Wednesday, 3 May 2017

Why Improving Educators Professional Development Is A Collaborative Endeavor

By Paul Stone


The challenging multicultural environment in learning centers has posed a dilemma on how educators should undertake to teach effectively. This turbulent diversity in educational centers has posed the challenge of cultural and language barriers of which teachers are required to bypass them at all cost. They will need to be exceptional as they assume superior communication roles for students to learn comfortably. That is why it is important for stakeholders to look for ways of improving educators professional development.

Tutors have realized how important it is to familiarize and understand these background differences that exist among students. In the process, they should come up with strategies that will bring about bonding between learners and themselves. One way that has proved to be effective is to initiate a conversation of common interest with the students. This has further helped in identifying unique traits in every individual student.

A multicultural classroom will need personalized attention for every member of the class. It is, therefore, appropriate for a teacher at any given time to adjust their instructional strategy by preferred learning styles. They should identify what works for their learners by consulting with them. What will follow next is to adjust the instructional strategy accordingly.

Such kind of efforts by teachers that seek to improve learning process will must be reinforced by stakeholders in the learning institutions. Administrators also need to understand the challenge of multicultural diversity in the institutions they govern. To help their teachers cope well with this, they will need to provide information based on research about it in their school. Thus a tutor will just need to go through the compiled piece as they interact with the students.

School administrators could collaborate with other parties in availing professional development seminars for their teaching staff. Topics that address multicultural challenges should be covered. Training programs or even courses that incline on cultural diversity in educational institutions should be accessible for educators. In the long run, the learning experience gained will prove to be effective in planning out an effective instructional strategy.

Besides these seminars and training programs, school administrators should support teacher interaction with other colleagues outside the school. They also need to socialize with the demographic around their school. Interaction with the surrounding community will help connect the cultural differences with a classroom setting. This approach of realizing classroom diversity from the perspective of outside environment is the core of philosophy and sociology which are instrumental in planning.

Resources that attend to cultural diversity should be within reach of the teacher. As they manipulate those resources in the learning process, their attitude towards classroom diversity is affected for the better. It is the role of administrators to ensure these resources are catered for and made available for use.

Professional development for educators needs collaboration efforts in undertaking the whole process. Individual learner differences in schools can be attended to with a consistent approach. This ensures that challenges brought about by culture and language variations are dealt with accordingly. The more teachers work on adding to their professional and moral skills, the higher the chances of attaining preferred learning outcomes.




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