What PD happens? My organization is an industrial association which belongs to the local Industrial and Commercial Bureau and is regarded as a governmental department. At first, there was not performance evaluation. Then, due to an accident in their jurisdiction, it directly led to the changes in progress. In order to promote the reform, the bureau had to introduce a new on-line system and implement the performance evaluation. Meanwhile, the leaders organized some training courses for assisting staffs to adapt the changes. However, the effect is little.
Following is the mainly reasons: 1. The performance evaluation system is imperfect. As a governmental department, the performance evaluation is rarely used, because the government has a set of fixed standard, while it was quite rigid. Therefore, the new performance evaluation system was firstly implemented, which was in line with the reform principle. However, during the process of its implementation, the leader only focus on the fixed quota and never consider other factors, which had caused quite discontent.
2. There lacks collective vision. As a governmental department, they have not a definite vision. In China, if you become a civil servant, it means that you get a "gold bowl"—a respectable income, and a leisure work life. Perhaps, they never consider what their vision is. Although the new on-line system was introduced and be put in daily life, they only complained it, and never considered how used it and what the goals to use it.
3. There lacks effective incentive. As a civil servant, the government has a set of standard to distribute the income and wealth. Although the new performance evaluation indicated that the workload would be comparatively important. In fact, the considered flexible distribution part is quite small. Therefore, the motivation lost its function. Therefore, according to the framework of Newhouse et. al. (2002), my organization always presented confusion and resistance.
What would you like to see in your organisation?
At first, the organization needs to build an effective performance evaluation system and then improve the performance management. In order to get this aim, the staffs must have a clear impression on their collective vision, which the association needs to give enough indication and support. Besides, the association need to strengthen the motivation. As the A Framework for Improving Performance said (Lusthaus et. al. , 2002) that “Organization's motivation affects the quality of work, the nature of how the organization competes, and the degree of involvement of institutional stakeholders in decision-making processes”. Therefore, the association also needs to enhance the motivation and incentives, not only in income, but also in self-improvement.
According to what we discussed in session 5 and other materials related to this topic， I acquire a basic understanding of PD (professional development) which focus on the process of making change. There are several steps of PD based on Wellivers Instructional Transformation Model, including familiarization, utilization, integration, reorientation and revolution. Also, there are several factors which are essential to PD, including vision, skills, incentives, resources, action plan and collegiality. Since I have described the changing that is happening in my working place in activity 2 and analysis 5 aspects deciding whether the changes are successful in activity 3, I will further analysis the PD directly here. As for the first change I mentioned before that technology is gradually introduced to our classes, I think we have already reached the second stage: utilization, which means basic technologies such as ppt, video and online test system have been widely used by a great number of teachers while there are still teachers who refuse to use technologies for their own reasons. Then I will discuss the situation from 6 aspects mentioned before. 1.Vision（confusion）：teachers who are positive to use the new technology share similar vision that technology will make the pedagogy process more effective. Although how much influence has been exerted by high-tech should be reconsidered（Here is a paper worth reading about the certain topic: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1176036?seq=1）, these people are tend to use new technology in their classes. Also，those who refuse the change claim that teachers’ excellent performance is the key point in class， which should not be replaced by any technology, otherwise， the core competition of our company will be threatened. Hence, a totally different vision will lead to different attitude towards technology in class. In addition, an interesting phenomena in our school is that those who has no vision about their classes or the development of the school are easily influenced by both sides, which means they may use technology in some occasions while give up it easily in others for the reason that whether technology is useful in class has never been considered seriously by them.
2.Skills（anxiety）:It is always a significantly important problem in using technology. For those who are not use computers and multimedia frequently, anxiety is a common feeling among them. However, once they are familiar with the skills and the equipments, anxiety will disappear automatically.
