Professional development has thus evolved from an often dreaded "inservice" activity that was perceived as something to suffer through to a comprehensive set of career-long experiences that are tailored to assist educators in being successful in their individual and collective evolving professional roles. Taking a rather generic view, Finch (1990) noted that professional development was in the process of evolving into a more comprehensive set of phases that include needs, focus, delivery, and impact. Needs are "derived from the contexts within which professional development will take place and the types of potential professional development recipients" (p. 6). Focus is driven by needs and context as well as content to be delivered and potential benefit to recipients. How professional development is delivered thus becomes a function of needs, focus, context, potential delivery modes, and potential delivery settings. And finally, assessing professional development's impact is a function of context, needs, focus, and delivery.
More recently, Finch et al. (1992) presented a vision of an evolving professional development paradigm. Within this paradigm, consideration is given to teachers' new professional roles in the schools as well as how professional development needs that are generated by these new roles should be met. Professional development assumes a new character that includes greater emphasis on the following:
Our discussions with almost 200 people at these sites included teachers of vocational and academic subjects; educational administrators and counselors; and business, industry, and community representatives. People we interviewed at these school-to-work sites supported the notion that for professional development to have a positive impact on teachers as well as their students, the professional development process must be both comprehensive and long term. This process requires a major investment of resources to prepare teachers for their involvement in school-to-work transition.
A second focus of this guide is on the many professional development practices
that can be used to assist teachers of both vocational and academic subjects in
their professional development. Most of these practices are provided in the
words of teachers who participated in them or others who were aware of teachers
who were engaged in different professional development practices. To make the
process of reviewing and selecting professional development practices easier,
they are organized into 13 different themes. These themes were based upon
analyses of text transcribed from our interviews with people at the
participating sites. Details about the study and how the themes were created
are included in a companion document titled Facilitating School-to-Work
Transition: Teacher Involvement and Contributions (Schmidt, Finch, &
Moore, forthcoming). A study summary is included as Appendix A.
In the second section, ways that school-to-work related professional
development may be provided to teachers are discussed. Implications are
organized so that consideration is given to teachers as learners. First,
teachers can learn by informal means, formal means, or a combination of the
two. Second, teacher learning can occur in different contexts, the most common
of which are the school, the workplace, the community, and a combination of
these. And finally, teachers may be encouraged to develop professionally
through the use of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Merging the
consideration of teachers as learners with a professional development framework
resulted in the creation of a useful organizing scheme to employ when
considering which teacher professional development approaches to use and when
to use them. Several suggestions for using professional development to help
teachers prepare for school-to-work responsibilities are then offered. The
suggestions are organized around each of the four stages included in the
professional development framework: professional development needs, focus,
delivery, and impact.
Organization
The guide is organized into two main sections. In the first section, each of
the 13 professional development themes is presented. Individually, the themes
are described through statements made by educators; educational administrators
and counselors; and business, industry, and community representatives. Their
comments serve to support the multidimensional profile of each theme.
Collectively, themes reflect the broad, comprehensive nature of professional
development for school-to-work transition. When taken as a whole, the themes
present a convincing case for creating comprehensive professional development
programs in the long term rather than on a piecemeal basis.