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| ABE and Professional Development |  About 60 adult basic education decision-makers and practitioners from 10 states whom we interviewed describe ABE practitioners as starved for professional development and having little opportunity to sate their appetites. People argue that professional development does occur and that it is high on most people's job-related wish lists. On the other hand, only some individuals participate in these activities to the extent that they think are necessary to grow as educators, and many participate only on their own time and at their own expense. There are five factors that negatively influence the ability of these people to find paid, professional time to acquire, process, and practice new knowledge and skills. These are defined as a distance, time constraints, information gaps, goal mismatch, and lack of face-to-face interaction. Here you can find how to detail them and conclude with some thoughts about possible remedies.
Distance
Primary, professional progress is rarely offered locally: events established by an employing institution or workshops or meetings in close proximity to educators offered by experienced and knowledgeable agencies. The reasons are readily acknowledged. The large number of sparse, dispersed teaching staff (a small number of teachers having multiple work locations and differing time schedules) makes it difficult for more than a handful of people to be physically proximate very often, especially in rural areas. Usually, the only choice for local professional development is traveling to regional, state, or national conferences. Employers differ significantly in the extent to which they encourage and facilitate their staffs' attendance at these events by paying for travel to or participation in professional development activities.
Time Constraints
As a result of limited program resources, many ABE educators work part-time. Some agree with this, but many struggle with its professional implications. Teachers basically argue that they are paid to teach and do little else. For some there’re the equivalent of a class period every so often in which to work on lesson plans but are allotted almost never any paid time to attend conferences, access materials and research, or share information with colleagues. The last are done on practitioners' own time, if at all. Professional growth, consequently, is a periodic phenomenon in ABE educators' work, dependent upon their almost heroic efforts to participate rather than the concerted, systematic focus of their employing institutions.
Information Gaps
For the reason that the lack of time and money rarely puts practitioners in a position to obtain information about research and practice directly, they must depend on other ABE professionals to steer materials, workshop announcements, and other professional resources their way. Eventually, resource center staff, program directors, state coordinators, and teaching supervisors inadvertently become de facto professional development gate-keepers. Some people who are in these positions acknowledge and embrace the knowledge-brokering aspect of their jobs. Some people, like the teachers, say that passing along information and encouraging participation in professional development is only a minuscule, and often not formally designated, part of what they have to do. The study information and professional development opportunities, as a result, is hit or miss and mostly a function of the individual people in these gate-keeping positions.
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