Distinguished Thoughts

Hayes Mizell’s blogs, which he writes on a regular basis for Learning Forward and its affiliates will be featured on this page. Mizell is a distinguished senior fellow with Learning Forward.

MAKE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
A JOYFUL EXPERIENCE

When educators talk about professional learning, they never seem to use the word joy. They sometimes describe a professional development experience as fun, but that is a much more superficial concept ( amusement or pleasure) than joy (intense or elated happiness). There are many forces that draw educators into learning experiences that can potentially increase their effectiveness, but joy is not usually one of them. Teachers and administrators regard professional development as an obligation and sometimes an opportunity, but rarely a joy. If someone used the term "joyful professional development," most educators would consider it a laughable oxymoron.

Certainly, quality professional development requires learning that is often hard work, a process that most people do not associate with joy. It can be very difficult to master new knowledge, skills, and behaviors. It can be even more challenging to translate that learning into day-to-day practice. Perhaps teachers only experience joy when they realize that because of professional development they have become more effective instructors and, as a result, there is evidence of their students' increased learning.

But there should always be the possibility that professional development itself can be joyful. That depends, in part, on attitude. If a person does not acknowledge their personal need for new learning, they will regard professional development as an unnecessary chore. If they bring to the experience emotions of dread, hostility, or resistance, there will never be space for joy.

Much also depends on how educators experience professional development. With good reason, they may perceive it as an indictment of their performance, or a requirement unrelated to their learning needs or those of their students. And even though everyone now recognizes that poorly organized and implemented learning experiences are ineffective, they occur too frequently. The serial killers of joyful professional development are still on the loose, and they continue to reap rewards.

Joy should be an input as well as an outcome of professional learning. The conditions that make joyful professional development possible are well known: (a) deep understanding of and respect for educators' work environments and challenges, (b) engagement of educators in small, collegial learning teams led by skillful facilitators, (c) educator teams' identification of their most pressing learning needs as informed by student performance data, (d) sustained opportunities for educator teams to learn, use, and master manageable chunks of new knowledge, skills, and behaviors, (e) appropriate on-site support for implementation of new learning, and (f) assessment environments and processes that foster trust, honest dialogue, accountability, and continuous improvement of professional practice.

Joyful professional development is not a fanciful concept. There are very practical reasons for making professional development joyful. Teachers and administrators will engage in professional learning more enthusiastically. Their commitment and energy levels will increase. They will seek new learning more frequently and they will use it more effectively. These potential results make it important to include joy in the equation that yields more effective professional development. Educators who are responsible for organizing professional learning should consider what it means for professional development to be joyful and proceed to make it a reality.