3. Incentive（resistance）:Before use the technology， teachers may have a question that why we should give up the traditional way of teaching and make a change. I think the incentives may come from two aspects. The first one is the curiosity of trying something new. People who keep such kind of curiosity are frequently referred to as innovators as we discussed before. The second one is imitation, which is the real incentive of most followers. 2 years ago, when I went to Beijing to accept the training offered by my company, a training teacher gave us a course focusing on the use of technology in our classes. He compared the traditional way and the new way with high-tech to explain the same idea in a same class. The differences were obvious. Therefore, lots of teachers, including myself began to realize the usage of technology and think about how to use them in our own classes. 4.Resources（frustration）: Once teachers are willing to use technology, whether there are enough resources is a first problem they will consider for the reason that no one can create all the materials in class and most information should be collected first and then it can be used effectively. In our school, most resources related to our courses and exams are easily found. For example, when I began to prepare for my first courses, my director recommended a useful website (www.zxxk.com) to me where there are almost all the materials we need. However, when the exams are changed, our courses should be changed too. Then it is not quite easy for us to get useful materials. For example, in 2011, English oral exam will be introduced to college entrance exam, therefore, we begin to collect relative materials. But there is few resources online and the feeling of frustration is obvious in our organization. 5.Action plan（treadmill）：To make a try is always much more important than just to think about it over and over again. When the director made a plan and forced teachers to finish certain assignments before a due date, the outcome was obvious. Also, if the teacher determines to use technology to make his classes better and made a plan for himself, he is more likely to use them in a better way than others without any plans just complaining that the job is boring. 6.Collegiality（isolation）Since our courses are always given individually ,there are not too many chances for teachers to cooperate , compare and communicate with each other. If the school can hold some activities to enable teachers to share their experiences of using technology, as well as other experiences in teaching, the quality of courses will be improved.
According to what Angie and Azalea stated in this activity, I would like to share some opinions about the characters of different kinds of companies in mainland China, depending on the financial resources. The companies which are invested and supported by government are referred to as State-owned enterprise. The advantage is obvious that there are a great amount of money and resources to fulfill relatively huge and complext tasks while the disadvantage is that there is a lack of supervision which will lead to unlimited power of the leaders. Therefore, as they stated in their answers, the development direction is always decided by leaders rather than the real need of the companies and the society, which will give rise to curious situations as it did in the case mentioned above. On the other hand, the organization I mentioned is a privatelly-run enterprise which was listed in New York Stock Exchange in 2006. It is also the first listed company in the education in mainland China. Luckily, there is no State-owned enterprise in this area. Otherwise, it is impossible for our company to develop fast for the competition is certain to be unfair. That is also the reason why our founder Yu Minhong chooses the field of education and insists it for nearly 18 years. The sad truth is that the most money and resources are not used properly by those who are really experts in many areas. The foundation reason is quite complex and they are even related to the policy of the country. However, we will also try our best to make a change both on the government level and on the individual level. Although it is really a struggling, challenging and perhaps a dangerous process, we will never give up easily, which is also a reason why we come to study here.
First, we have to understand what professional development (PD) is.
"Professional development ... goes beyond the term 'training' with its implications of learning skills, and encompasses a definition that includes formal and informal means of helping teachers not only learn new skills but also develop new insights into pedagogy and their own practice, and explore new or advanced understandings of content and resources.”
Professional Development: Source: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/profdevl/pd2prof.htm
It is important to know PD can help people goes beyond their own practice and learning in order to lead them to explore and develop the new insights on what they are doing.
Therefore, we may use a framework for performance and evaluation in learning organization which is called organizational assessment framework to see whether PD happens in my organization. The framework is based on four aspects below:
Organizational Capacity My previous working organization is like government department since government provides all financial resource to my organization. Also, our department leaders were changed by top management regularly from time to time because they have fixed service period such as a 2-year term. And, most of leaders are not from the same industry so that their expertise may not be applicable to our department.
