Professional Development: Self-Directed

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In our high-change world, those who are most successful in their work are the people who are committed to developing themselves by giving themselves goals or new levels of mastery to reach for.</div>
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Successful employees don’t wait for their annual performance review and their boss to tell them where they need to grow – they’re committed to life-long self-directed learning and they’re deciding and driving their own development directions. And it’s a given that, as an entrepreneur, no matter how good your mastermind or business coach is, it’s ultimately up to you to take responsibility for your own personal and professional development.</div>
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Here’s how you can drive your own career with a self-directed learning plan:</div>
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1) Discover Your Natural Strengths and Interests</div>
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You’ll learn fastest, enjoy your work the most and make the most progress if you’re learning and working in the areas of your natural strengths and interests, so base your self-directed learning program on your natural strengths and interests.</div>
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Start by thinking of the times when you’re so involved in what you’re doing that you lose track of time. What are you doing when you feel that way? Think about the activities at work that give you the flow experience, and then think of activities outside of work where you get that flow experience. These are the activities that you innately love doing, so they’ll be the areas where you’ll do best to invest your time and energy when it comes to developing mastery.</div>
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2) Get Clear On Your Vision</div>
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We’re all learning and growing all the time – we can’t not learn. The difference that creates success is deciding and directing your learning direction. If you don’t know what you want your work to look like in 1 or 2 years from now, you’ll be likely to have your career direction determined by other people or circumstances, rather than your personal values and desires, so get clear on the picture of work you’re aiming for.</div>
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What activities would you ideally spend your day doing? Who are your ideal clients? What does an ideal work week’s schedule look like? What kind of impact do you want to be making through your work? What are the values you want to express and affirm through your work?</div>
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3) Look for the Gaps</div>
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When you know what picture you’re aiming for, you can come back to where you are right now and notice where the gaps are between where you are now and where you want to be. This provides the focus for your learning program.</div>
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What’s missing in your work right now? What do you want more of and what do you want less of? How much more/ less do you want? How will you know when you have it?</div>
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4) Set Your Learning Goals</div>
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Considering the gaps you’ve identified, set yourself learning goals that will enable you to bridge those gaps. Remember to check your learning goals against your strengths and interests. If it’s not in the arena of your strengths or interests, can you rather outsource or in source help and get someone else to bridge that gap for you?</div>
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A key to successful self-directed learning is in setting the right mastery goals. <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html">Csikszentmihalyi</a> studied the flow experience – that space where you’re “in the zone” and it feels like you’re able to perform accurately, easily and effortlessly without much conscious thought. He found that one of the factors that created flow was when people were tackling learning goals that were within a sweet zone where the challenge was not too easy and not too hard, but “just right.”</div>
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So if you want to trigger flow experiences, feel naturally motivated and perform your best, then set yourself learning goals that challenge you just enough to trigger both anxiety and excitement. And then, as you make progress, to keep hitting that sweet spot, keep adjusting those goals to challenge yourself a little further all the time.</div>
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5) Design Your Plan</div>
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Design a self-directed learning plan for yourself by deciding what sources you’ll learn from, what programs or classes you might wish to sign up for, who you’d like to be mentored by, and what other sources of social support and accountability you’ll build into your learning program, in order to achieve your learning goals. As you design your program, remember that you’ll learn best if you create a program that allows you to learn on three levels: </div>
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Learning from other people who are ahead of you. This helps you to stay inspired of the possibilities and to discover more about the territory you’re heading into before you get there. </div>
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Learning with other people who are at a similar level of development. This helps to normalize your fears and ensures that your learning is highly relevant and meets you where you’re at. </div>
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Teaching other people who are just beginning. This helps to reinforce the foundational basics and to remind you how far you’ve come. Plus it has the added bonus of growing your leadership and influence and motivating you through the good feeling of giving back. </div>
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Want to avoid getting suckered into buying every new program, overwhelming yourself and never using any of it? Just go back to your self-directed learning plan and check – does this offering fit with my learning goals?</div>
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6) Schedule regular reviews</div>
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Decide some parameters for tracking and measuring your progress and <a href="http://www.productiveflourishing.com/free-planners/">mark your calendar</a> with an appointment with yourself or your coach to review your progress regularly. Schedule reviews as often as once a month, because the review and feedback loop is fundamental to learning. You might wish to gather feedback from others, record performance statistics, or just reflect and record your own judgement of your performance and progress.</div>
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What we measure is what we focus on and what we focus on is what we grow, so be sure to find quantitative or qualitative ways of measuring your progress and focusing your growth.</div>
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Happy learning!</div>
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How To Drive Your Professional Development With A Self-Directed Learning Program

In our high-change world, those who are most successful in their work are the people who are committed to developing themselves...

