Kansans Can: Redesign Professional Learning and Re-licensure

Abstract

Professional learning is and always has been a core expectation for educators. Educators, whether they are self-directed as intrinsically motivated learners or compliantly fulfilling requirements set by their employing districts and state departments, engage in professional learning throughout their careers. While educators engage in traditional means of professional learning in the form of workshops, conferences, mentoring, and graduate coursework, this study centered on educators’ professional learning efforts that are more informal and more personalized to their specific interests and passions. This professional learning often comes in the nonconventional forms of social media, professional learning networks, peer observations, and professional units of study known as micro-credentials (Ady, Kinsella, & Paynter, 2015). These forms of learning are more specific to individual educators’ needs and interests are categorized as personalized professional learning (Cator, Schneider, & Vander Ark, 2014). In this study, personalized professional learning is explored in the form of micro-credentials.