Educator, leader, and IT development
Build a collaborative community of educators, staff, IT, and school leaders working to improve teaching and learning.
Collaborative capacity building
Highly effective educators continually assess learner progress and how their teaching must change to improve it. This is no simple task, and the complexity is often underestimated by those outside the education sector. Educators require practical experience and the ability to adopt and adapt learned techniques to innovate and meet the needs of every learner. Professional learning is more likely to be effective when it promotes collaboration with peers and other colleagues.
When building a digital transformation program, it’s critically important to include key stakeholders in building their capacity. In addition to educators, this may include other school staff, IT departments, specialists, and other leaders as part of a learning community working to continuously improve teaching and learning.
Use ISTE's essential conditions as a guide to working with your ETF Leadership Team to effectively leverage technology for learning.
Educator professional learning: When is it effective?
Despite significant investments worldwide, the majority of professional learning still has little impact. Few educators report professional learning as useful. However, when done well, professional learning significantly improves learning.
Fundamentally, educators need to have a learning mindset for any professional learning program to be effective. They need to have the skills and incentives to continually assess learner progress, how teaching needs to change, and then apply new ways of working. This cycle of educator learning and inquiry is iterative.
Effective professional learning programs have a number of key elements:
- Programs must address practical problems faced by educators with opportunities to transfer what has been learned into practice. Every professional learning experience should have a "call to action" that’s both relevant and meaningful and in a timely manner so educators are able to practice new learning.
- There must be multiple opportunities to apply new ways of working over a sustained period of time. Adults often learn iteratively (they need to see evidence of something working several times before changing practice).
- Professional learning is also more likely to be effective when it promotes collaboration with peers, live observation, and educator feedback on the job—all proven to have a positive impact on teaching practice.
- The content of professional learning programs matters. Programs must integrate pedagogical content knowledge, assessment information, how to execute it, and most importantly, why it matters.
- Knowledge of learners and their individual developmental progressions is critical. Are professional learning programs taking into account personalization, differentiation, and social emotional learning?
Read Effective teacher professional development and think about the role of technology in furthering professional development in a remote setting.
How does technology help build capacity?
Because building leadership is primarily a collaborative, iterative process that’s undertaken by groups of educators, there’s no limit to the technology that may be used. What is important is that educators feel supported and encouraged to take chances, grow their learning, and share that new learning with other educators.
Microsoft Education programs expose educators to a wide range of resources and professional development opportunities. Identify the influencers in your school. Encourage them to take on leadership roles that support growing the capacity of their fellow educators. Educators love sharing best practices when they achieve success. Use this desire to build a cadre of innovators.
Tips for creating an "expert" cadre:
- Provide incentives for educators who complete modules on the Microsoft Learn Educator Center
- Recognize educators who have completed modules during staff meetings; create a challenge for educators to get the most badges
- Hold "Teach Meets" during professional development days that allow educators to quickly (in 2 minutes or less) show how they are implementing technology in their class
- Make learning fun, relevant, and worthwhile for educators
- Identify your early-adopter educators and provide them opportunities to learn and grow by becoming Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts (Approximately 3% of educators worldwide are part of the MIEE program)
- Encourage MIE Experts to share and mentor others in a formal and consistent manner
- Continue to grow leadership among educators; the result will be a community of leaders within your school who support your vision for digital transformation. Challenge educators to become learning leaders by completing the Microsoft Educator Trainer Academy.
How do the top schools do it?
Top schools place an intensive focus on training, mentoring, and collaborative working groups. This promotes discussion on learner progress as it relates to the educators’ everyday work with feedback and opportunities to learn from peers.
- Educator mentoring and coaching needs to be intensive, involving regular observation and feedback
- Coaching helps educators diagnose learners’ needs and develop class management skills and pedagogy
- Educators often prefer working collaboratively in lesson and grade groups. This develops leadership skills and prevents stress and burnout
- To evolve teaching, create educator research groups that pick a practice, develop it, then trial it in a real class. The result is evaluated and put into practice, shelved, or sent back for re-development
One way to encourage ongoing collaboration is to create Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). PLCs are most effective when there’s an organized way to meet, learn, and grow professionally. Microsoft Teams is an example of a tool that brings educators together in person and virtually so they are able to discuss, share, learn, and grow professionally—all while keeping resources and communications at their fingertips.
How does your staff currently collaborate? Using the above list on how top schools collaborate, think about effective ways for staff to work together and foster a greater community of practice to better inform their work.
Being a learning leader
School leaders are increasingly viewed as the key to education reform and improving learner outcomes. This new perspective increases the responsibility of the administrator to work closely with their educators to coordinate school- and class-based strategies aimed at improving teaching and learning. Place emphasis on promoting and participating in educator learning and development, establishing teaching and learning goals and expectations, and curriculum planning and coordination.
John Hattie asserts that "instructional leaders look at what is taught, learning leaders emphasize how information is taught and how we know it was taught well." As a learning leader, how does this idea of looking at how over what is taught change your thinking about the professional learning opportunities for your team?
A learning leader focuses on what their educators know and educating them in their craft so they in turn better educate their learners. Learning leaders use data to assess how their learners and educators are performing and create a collegial environment where educators trust that they are able to learn from one another.
The OECD suggests that the role of the school leader consists of four main responsibilities. The first two responsibilities are consistent with the administrator’s role as an instructional or learning leader. The third responsibility, “strategic use of resources”, includes operational activities consistent with the managerial role. The fourth point, “school leadership beyond the school,” is a recent addition which highlights the importance of building relationships with other schools and the community.
Due to the expanded role of the administrator, distributed leadership— where several individuals share leadership responsibilities—results in improved organization performance. Hence, the importance of having a digital transformational leadership team that includes key stakeholders to collectively make decisions on their educational technology path.
A learning leader alone cannot drive change; it requires the buy-in and expertise of the entire staff. Develop a way to bring staff together as equal contributors to improve learning.
In your Staff Team/Staff Notebook notate empowerment activities to create a culture that capitalizes on educators' strengths.
- What steps are necessary to implement all quadrants of the ISTE standards with departments and stakeholders in your organization?
- What support from Microsoft might you use to support your organization's next steps?