop in our retention rate that can negatively impact next year’s funding. While immediate needs are the most pressing, I think of it as a whistling tea kettle. Of course, if the tea kettle is whistling louder and louder, it takes away from other household needs, such as reorganizing the pantry, starting dinner, clearing the clutter around the house, or starting that vegetable garden in the backyard. We can take the kettle off the fire, which stops the whistling, but then what? Other than preventing a kitchen fire, did that action contribute to improved changes in our household?

Let’s say you are planning to attend a conference session on new math initiatives. What is your intention in attending the session? What do you hope to learn from it? Perhaps you will attend because you realize your students need more help on math topics. Maybe you hope to attend to get new resources to bring to the classroom next week. The challenge of addressing pressing needs is that it takes away from the other tasks, which can have longer-term benefits to our environment. Without question, pressing needs have to be addressed; however, if we can tie these to a bigger-picture issue, we’ll have a more lasting impact. If attending the math initiative conference session will give you some ideas for your class this term, how can you tie this to a lasting impact to maximize the time, energy, and money (our inputs) spent? Consider this: what are the outputs (the results) we want out of the inputs? To maximize what we input, we need to do some big-picture thinking. What if other instructors are also struggling with certain subjects at your organization? Could there be a need for a lesson bank or best practices guide for new instructors?

Let’s go back to the math initiative conference session. What if before you stepped foot into the conference venue, you sat down and wrote out what you hoped to get out of attending the conference? What if you took 15 minutes and connected what you wanted to get with what the organization hopes to achieve in the fiscal year? Let’s say that at the quarterly staff meeting (assuming your organization has quarterly staff meetings and you attend them), a portion of the meeting was dedicated to discussing attending the upcoming conference. Your team could discuss what they are hoping to get out of the conference and the steps needed to take to implement new changes. Perhaps other staff members have ideas on what areas of focus the team needs in their professional learning. Or perhaps team members can split up different topics to cover at the conference and have a team share at the next meeting. By tackling challenges as a team, there is more opportunity to achieve shared goals. 

Using the competencies

Once you have identified the general topics you want to focus your professional learning on, it is time to finesse these into more specific competencies. The Professional Learning Toolkit identifies areas for professional growth split into types: program, leadership, instruction, and data professionals. Let’s return to our math initiative conference session example. If you want to improve your skillset in instructing math, we should look for competencies that cover those areas. 2.1 Designs learner-centered instruction and classroom environments seems to cover our needs—however, 2.2 Designs Standards-based instructional units and lesson plans, 2.3 Uses instructional techniques that are effective with adult learners, and 2.4 Designs instruction to build learners’ higher-order thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills can also fit. 

The Professional Learning Toolkit can be daunting, but there is a lot of opportunity for professional growth when we know what to look for. Let’s say the math initiative conference session covers new instructional routines to use with your students when starting a new math topic. After attending the session, you are given practical activities and resources that can be used in class. You take the activities and resources and redesign your warm-up routines in class. This is aligned with 2.3 Instructional techniques that are effective with adult learners. After a few weeks of using these new routines, adapting what works, and removing what does not work, you bring it up to some of your colleagues and share your resources. Your supervisor hears about these new resources you are sharing and asks you to share them at the next staff meeting, where more staff can learn the routines and resources. You create a quick presentation and present it at the staff meeting. At the staff meeting, leadership encourages you to present your redesign of the routines at the next educators’ institute. You review your materials and present your updated presentation at the educators’ institute.

All aspects of this scenario are examples of professional learning. Professional learning encompasses a comprehensive, ongoing process in which educators engage in various practices aimed at improving their knowledge, skills, and competencies through reflective inquiry and collaboration. As we recall, this example came from attending one conference session. While attending a conference session in itself is a form of professional development, tying the session with improving your practice, reflecting on those changes, and sharing with other colleagues is illustrative of a transformational learning process: A transformational learning process that affects multiple classroom practices. Remember, you shared with your staff twice, then presented at an educators’ institute. Your professional learning has the potential to reach many different audiences. You also worked on the content, finessing it to suit your students better. Taking the time to evaluate your techniques and redesign them benefits your students. Also, regularly updating your routines and materials helps you develop your techniques as an educator.

Different modalities of professional learning

What if you can’t attend a conference? Choosing the modality of professional learning is vital to maximizing the benefits of professional learning. If you can’t attend a conference, don’t fret; there are other opportunities to maximize professional learning benefits. Here are some different modalities of professional learning:

• Asynchronous courses

• Webinars/workshops 

• Cohort training (in-person or online)

• Action research

• Professional book groups

• Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)

• Microlearning activities (infographics, videos, short courses)

Choosing modalities that are best for you takes some self-reflection. Before choosing your modality, think about when you can make time for learning, aka time management. Look at your schedule for the next week; what times do you have for professional learning? Do you have a solid block of time, such as 30 minutes or an hour? Or do you have 15 minutes a few days a week? Are there any days that work best for you—say, Tuesday afternoons? Or do you need to adjust your schedule every week, and it is hard to keep a regular schedule?

These are the questions that address time management specifically. Now, let’s get into how you learn. How you learn affects how much you get out of your professional learning. If you hate sitting at a computer to learn, then an asynchronous course may not be for you. In addition, your mindset also affects how you learn. If you believe you’ll never get anything out of hybrid training, then attending the DELT team’s hybrid Google Intensive will not benefit your practice. In addition to these constraints, there are other considerations:

• What are the needs of your organization?

• What is the budget for professional learning?

• How can you connect what you learn with your previous knowledge?

Conclusion

To summarize, professional learning takes some pre-planning, asking yourself reflective questions, and continued work beyond the initial contact with the content. In our field, it can feel incredibly daunting to plan far ahead for professional learning. Still, by taking some of these extra steps, we can further develop our skillsets and benefit our students, staff, and professional selves.

References

Bradley, J., Groth, C., Rorrer, A., & Evans, L. (2023, June). Professional Learning Vs. PD: The Distinction Matters. Learningforward.org. https://learningforward.org/journal/accelerating-learning/professional-learning-vs-pd-the-distinction-matters/

George, T. (2023, January 27). What is action research? Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/action-research/ 

Scherff, L. (2018, January 4). Distinguishing professional learning from professional development. Ies.ed.gov. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/pacific/blogs/blog2_DistinguishingProfLearning.asp