Preparing Kentucky’s students for college and careers requires an effective and continuously improving education system and workforce. To achieve this, Kentucky is establishing a comprehensive system of professional learning for its education workforce.
Kentucky Professional Learning Guidance
The newly released Kentucky Professional Learning Guidance promotes a coherent system of professional learning aligned with state initiatives. It is available to all educators and offers guidance in how to develop a coherent and comprehensive professional learning system that advanced educator effectiveness and student success.
Kentucky's Definition of Professional Learning
According to 704 KAR 3:035, Professional learning is a comprehensive, sustained, and intensive approach to increase student achievement that strengthens and improves educators’ effectiveness in meeting individual, team, school, school district, and state goals. It is ongoing, relevant, job-embedded learning for educators at all stages of career development.
Effects of Professional Learning on Practice
Professional learning provides opportunities for individual and collaborative professional study, analysis, application, and reflection relevant to ongoing improvements in professional practice and student achievement. For professional learning to have its greatest impact, it must be
aligned with state and local goals for student achievement and with individual professional goals for effectiveness and career advancement and the systems that support these goals. Decisions about professional learning are made collaboratively by educators, among educators, their colleagues, and their supervisors, and based on student, educator, and system data.
Ultimately, the purpose of educator professional learning is to increase student learning.
Joellen Killion, of Learning Forward, discusses Professional Learning versus Professional Development