EDUCATION ADMINISTRATION
Data-Based Decision Making
New teachers professional development is a significant area where needs should be met for better student outcomes. If teachers can improve their skills, its positive influences would be seen in students and their academic performances. This paper aims at identifying three areas where professional development is needed for the new teachers of our school. A learner-centered professional development session would be designed for the teachers whose scores for their specific needs are lowest.
Needs Assessment Results Chart
The following table is formulated after analyzing the mock data for teachers needs assessment given for five teachers. Their respective tables were filled, and their rankings for particular professional development needs were mentioned in those five tables. The ranking of 1 indicated the area with the greatest need, and 10 was for the area with the least need of development. These rankings taken from five teachers have been consolidated in the table below in the response section. The lowest total for professional development needs would be the one that needs a learner-centered session, as explained later in the paper.
Professional Development Need
Responses
Total
(Lowest total will indicate the greatest area of need)
Content knowledge and skills
2, 10, 3, 2, 10
27
Classroom management
1, 1, 2, 1, 4
9
Relations with parents
10, 2, 4, 4, 1
21
Student motivation
8, 9, 7, 7, 6
37
Student engagement
9, 8, 8, 8, 5
38
Needs of diverse learners
7, 6, 6, 6, 3
28
Student assessment
4, 3, 1, 3, 7
18
Organizational skills
6, 5, 9, 10, 9
39
Communication with colleagues
5, 7, 10, 9, 8
40
Other:
3, 4, 5, 5, 2
19
Identification of Three Professional Development Areas
Classroom management, student assessment, and other professional development need are the three areas that need improvement. It is critical to specify that the other area is different for all five teachers since the new teachers geared levels are different. For example, one teacher is a grade K level teacher for all subjects, another is Maths teacher for grade 5, next is a language arts teacher for grade 3, one more is a science teacher for grade 4, and the last one is the music teacher for grade 4. Each one of them has identified other professional development needs with their own opinion.
The Kindergarten teacher has stated that her other need is teaching...
The rest of the two areas, classroom management, and student assessment, have to be designed collectively for all the teachers.
Classroom management
Classroom management can be difficult for new teachers since they are a novice in this field and they are unaware how to go about things and what to expect from the students (Simmons, 2019). Even if they are aware of the schools policies related...
…on active engagement in conversations and
discussion so that new ideas could be exposed to them and more child language development could be attained (Mascareno et al., 2017). Phonological awareness would be improved, and active reading enhances mechanisms involved in child language.
Grade 5 Math teacher mentioned that he found preparing children for state tests challenging, for which he can make use of a variety of methods. He could incorporate technology in different ways for test preparation, such as online tests. Teaching them to do simple tasks, which they otherwise would not be able to learn since they do not have adequate time for small tasks in online tests, could help them become speedy in completing the tests. The tools can include highlighting the phrases for importance and personal reminding in comprehension passages, moving areas of the document and selecting terms, etc. (Wolpert-Gawron, 2017). Instructing them to use the commonly used terms in the tests would be valuable since the test questions language might be difficult to comprehend for some of them.
Similarly, more new teachers have revealed their problems in achieving their childrens goals to improve their writing, music, and science skills. The distinct learner-oriented sessions for each grade teacher would help them understand the students specific needs since they are novices in the field and need to discern the classroom strategies, homework planning, and assessment formulation abilities.
Conclusion
The given data shows that new teachers have to obtain professional development in classroom management, student assessment, and other different needs for diverse grade and subject teachers. When appropriate learning connections are provided to the new teachers, they will gain meaningful knowledge about the students needs to help in cognitive, social, and…
