The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
Volume XI, Number 4, Winter 2005/2006
Issue Topic: Professional Development
From the Director's Desk
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| Heather Weiss |
Professional development for those who work with children and youth is fraught with challenges and ripe with opportunity—specifically, the opportunity to increase staff quality, which experts agree is critical to positive experiences for children and youth. This theme has been reflected in many Evaluation Exchange issues over the past several years, including the spring 2004 issue on Evaluating Out-of-School Time Program Quality, in which a group of experts pointed to staffing as the most essential element of program quality.
In this issue, we hone in on professional development in four key sectors affecting children, youth, and families—K–12 education, early childhood education, child welfare, and youth development. Though these sectors face many of the same professional development challenges, each has its own unique issues, strengths, and goals. The staffing shortage in the child welfare sector, for instance, has spurred public agency–university partnerships to educate workers and increase workforce retention.
We frame individual professional development not as an isolated activity but as nested within larger workforce systems. This issue's Theory & Practice features new work supported by Cornerstones for Kids (www.cornerstones4kids.org) examining research evidence about the links among training, worker performance, service quality, and child and youth outcomes. We introduce a theory of change for workforce development, which includes not only individual professional development but also organizational capacity and policy supports.
Now more than ever, as labor markets shift, workers experience multiple demands on their time, and accountability reigns, professionals across sectors are searching for learning experiences that are time and cost efficient but also engaging and meaningful. However, the common “one-shot” workshop model is widely critiqued for failing to deliver depth and application of learning. This issue offers new and innovative approaches to professional development—including coaching, a cascade model, online professional development, and the case method—and describes how these efforts are being evaluated.
Although innovations like these are important, the bottom line for educators and other human service professionals is positive impact on children and youth outcomes. Yet evidence of impact from professional development often goes unmeasured. In this issue, we share frameworks, processes, and measures for assessing impact, as well as an interview with Dr. Thomas Guskey, who explains how multiple levels of evaluation and learning can build on one another to improve quality.
Professional development in the emerging field of out-of-school time programs and youth development also receives special attention through generous support from the William T. Grant Foundation. In our Ask the Expert section, we hear about the unique characteristics of the after school workforce and challenges for its professional development. Promising Practices highlights a site-based coaching model for after school staff that has met with promising evaluation findings.
In our zeal to cover these topics in more breadth and depth, this issue also features supplemental resources on our website, including an ex-panded New & Noteworthy section, a research bibliography, and an expanded Promising Practices article.
As always, we invite you to share your feedback and ideas about this and future issues.
Heather B. Weiss, Ed.D.
Founder & Director
Harvard Family Research Project