External Environmental Being one of major online news platforms in China, my organization is required to catch up today’s technological change. Also, in terms of economic perspective, most of subsidy organizations in China are required to be a profit making organization in near future.
Motivation As mentioned, the background of my organization is related to the government. Actually, it is one of major three licensed news channels about financial news in China. Thus, my organization has a mission to service the public to obtain the real and true news in time. Nowadays, the business environment is rapidly changing. Ready-to-change is one of my organizational cultures. In addition, the leaders in my organization will link up the staff performance with the performance of change program to assess and provide the incentive to the good performers.
Organizational Performance In conclusion, my organization is still ineffective as a learning organization. In financial perspective, almost of all change programs were taken a long time and used up a lot of fund. Some of them were even failed. I think the major reason of low performance because of the poor leadership. The leaders would like to implement the change program but they do not have sufficient knowledge in this industry. Therefore, they do not know what the important part in the change program is. Also, they would like to make the outstanding performance during their service period so they always make some change from time to time and forget what the organization and people really needed. However, most of change programs will be completed because people in organization are required to achieve the change programs to have their incentive. Unfortunately, those change programs are used up a lot of resource and may be out-dated due to the long duration of implementation. As a result, people in my organization are keeping change by many new change programs. I believe they are learning goes beyond their own practice but they do not explore and develop the new insights on what they are doing.
What PD would you like to see in your organization?
According to the above mentioned, the key factors making ineffective PD in my organization are the issues of leadership and implementation. Indeed, the ultimate objectives of all change programs should be delivered to all related staff by the leaders. Although leaders are important in the process of change, the followers should be continued the programs to achieve the ultimate objectives, instead of making some unnecessary changes if the leaders may be replaced or left. The effective project management is also essential to make the success to finish the change programs on time and within budget. Otherwise, the result of change program will be out-dated, and then it is required to make another change again. Therefore, the effective leadership and project management can tackle these two key issues in my organization in professional development. In conclusion, staff will learn from the benefit of change and start to think how to make some change on their own practice with their own ideas and insights. In the other word, “organizations learn only through individuals who learn”. (Senge, 1990, p. 139) Then, the effective PD is really happened in my organization.
Since I worked for government, our government forced on Professional Development to identify the competencies and skills required of a local civil servant. During a process facilitated, we set 7 items as below:
1. Staff Effectiveness: Promoting the development and performance of staff and employees throughout the organization (requires knowledge of interpersonal relations; skill in motivation techniques; ability to identify others’ strengths and weaknesses).
2. Policy Facilitation: Helping elected officials and other community actors identify, work toward, and achieve common goals and objectives (requires knowledge of group dynamics and political behavior; skill in communication, facilitation, and consensus building techniques; ability to engage others in identifying issues and outcomes).
3. Functional and Operational Expertise and Planning (a component of Service Delivery Management).
4. Citizen Service (a component of Service Delivery management): Determining citizen needs and providing responsive, equitable services to the community (requires skill in assessing community needs and allocating resources; Knowledge of information gathering techniques).
5. Quality Assurance (a component of Service Delivery Management): Maintaining a consistently high level of quality in staff work, operational procedures, and service delivery (require knowledge of organizational processes; ability to facilitate organizational improvements; ability to set performance/productivity standards and objectives and measure results).
6. Technological Literacy (a component of Strategic Leadership): Demonstrating an understanding of information technology and ensuring that it is incorporated appropriately in plans to improve service delivery, information sharing , organizational communication, and citizen access (requires knowledge of technological options and their application).
7. Budgeting: Preparing and administering the budget (require knowledge of budgeting principles and practices, revenue sources, projection techniques, and financial control systems; skill in communicating financial information) .
RE:Jacqueline(Yang Ye) According to the Jacqueline,different organizations have differences. I think sometimes, the private companies will organize more professional development.Besides, they have much specific vision and motivation.
What PD happens?
