The Staff Development and Performance Evaluation Processes

1 194 The Staff Developmentand PerformanceEvaluation ProcessesCHAPTER 7 Learning ObjectivesAfter reading this chapter, you will be able to Describe the importance of the Staff Development process in relation to itslink to the achievement of school district goals and its relation to serving theneeds and interest of employees. Utilize an operational model for the implementation of an effective staffdevelopment program in a school or school district setting. Identify and describe several strategies for providing professional develop-ment opportunities for school Staff personnel. Understand the important considerations in developing and implementingstaff Development programs for adult learners.

2 Implement a mentoring relationship with a teacher or administrator. Describe the importance of the Performance Evaluation process for improv-ing the internal operations and overall effectiveness of the school Development in education has come to be viewed as indispensable if thegoals of the organization are to be realized and the need dispositions of theemployees are to be met. According to studies from management consul-tants the largest single factor driving job satisfaction is the opportunity for growthand career Development (Bathurst, 2007). The Staff Development process in educa-tion has many facets as evidenced by the numerous terms in the literature thatname the process.

3 Such terms include professional growth, in-service education, 3/20/2008 2:07 PM Page 194continuing education, recurrent education, on-the-job Staff training, human resourcesdevelopment, Staff improvement, renewal,talent management, and other combina-tions of these (1989) attempted to differentiate between and among the terms staffdevelopment, staffing, in-service training,and advanced preparation. He viewed theterm Staff developmentas embracing much more than in-service education. Onecomponent of Staff Development , according to Harris, is staffing, which includesseveral of the human resources Processes ( , selecting, inducting, assigning, devel-oping, evaluating, etc.)

4 The other side of Staff Development includes two kinds oftraining, in-service education and advanced preparation. In-service training is con-sidered to be any planned program provided for the purposes of improving theskills and knowledge of employees on the job. For Harris, however, advanced prepa-ration differs from in-service in terms of its goals and objectives, which areintended to anticipate future needs of the school system or needs brought about bychanges in workplace the purposes of this text, Staff developmentis defined as the process of pro-viding opportunities for employees to improve their knowledge, skills, and perfor-mance in line with the goals and values of the organization and in relation to theinterests and needs of the employee.

5 This definition submits that the growth ofemployee Development must be linked to the school district s strategic plan and tothe short- and long-range workforce assets. Such a concept requires an ability toanticipate gaps in the knowledge and skills of the workforce and how the changingschool system s demographics, economic status, and present employee inventorywill impact the accomplishment of stated goals and objectives. In this sense, staffdevelopment places an emphasis on organizational learning and is provided at theidentified time of need either by the organization, by an employee group, or bythe individual worker. It emphasizes the premise that organizations will progress tothe extent that people grow and term Staff developmentgenerally is preferred to the term trainingin profes-sional fields, although definitions of the two terms often are quite similar in the liter-ature.

6 For example, as previously noted, Harris speaks of Staff Development as havingtwo kinds of training, one of which is in-service training. Among the trends in humanresources administration today is tying Staff Development to the motivation, deploy-ment, and alignment of people within the system to increase the system s productiv-ity. A relatively new term for this relationship is talent fact thatorganizations will realize greater personnel Performance by developing and using thestrengths of its human assets rather than focusing on their weaknesses is a conceptdeveloped by Clifton and Nelson in their work,Soar With Your Strengths(1996).Historically, Staff Development has been a reactive program.

7 The inadequacies inthe preparation of teachers before 1900 and many years thereafter required majorremediation programs. As early as 1882, Bloss noted in his annual report to the Governor of Indiana, that The fact that so large a portion of the teachers areinexperienced is not the only difficulty, since the statistics for the past three yearsshow .. the majority of teachers licensed to teach are by no means the most competent (p. 156). In fact, the need to provide the missing education for the Staff Development and Performance Evaluation Processes 3/20/2008 2:07 PM Page 195ill-prepared teachers dominated in-service programs in most school districts dur-ing much of the first half of the twentieth century.

8 Such motivation unfortunatelycontinues in many schools today. As a result, participants in such programs oftenapproach in-service with little motivation and considerable Development must be proactive rather than reactive; its effectivenessdepends on the extent to which it is personalized and based on positive is not that concern for deficiencies in Staff preparation and the need to updateskills are not appropriate concerns of Staff Development ; rather, remediation shouldnot assume the dominant role. The human resources planning process must pro-ject and predict as accurately as possible the human skills and talents necessary tomeet system needs in the immediate and long-range future.

9 Armed with thisinformation, along with important ongoing recommendations from building-levelpersonnel, Staff Development joins other personnel Processes to build the humanresources necessary to keep the school system alive and vital. These program activ-ities become cooperative endeavors that account for personal interest as well as forlocal building and organizational program position taken in this text is that Staff Development is individual must assume the primary responsibility for his or her continuouspersonal growth. When this occurs, a school system truly begins to demonstrate thecharacteristics of a learning organization whereby the needs in the system are read-ily identified by the system personnel and the personnel initiate steps to correct orimprove the identified discussion of Staff Development , then, is based primarily on the followingconcepts:1.

10 The Staff Development process is developmental in that its emphasis is on acontinuously growing individual. In this sense, Staff Development is an ongo-ing process as opposed to a one-time project. It focuses on projected needsand objectives that will help the school system remain creative and produc-tive. Individual growth that meets these projected needs provides employeeswith a personalized opportunity to reach higher levels of self-fulfillment andgratification. Staff Development is viewed as an important investment in theschool system s Effective Staff Development places greater emphasis on the extension of per-sonal strengths and creative talents than on the remediation of personalweaknesses.