0.4 Cressman, j., richter, r., sims, p., schuth, s., & Sukowski,  (Page 2/6)

As the fifth year of CAFÉ approaches, CUC wants to make the experience better for all participants. To do this, reflection on where the institution has been, where it is at, and where it wants to go is necessary. Four lenses help assess CAFÉ. Defining what CUC understands professional development to be is the first lens in which the institution looks at itself. Secondly, the institution focuses on the lens of the characteristics of effective professional development. Next, CUC will examine the lens of the three models of teacher development. And, finally, the researchers will use the lens of the evaluation of experiences of CAFÉ by listening to the feedback from four years work of comments by the participants.

Lens one: what is professional development?

Fullan (1991) asserts that professional development is “the sum total of formal and informal learning experiences throughout one’s career from pre-service teacher education to retirement” (p. 326). These learning experiences can be end-of-day meetings, before school meetings, half-day workshops, institute days or seminars (Friedman&Phillips, 2004). More typically in higher education, faculty development takes the form of “one-off” workshops, held during the day. This makes it hard for part-time faculty in particular to join in, which is a reason that CAFÉ works well. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD, 2002) says that professional development is all those activities directly focused on teachers helping students achieve learning goals and supporting learning needs. Professional development must be collaborative, school-based, job-embedded and long-term.

From the National Staff Development Council (Good, Miller,&Gassenheimer, 2003) three standards are presented for professional development. Content is the material presented to teachers to help them understand their academic subject. Process refers to activities by which the content is presented. And context is where the activities occur (Ganser, 2000).

CAFÉ is a series of learning activities that are exchanges of core content, teaching strategies and understandings of student perspectives. In the “Birds of a Feather” sessions, participants discuss the content, skills, theorists, theories and practical applications of each course. Various teaching techniques are also demonstrated and explained. There is a priority to improve the quality of each course. In addition to the focus on content and process, we also address the context of the students. We acknowledge that our students are full-time professionals and/or employees, have a family life and then are part-time students. We need to be sensitive to what they are experiencing as some students come from the large city system while others are from the suburban and rural areas.

While CAFÉ is a yearly one-day nonpaid experience, some programs also have a mini-CAFÉ session in late December or early January. These additional sessions are a follow-up on what was done in late August. Frequently throughout the school year, there are phone calls and synchronous web-based activities and various formative assessment activities or roundtables, and email exchanges between course leaders and full and part-time faculty to address issues as they arise. Course leaders monitor the rigor of each course and provide much of the professional development of the faculty chosen to teach each course. Department heads and course leaders interview and make decisions about which faculty will teach what courses.