Summary: Barriers Preventing Effective Professional Development

Based on the assertion that many professional development programs are designed to support student learning, teachers play an important role in determining what educational materials and tasks are presented to students and how they are delivered. Therefore, building teacher capacity to deliver innovative and engaging curriculum through professional development becomes a crucial element toward achieving educational goals (Hawley & Valli, 1999). Traditional, face-to-face professional development “often focuses on generalized instructional practices, such as collaborative learning” (Fishman, Konstantopoulos, Kubitskey, Vath, Park, Johnson, & Edelson, 2013, p. 427). A notable challenge with such generic learning is the individual teacher is charged with interpreting content, often irrelevant to his or her practice, that must be translated into classroom instruction.
As technology continues to emerge in all aspects of teachers’ and students’ lives, educators are facing increasing challenges to learn tools that will yield innovative pedagogy within the classroom. However, as technology adoption continues to rise in K-12 schools, teacher self-efficacy involving technology integration as well as the use of technology driven professional development is in question (Freeman, 2011).
Barriers Preventing Effective Professional Development
Currently, a learning gap …show more content…
9). This gap in the literature suggests that until more extensive research regarding technology driven professional development is conducted, educators will remain uninformed about which modality of professional development best supports teachers in the adoption of innovative