ReplyDeleteMy organization is an industrial association which belongs to the local Industrial and Commercial Bureau and is regarded as a governmental department. At first, there was not performance evaluation. Then, due to an accident in their jurisdiction, it directly led to the changes in progress. In order to promote the reform, the bureau had to introduce a new on-line system and implement the performance evaluation. Meanwhile, the leaders organized some training courses for assisting staffs to adapt the changes. However, the effect is little.
Following is the mainly reasons:
1. The performance evaluation system is imperfect.
As a governmental department, the performance evaluation is rarely used, because the government has a set of fixed standard, while it was quite rigid. Therefore, the new performance evaluation system was firstly implemented, which was in line with the reform principle. However, during the process of its implementation, the leader only focus on the fixed quota and never consider other factors, which had caused quite discontent.
2. There lacks collective vision.
As a governmental department, they have not a definite vision. In China, if you become a civil servant, it means that you get a "gold bowl"—a respectable income, and a leisure work life. Perhaps, they never consider what their vision is. Although the new on-line system was introduced and be put in daily life, they only complained it, and never considered how used it and what the goals to use it.
3. There lacks effective incentive. As a civil servant, the government has a set of standard to distribute the income and wealth. Although the new performance evaluation indicated that the workload would be comparatively important. In fact, the considered flexible distribution part is quite small. Therefore, the motivation lost its function.
Therefore, according to the framework of Newhouse et. al. (2002), my organization always presented confusion and resistance.
What would you like to see in your organisation?
At first, the organization needs to build an effective performance evaluation system and then improve the performance management. In order to get this aim, the staffs must have a clear impression on their collective vision, which the association needs to give enough indication and support. Besides, the association need to strengthen the motivation. As the A Framework for Improving Performance said (Lusthaus et. al. , 2002) that “Organization's motivation affects the quality of work, the nature of how the organization competes, and the degree of involvement of institutional stakeholders in decision-making processes”. Therefore, the association also needs to enhance the motivation and incentives, not only in income, but also in self-improvement.
According to what we discussed in session 5 and other materials related to this topic， I acquire a basic understanding of PD (professional development) which focus on the process of making change. There are several steps of PD based on Wellivers Instructional Transformation Model, including familiarization, utilization, integration, reorientation and revolution. Also, there are several factors which are essential to PD, including vision, skills, incentives, resources, action plan and collegiality.
ReplyDeleteSince I have described the changing that is happening in my working place in activity 2 and analysis 5 aspects deciding whether the changes are successful in activity 3, I will further analysis the PD directly here.
As for the first change I mentioned before that technology is gradually introduced to our classes, I think we have already reached the second stage: utilization, which means basic technologies such as ppt, video and online test system have been widely used by a great number of teachers while there are still teachers who refuse to use technologies for their own reasons. Then I will discuss the situation from 6 aspects mentioned before.
1.Vision（confusion）：teachers who are positive to use the new technology share similar vision that technology will make the pedagogy process more effective. Although how much influence has been exerted by high-tech should be reconsidered（Here is a paper worth reading about the certain topic:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1176036?seq=1）, these people are tend to use new technology in their classes. Also，those who refuse the change claim that teachers’ excellent performance is the key point in class， which should not be replaced by any technology, otherwise， the core competition of our company will be threatened. Hence, a totally different vision will lead to different attitude towards technology in class. In addition, an interesting phenomena in our school is that those who has no vision about their classes or the development of the school are easily influenced by both sides, which means they may use technology in some occasions while give up it easily in others for the reason that whether technology is useful in class has never been considered seriously by them.
2.Skills（anxiety）:It is always a significantly important problem in using technology. For those who are not use computers and multimedia frequently, anxiety is a common feeling among them. However, once they are familiar with the skills and the equipments, anxiety will disappear automatically.
