Online Professional Development for Teachers: Emerging Models and Methods.

Online Professional Development for Teachers: Emerging Models and Methods. Chris Dede, editor (Harvard Education Press).

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The sensible use of online and distance education is at the vanguard of today's efforts to rethink educational provision. Harvard professor Chris Dede has collected an important set of analyses to consider how online learning is being used to improve teacher quality. As Dede notes in his introduction, it is widely understood that today's professional-development programs are frequently mediocre, fragmented, and superficial. The promise of online professional development is that, if properly designed, it can provide cost-effective, tailored, "just-in-time" training. The challenge is making it work, a task that has suffered due to a lack of careful consideration of existing efforts. This volume examines ten diverse models, providing a comparative look at what's working and how these various efforts are designed. Chapters survey the existing research, what some of the leading providers look like, how online mentoring is being used, and what challenges exist. The volume doesn't probe as deeply into the evidence or into specific efforts as might be ideal, and some chapters are hobbled by clunky language, but the volume is a useful and important contribution. Dede and his colleagues close with some practical guidance for researchers and policymakers; the bottom line is that more research, experimentation, and bold thinking are essential in this realm.