Through­out the coun­try, many schools and states are hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions about mas­tery based learn­ing.  I have had the great for­tune to lis­ten to col­league and national expert on the topic Tom Guskey explain mas­tery learn­ing on mul­ti­ple occa­sions.  The con­cept is sim­ple; rather than mov­ing through mate­r­ial after a pre­de­ter­mined amount of time, stu­dents move through as they mas­ter the con­tent.  Mas­tery learn­ing is some­thing most edu­ca­tors would agree makes sense, but the con­ver­sa­tions about imple­men­ta­tion get much more dif­fi­cult for some.  My post isn’t intended to address the con­ver­sa­tion around mas­tery based learn­ing with stu­dents, but rather as a unique approach to pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment around tech­nol­ogy inte­gra­tion.  My thoughts are out­lined below as “what ifs”:

What if…

• rather than requir­ing all teach­ers to attend pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment, those who had mas­tered the con­tent didn’t need to sit through the training?
• school lead­ers and inte­gra­tion coaches devel­oped assess­ments for teach­ers to demon­strate their under­stand­ing prior to PD sessions?
• those teach­ers who needed extra sup­port and help got it, and those who didn’t need the extra sup­port weren’t forced to sit through PD about a topic they had already mastered?

My thought is that if schools imple­mented this type of PD, they would actu­ally get MORE out of PD with teach­ers.  Those teach­ers who needed more help would receive train­ing in a smaller group that was tai­lored to their needs.  The other teach­ers would be more than pleased to demon­strate their mas­tery prior to attend­ing PD if it meant that PD time truly became their time.

“Day of Discovery”

Does this look like your PD? (Photo credit: kross­bow on Flickr http://bit.ly/7ECEZT)

This model isn’t unique, and some of your schools may already be imple­ment­ing such a pro­gram.  Dur­ing my tech-savvy super­in­ten­dent inter­views that are archived on blog talk radio, one of the super­in­ten­dents dis­cussed how he was imple­ment­ing a sim­i­lar pro­gram with his school admin­is­tra­tors.  After clearly iden­ti­fy­ing the tech­nol­ogy skills he wanted his admin­is­tra­tive team to mas­ter, he cre­ated an assess­ment aligned with those skills.  Those admin­is­tra­tors who didn’t mas­ter the skills on the ini­tial assess­ment were given extra sup­port until they mas­tered the skills.  It wasn’t pun­ish­ment, and even­tu­ally the ENTIRE team mas­tered the skills that had been iden­ti­fied as impor­tant for the dis­trict.  There will cer­tainly be some chal­lenges to imple­ment­ing this sys­tem, but it should pay div­i­dends in the long run!  It would move your PD away from the “time=learning” men­tal­ity in which one size fits all.

Nick Sauers