Literature on teacher PD continually emphasizes dimensions of adult learning theory to position educators as professionals driving their own learning. Collaborative coaching models that seek to build partnerships between coaches and teachers thrive on mutual ownership and expertise to guide the coaching process. At the same time, we spend a lot of time addressing coaching discourse: both what coaches say and how they say it. In analyzing language, we look closely at use of reflective dialogue and questioning strategies as often derived from Cognitive Coaching. Within our coaching program, we put these ideas to practice through a number of video analysis activities that focus on balance of talk time and noting and naming coaches moves through language. In these cases, we bring in the 7 Norms of Collaboration to identify examples of paraphrasing, asking clarifying and probing questions, putting ideas on the table, validating teacher expertise, etc. 
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Yet, underlying these instructional approaches is a focus on coach behavior as it contributes to the collaborative experience. I recently found myself wondering if spending so much time on coach contributions is inherently limiting our understanding of teacher contributions and undermining the partnership framing to begin with. 

It's been a whirlwind this week as our Practicum course moved from the first half of our time together, focused on PLCs, and into the second half, focused on Special Interest Groups (SIGs). The SIGs are a new approach to designing our course experience by providing more CHOICE and OWNERSHIP to our participants. Organized into 8 topical groups, participants have been engaging in relevant readings as they work to plan a facilitated discussion and create a coaching resource/tool for peers to utilize at their own sites. The tricky part about this process is remembering that it all takes place virtually-- the collaborative planning and the conversation itself. This would be tough enough for a group of my younger, millennial undergraduates. While experienced educators, many of our participants are embarking in the online learning milieu for the first time as they participate in our program. And here we are, asking them to design and lead their own virtual PD of sorts.

I'm really excited to engage in these conversations, explore the tools they create, and celebrate the success of pushing our work forward by taking on this risk. The next few weeks will present a number of challenges, no doubt, but I'm hoping that the final products will be a launching point to continue this work in the future.

When we started our work with Teachology, we didn't have anything as explicit as the Teacher Educator Technology Competencies to work from. We did have ISTE's Educator Standards as inspiration, and we also worked from our own School of Education Standards (though technology was only briefly referenced within two sub-standards). However, the TETCs provide the exact type of framework we needed to guide our project. Alas, we must settle for applying the competencies retroactively :(

I only came across these competencies last week when working on a writing project featuring Teachology's peer-mentorship model of professional learning. Analyzing our work in light of the TETCs was still illuminating as it helped me to identify the dimensions of educator capacities most explicitly targeted within our workshop activities. 

The most relevant TETCs identified include:

• Standard 2: Teacher educators will incorporate pedagogical approaches that prepare teacher candidates to effectively use technology: a) model using technology for accessing, analyzing, creating, and evaluating information; and c) assist teacher candidates with the selection and use of content-specific technologies to support student learning
• Standard 3: Teacher educators will support the development of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of teacher candidates as related to teaching with technology in their content area: b) provide opportunities for teacher candidates to reflect on their attitudes about using technology for teaching and for their own learning; and c) provide opportunities to develop teacher candidates’ efficacy about using technology in teaching.

Great appreciation for the development of this document and the clarity in articulating design goals for educator professional learning-- a resource I will definitely return to in the future!