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<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Teacher’s Choice Framework</strong></em></div>
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<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Gabriel Diaz-Maggioli in her ASCD book, <a href="http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/104021/chapters/Professional-Development-Today.aspx" style="color: #004477; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Teacher-Centered Professional Development</a>, proposes a teacher’s choice framework which are characterized by:</span></span></div>
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<li>Teachers are talented and devoted individuals who have gained enormous experience by interacting with students, and possess a wealth of knowledge that must be explored and shared. </li>
<li>Teachers differ from one another in terms of their theoretical and professional knowledge and the stages they are at in their careers. This diversity offers a wealth of resources and experience. </li>
<li>Teachers’ professional development should be embedded in their daily schedule; they should not be expected to devote their own free time to programs that are divorced from the context in which they work. </li>
<li>In order for teachers to develop ownership of professional development, they need to be active participants in its construction, tailoring programs to their needs and motivations. </li>
<li>Professional development should not be regarded as an administrative duty, but rather as a career-long endeavor aimed at disclosing the factors that contribute to the success of all students and teachers. Mandatory professional development offered only when it is convenient to administrators has little to offer to teachers.</li>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Teacher Empowered Model of Professional Development</span></b><div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
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<li>Develop a vision and a mission of an ideal classroom and optimal student achievement. </li>
<li>Identify gaps between what is and the ideal. </li>
<li>Establish and/or identify self -driven professional development activities to close the gap. </li>
<li>Develop plans of action for implementation.</li>
<li>Engage in an accountability system.</li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicSo7cLdIiXAlGDBi6AmrzfKL2SX49uyL7nVBjJmYigZ1oMR5yqLq4yIuxlNOvK86r53yeNe7_Fay6s5cwEyBkyhLzujJwZbPdur7clzcU41_20IjEa50KF8S8N2zHO4e9nBfyz3Jo_E0/s1600/tmp456121846488629249.png"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicSo7cLdIiXAlGDBi6AmrzfKL2SX49uyL7nVBjJmYigZ1oMR5yqLq4yIuxlNOvK86r53yeNe7_Fay6s5cwEyBkyhLzujJwZbPdur7clzcU41_20IjEa50KF8S8N2zHO4e9nBfyz3Jo_E0/s400/tmp456121846488629249.png" /></a></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Develop a vision and a mission of an ideal classroom and optimal student achievement.</b></span><br />
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As part of their teacher education, students are often asked to develop their teaching philosophy.  This is a good initial exercise but several problems exist with it.  First, this happens during pre-service teaching and often prior to any extensive time spent teaching in an actual classroom.  Second, it does reflect the continuous and evolving nature of education.  Finally, it does not reflect ideas and teaching practices shaped and learned while one is a teacher.<br />
Identify gaps between what is and the ideal.<br />
The educator then compares current practices to that of the ideal to identify gaps.  From these gaps, professional development goals are established.  This process provides a foundation of “need”, focus, and relevancy for the educator’s professional development.  Professional development then becomes “<a href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Designing_Professional_Development/JIT_Learning" style="color: #004477; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">just-in-time learning</a>” rather than “just-in-case it is needed”.</blockquote>
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The following visual metaphor is a model of this process.</div>
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<li><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Identify Current Reality: </em>On the left cliff, list of keywords that define your current reality. You’re basically outlining where you are right now in your classroom teaching process.   Sketches and symbols can also be used to describe your current reality.</li>
<li><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Identify Desired Reality</em>:  On the right cliff write down a list of keywords that define your desired classroom environment and practices based on your vision of the ideal.  You’re essentially defining the type of classroom that you would like to create by the date you specified.  Represent these keywords (your desired reality) using a series of sketches, symbols or both. Completing these sketches will help you to create more meaningful associations.</li>
<li><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Identify Obstacles: </em>Within the gap between the two cliffs, write down all the obstacles that are standing between your current reality and your desired reality. Write down keywords. Alternatively, you can represent these words in a visual way, as described above.</li>
<li><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Identify Key Resources;  </em>On the tree branches outline five key resources and training opportunities that you have at your disposal that you could use to help you overcome the obstacles that are standing between you and your desired reality. (Identifying resources will be further expanded upon in the next section.)</li>
<li><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Bridge the Gap:  </em>Now that you are clear about where you are, where you want to be, the obstacles standing in your way, and the resources you have at your disposal, it’s now time to build a bridge that will take you over the cliff towards your desired reality. This bridge is going to be built using a series of steps that you will take over a certain period of time that will get you to where you want to go.</li>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Establish and/or identify self-driven and directed professional development activities to close the gap.<br /></span></b>During this phase, educators engage in self-directed professional learning opportunities to learn how to close the gap from the current state to the ideal one.  The opportunities for educators to engage in self-directed professional development is basically limitless in this era of teaching and learning.  There Many Ways to Grow Professionally</div>
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<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Attend a conference/workshop locally.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Attend a conference/workshop regionally/provincially/nationally/internationally.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Attend a workshop/conference or summer institute/course.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Becoming a facilitator, and give a workshop locally, regionally, or provincially.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Begin/continue university studies.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Form/join a teacher research group.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Participate in group planning.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Job-shadow in a related work situation.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Join a professional organization/network.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Observe another teacher, and talk together about the lesson/program.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Read professional literature.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Reflect, discuss, and research for the purpose of planning individual or group ongoing professional development.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Develop the discipline of reflective journal keeping.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Share with colleagues what you found at a conference/workshop.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Subscribe to/read professional journals.</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;">Watch professional videos.</li>
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Teacher Agency: Self-Directed Professional Development

The Teacher’s Choice Framework Gabriel Diaz-Maggioli in her ASCD book, Teacher-Centered Professional Development , proposes a tea...

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Professional Development

How To Drive Your Professional Development With A Self-Directed Learning Program

Teacher Agency: Self-Directed Professional Development

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