Personalized Professional Learning for Elementary Bilingual Educators: A Policy Advocacy Document

<p>This policy advocacy document advocates a policy to strengthen an existing elementary bilingual program through personalized professional development. Twin goals of the proposed policy are to (1) increase student achievement and (2) increase bilingual teacher retention. District 32’s bilingual program recently shifted from a Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) model to a Developmental Bilingual Education (DBE) model, which emphasized biliteracy. As a small suburban school district with a rapidly rising Hispanic and low-income student population, this shift raised awareness among district administrators of the need for a new professional development model geared toward its mostly inexperienced bilingual teachers. To be immediately effective, this new professional development model would need to be more classroom-based, frequent, and focused on sustained personalized professional learning. Key to providing this kind of in-depth, individualized professional learning is hiring a full-time bilingual consulting teacher. Browder’s (1995) policy advocacy needs analysis framework is used to analyze the educational, economic, social, political, and moral/ethical dimensions of the proposed policy, and to identify related best practices in professional learning for bilingual educators. Guskey’s (2002) five-level professional development framework and Escamilla’s (2014) biliteracy observation protocol are utilized in the policy’s implementation plan and assessment plan. </p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Ed.D. Doctor of Education

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation - Public Access

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educational Leadership

Year dc:date.available

2016

Author dc:creator

• Robinson, Nicole M.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. Norman Weston
• Dr. Jack Denny
• Dr. Jason Stegemoller

• peer assistance and review program
• PAR program
• Educational Leadership

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.nl.edu/diss/206

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.nl.edu:diss-1216