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Professional Growth and Development in Education

Professional growth and development in education requires educators to continuously improve themselves professionally. Teachers must avoid becoming stagnant and mediocre, as top educators seek to stay updated in their field and feel a sense of achievement. Institutions should hire educators willing to grow beyond just training, by implementing new knowledge and skills in the classroom and evaluating results. The most motivated teachers have moved beyond basic needs to seek belonging, accomplishment, and fulfilling their potential through creative teaching practices and technological skills. Professional training alone does not guarantee educators will learn to apply new knowledge or improve student learning; teachers must have the right attitude towards ongoing professional learning and development.

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1K views

Professional Growth and Development in Education

Professional growth and development in education requires educators to continuously improve themselves professionally. Teachers must avoid becoming stagnant and mediocre, as top educators seek to stay updated in their field and feel a sense of achievement. Institutions should hire educators willing to grow beyond just training, by implementing new knowledge and skills in the classroom and evaluating results. The most motivated teachers have moved beyond basic needs to seek belonging, accomplishment, and fulfilling their potential through creative teaching practices and technological skills. Professional training alone does not guarantee educators will learn to apply new knowledge or improve student learning; teachers must have the right attitude towards ongoing professional learning and development.

Uploaded by

Jonathan Acuña
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Grabado en Madera – Fernando Rudín, Sophia Wanamaker Gallery

Centro Cultural Costarricense-Norteamericano, San José – Costa Rica


Picture taken by Jonathan Acuña (2017)

Professional Growth and Development in


Education
Some considerations

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

Head of Curriculum Development Senior Language Professor


Academic Department School of English
Centro Cultural Costarricense- Faculty of Social Sciences
Norteamericano Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Monday, September 28, 2020


Post 383

As members of an education institution, it is important to endorse the idea


that organizations must be created around the belief that every single individual
wants to grow professionally. Educators cannot live nor prosper in a teaching
system where mediocracy is rewarded; as pointed out by Laura Lewin, mediocracy
in teaching cannot and must not exist (2020). Teachers have to hold on strong
desires to continue to grow as a professional; otherwise, they will get stagnated
and with no sense of achievement in their field and careers. Part of being a top
pedagogue is to grow professionally and keep oneself updated (Lewin, 2020).
Taken from Simply Psychology at https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

Being a professional does not equal with being a good educator. Institutions
need to select and hire people who are willing to continue to grow in their
profession and beyond. Based on Lewin (2020), organizations need to encourage
their teachers to take responsibility for their own professional growth and well-
being. Seasoned, consolidated professionals are no longer just driven by money
to satisfy their basic needs; they now aspire for their place in the field. If these
professionals have already crossed the borderline between basic necessities and
psychological essentialities in the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, as posited by Lewin
(2020), educators’ motivation is no longer bound to money; they look for a sense
of belonging to a group of other professionals and colleagues in the same field and
a sense of accomplishment at a personal and professional level in their teaching
careers.

Institutions crave for teachers in the self-fulfillment needs phase. McLeod


(2020) states that people in this level are in the search for “achieving [their] full
potential, including creative activities.” These individuals are now beyond the
exchange of information that takes place in training sessions; these people are
ready to get training, implement the new knowledge in the classroom, and then
evaluate the results of the implementation (Lewin 2020). For good, committed
educators, it is not enough to know about what they teach; for Lewin (2020) these
professionals promote social and emotional intelligence among their learners, feel
comfortable with new teaching methods, and are up-to-date with technological
advancements in and for education. With this type of educators, a sense of
purpose and movement from potential to materialization of training in the
classroom is sensed and can be measured in the classroom. And if these people
who are being trained eventually leave the company is not the problem; the
problem is those who stay in the institution with no desire for training and growth
(Lewin 2020).

Training teachers on a given area does not guarantee that they have learned
how to implement new information (from a training session) and then evaluate the
results of an implementation in their teaching. A professional training program in
an institution needs to aim at providing instructors with new knowledge; then this
new input is transformed into skills that can improve their teaching process. Finally,
institutions want these skills in teachers to turn into competencies that can be later
on seen all across their teaching and in their student learning. But most
importantly, as stated by Lewin (2020), none of this would work if educators have
the wrong attitude towards professional development. Just because you train them
does not mean teachers will learn how to apply new knowledge within a learning
setting.
References
Lewin, L. (2020, Octubre 2020). Cómo Armar un Programa de Desarrollo Profesional. Escuela para
Directivos - Laureate Languages. Buenos Aires, Argentina: ABS International.

McLeod, S. (2020, March 20). Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Retrieved October 7, 2020, from
SimplyPsychology.Org: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

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