Professional Development Opportunities for the Relief/Casual/Temporary Educator?

Are there enough face-to-face opportunities available?

Anecdotally, there has been a major shift with educators preferring to use online courses to complete the majority of their professional development hours. This results in very little face-to-face contact with other educators. I believe this is something we need to address.

 Are we maintaining the balance?

Due to today's busy lifestyle, with many educators juggling full-time work, families, children's sporting commitments, their own sporting commitments etc, completing professional development online is certainly perceived as an advantage. It is convenient and provides the flexibility for educators to complete their PD during their "down time" with the use of portable devices. As a result they have understandably adopted the “do anywhere at any time approach”. It is also important to recognise that it may be the only option available to educators living and working in rural or remote areas.

As a direct result of this trend, the number of professional development resources and technology available to educators has grown significantly over the last few years. There is certainly a place for this in our industry, and given that technology is always improving, the online presence in professional development will only continue to increase and there are certainly some exciting resources on the horizons particularly in VR technology.

However, does this mean we are going to see less and less of face-to-face professional development being offered? There already appear to be fewer diverse training options for educators to access, particularly for the casual teacher!

Face-to-face professional development still has a place in our industry and has significant benefits. It is well researched. As humans we tend to learn more when we are surrounded by other like-minded individuals. This leads to a better and deeper understanding of the material covered and a greater recall of what was learnt. Additionally, the passion of the presenter can be felt at the coal face, which is more likely to result in educators becoming more enthusiastic about the subject matter. Furthermore, when in a room with others, it provides opportunities to ask questions, start dialogues and ultimately learn from the experiences of not only the presenter but also the other educators, which is absolutely invaluable and cannot be replicated by completing an online course by yourself. Finally, the ultimate positive to come out of face-to-face professional development is networking with other educators.

The current generation of educators has grown up in an IT savvy world and I believe would be more inclined to opt for online professional development in an instant. 

Therefore, there needs to be a concerted effort made by current face-to-face professional development providers to bring their courses "in line" with the "online", to ensure face-to-face professional development will continue to be viable and relevant in today's society.

There is a real concern that our future educators will be presented with fewer and fewer opportunities to access face-to-face professional development opportunities and the unique benefits of this type of training will also be lost in the process.