National Center on Secondary Education and Transition: Creating opportunities for youth with disabilities to achieve successful futures.

Professional Development

Emerging & Promising Practices

Study Groups for Professional Development

Collegial study groups allow teachers to engage in professional development activities in small, cooperative learning groups.

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)

ASCD is promoting the concept of collegial study groups in schools. To support these groups, ASCD offers resources for groups and encourages ASCD Associates (those who have been members for four or more years) to take a leadership role in organizing study groups. Educational Leadership, published by ASCD, can serve as a starting point for many discussions, and extra resources and questions for use in study groups are available to be used with each issue of Educational Leadership. A few articles from each issue of Educational Leadership are available online at http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership.aspx. To access the supplemental resources for study group discussions, go to www.ascd.org and search for EL Extra.
www.ascd.org

Online Professional Development

Online professional development opportunities for teachers represent a growing trend. Below are links to several opportunities.

Council for Exceptional Children

A variety of professional development opportunities are featured on the Council for Exceptional Children Web page. Information is provided about the Council for Exceptional Children's upcoming continuing education workshops, web seminars, and conventions.
http://www.cec.sped.org/Professional-Development?sc_lang=en

LD Online Teacher's Homepage

The Teacher's Homepage at LD Online includes information helpful to teachers who want to improve their practice, as well as links to bulletin board discussions where teachers are invited to share with each other. Each month, ideas and strategies of expert teachers are shared in a feature called Mentor Teacher of the Month.
http://www.ldonline.org/educators

National Association of Secondary School Principals

The National Association of Secondary School Principals offers online professional development courses for principals. The online courses are separated into four topical libraries, and they are designed to allow individuals to direct their learning.
http://www.nassp.org/

Teacher Magazine

Teacher Magazine includes many articles on professional development. Also available is a monthly e-newsletter covering professional development topics.
http://www.edweek.org/tm

Transition Coalition

The "Training" tab on this Web site links to online training opportunities available through the Transition Coalition and the University of Kansas. These training programs include: Best Practices in Transition; Interagency and Community Systems for Serving Youth with Disabilities; and Assessing Students with Disabilities: Transition Planning for the IEP.
http://www.transitioncoalition.org/transition/

www.4teachers.org

This Web page from the High Plains Regional Technology in Education Consortium offers links to a number of organizations providing online professional development resources for teachers working with students who have special needs.
http://www.4teachers.org/profdev/sn.php