Page 81 - International Journal of Process Educaiton (Special Issue)

Professional Development (1991)
Professional development offers faculty the opportunity to experience transformational learning
by discovering and experiencing, first-hand, the techniques, tools, processes, philosophy, and
culture of Process Education. This helps them to elevate their practice, increasing learner success
and growth in their own students.
Genesis of the Teaching Institute
Between 1985 and 1992 Pacific Crest held more than 500
workshops to support the use of its problem-solving and
modeling software PC:SOLVE; these workshops focused
on instructional computing and the design of learning
activities (Pacific Crest, 1992). During the course of
running these workshops, it became apparent that there
was an acute need for engaged and innovative faculty to
collaborate and share teaching and learning discoveries
with others (Dan Apple, personal recollection). This was
the impetus for creating the Problem Solving Across the
Curriculum Conference (Kramer & Beery, 1990).
This conference was successful and it triggered animated
discussions that lasted well into the night. As a result of this at: http://fs20.formsite.com/pacificcrest/form24/ (Pacific Crest,
success, Pacific Crest partnered with the SUNY Training
Center, IBM ACIS, and the FACT committee to sponsor a
teacher workshop series in the spring of 1991, supporting
seven different disciplines at six locations across New
York State for a total of 42 workshops (SUNY Training
Center, 1991). The first Pacific Crest Teaching Institute
was held later that summer (Apple, 1991), its content
based on lessons learned from hundreds of workshops
and discussions with thousands of educators, not least the
more than 20 faculty who elected to stay an extra day at the
PSAC conference and collaborate on the Learning Process
Model (See the Learning Process Methodology section).
The Pieces and Patterns
While this was only the first Teaching Institute, as has
been noted in other sections of this article, so many of
the critical pieces of Process Education were already in
place: learning as a process, the Learning Process Model,
discovery learning, learning skills, a focus on problem
solving, cooperative learning, mentoring, peer coaching,
and assessment (Apple, 1991). The goal of the institute is,
“to help its participants to be successful change agents to
help their college to increase their educational outcomes.”
The Teaching Institute also focused on growing both the
learning and teaching processes of faculty by having
them play the role of learners. As stated in the notes for
the Teaching Institute, “To illustrate what education and
learning is all about, this session is organized to use (and
improve) the processes that we are developing” (Apple,
1991).
International Journal of Process Education (February 2016, Volume 8 Issue 1)
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The following line from the notes is perhaps more critical,
at least from the perspective of a professional development
program: “The facilitators are interested in modifying and
evolving the teacher institute's curriculum.” This seemingly
trivial sentence is actually a commitment not only to
teaching the process of assessment, but also to practicing
it: seeking continual improvement on the basis of research,
collaboration, and learning. It is for this reason, more than
any other, that the professional development offerings
have continued to grow; the growth is based on the synergy
between participants, facilitators, and mentors. The more
any of us learn, the more we have to share. Every Pacific
Crest institute, including the first Teaching Institute in
1991, has sought assessment feedback from participants;
the current institute assessment form is available online
2015b).
The Structure of the Teaching Institute: Walking
the Talk
Because the principles of Process Education, particularly
assessment, are consistently modeled with faculty during
workshops and Teaching Institutes, assessment-based
feedback from participants led to changes in subsequent
institutes, with major changes integrated on a yearly basis.
Two early pieces of feedback requested 1) breaking the
Teaching Institute into daily workshops spread over time,
and 2) bringing in faculty who were experts in Process
Education who have experienced the Teaching Institute
(these are now termed “Teaching Institute mentors”).
As a result, during 1994/1995, the Teaching Institute
was presented as a flexible four-part series of half-day
workshops (Dan Apple, personal recollection). It is worthy
of note that each of these “parts” is still present, in some
form, in the current Teaching Institute:
Part 1: An Introduction to Process Education
Part 2: Designing Process Curricula
Part 3: Implementing Process Curricula
Part 4: Modeling Process Education with Students
From 1993 to 2000, the Teaching Institute handbook
content and activities expanded:
• 1993: 54 pages (Pacific Crest)
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