Professional Development Article Reviews - Book Report/Review Example

Indeed, along with students and school administration, teachers are the major agents of intended change at school. This paper focuses on site-based teacher professional development due to the fact this has been recognized one of the most effective professional development approaches (Gaible & Burns, 2005; Borzack, 2008). Site-based professional development refers to “intensive learning by groups of teachers in a school or region, promoting profound and long-term changes in instructional methods” (Gaible & Burns, 2005, p.25). Specifically, site-based professional development takes place at certain sites: schools, teacher colleges, or teacher resource centers.

It is suggested that teachers collaborate with “in-house” (in other words, local) facilitators in order to engage in the process of developing their pedagogical skills, as well as technology and content competence. Site-based programs are also known to offer the opportunity to gradually engage into the learning process since it usually concentrates on particular problems faced by individual teachers in the situations when they try to carry out innovative techniques within classroom settings (Gaible& Burns, 2005, p.25). Site-Based Teacher Professional Development: Research OverviewIn their article “Using Technology to Train Teachers”, Gaible and Burns (2005) discuss a variety of approaches to Teacher Professional Development.

Site-based TPD practices are considered the most effective in comparison with standardized PD and self-directed PD. To illustrate, the authors assert that “site-based TPD, since it addresses locally based needs and reflects local conditions, should be the cornerstone of teacher development across the education system.” (Gaible & Burns, 2005, p.2). The benefits of employing the site-based practices are based on the facts that the latter unite people in an attempt to solve local issues and respond to local needs over a certain period of time, boost individual initiative and offer collaborative approaches to existing problems, enable TPD to flow in a more flexible way ensuring its sustainability and intensive character, and offer ongoing learning opportunities for a set of teachers (Gaible & Burns, 2005, p.7). As for the disadvantages of site-based TPD, these are thought to be related to time limitations (they are time intensive) and cost and availability limitations (low-resource districts, areas where some war conflicts take place, or just remote places appear to hardly benefit from the site-based TPD).

Additionally, troubles with cost include the ongoing PD will require recurrent funding; additional costs need to be spent on producing training materials, buying special equipment; extra expenditures should be spent on facilitators’ transportation (Gaible & Burns, 2005, p. 22).All in all, the authors suggest that site-based TPD programs be more effective than other approaches when there is a critical need to change teaching practices, teachers’ professional competence calls for a considerable enhancement, teaching/learning objectives