3. Incentive（resistance）:Before use the technology， teachers may have a question that why we should give up the traditional way of teaching and make a change. I think the incentives may come from two aspects. The first one is the curiosity of trying something new. People who keep such kind of curiosity are frequently referred to as innovators as we discussed before. The second one is imitation, which is the real incentive of most followers. 2 years ago, when I went to Beijing to accept the training offered by my company, a training teacher gave us a course focusing on the use of technology in our classes. He compared the traditional way and the new way with high-tech to explain the same idea in a same class. The differences were obvious. Therefore, lots of teachers, including myself began to realize the usage of technology and think about how to use them in our own classes.
ReplyDelete4.Resources（frustration）: Once teachers are willing to use technology, whether there are enough resources is a first problem they will consider for the reason that no one can create all the materials in class and most information should be collected first and then it can be used effectively. In our school, most resources related to our courses and exams are easily found. For example, when I began to prepare for my first courses, my director recommended a useful website (www.zxxk.com) to me where there are almost all the materials we need. However, when the exams are changed, our courses should be changed too. Then it is not quite easy for us to get useful materials. For example, in 2011, English oral exam will be introduced to college entrance exam, therefore, we begin to collect relative materials. But there is few resources online and the feeling of frustration is obvious in our organization.
5.Action plan（treadmill）：To make a try is always much more important than just to think about it over and over again. When the director made a plan and forced teachers to finish certain assignments before a due date, the outcome was obvious. Also, if the teacher determines to use technology to make his classes better and made a plan for himself, he is more likely to use them in a better way than others without any plans just complaining that the job is boring.
6.Collegiality（isolation）Since our courses are always given individually ,there are not too many chances for teachers to cooperate , compare and communicate with each other. If the school can hold some activities to enable teachers to share their experiences of using technology, as well as other experiences in teaching, the quality of courses will be improved.
According to what Angie and Azalea stated in this activity, I would like to share some opinions about the characters of different kinds of companies in mainland China, depending on the financial resources.
ReplyDeleteThe companies which are invested and supported by government are referred to as State-owned enterprise. The advantage is obvious that there are a great amount of money and resources to fulfill relatively huge and complext tasks while the disadvantage is that there is a lack of supervision which will lead to unlimited power of the leaders. Therefore, as they stated in their answers, the development direction is always decided by leaders rather than the real need of the companies and the society, which will give rise to curious situations as it did in the case mentioned above.
On the other hand, the organization I mentioned is a privatelly-run enterprise which was listed in New York Stock Exchange in 2006. It is also the first listed company in the education in mainland China. Luckily, there is no State-owned enterprise in this area. Otherwise, it is impossible for our company to develop fast for the competition is certain to be unfair. That is also the reason why our founder Yu Minhong chooses the field of education and insists it for nearly 18 years.
The sad truth is that the most money and resources are not used properly by those who are really experts in many areas. The foundation reason is quite complex and they are even related to the policy of the country. However, we will also try our best to make a change both on the government level and on the individual level. Although it is really a struggling, challenging and perhaps a dangerous process, we will never give up easily, which is also a reason why we come to study here.
What PD happens in your organization?/
ReplyDeleteFirst, we have to understand what professional development (PD) is.
"Professional development ... goes beyond the term 'training' with its implications of learning skills, and encompasses a definition that includes formal and informal means of helping teachers not only learn new skills but also develop new insights into pedagogy and their own practice, and explore new or advanced understandings of content and resources.”
Professional Development:
Source: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/educatrs/profdevl/pd2prof.htm
It is important to know PD can help people goes beyond their own practice and learning in order to lead them to explore and develop the new insights on what they are doing.
Therefore, we may use a framework for performance and evaluation in learning organization which is called organizational assessment framework to see whether PD happens in my organization. The framework is based on four aspects below:
1. Organizational Capacity
2. Organizational Motivation
3. Environment
4. Organizational Performance
Organizational Capacity
My previous working organization is like government department since government provides all financial resource to my organization. Also, our department leaders were changed by top management regularly from time to time because they have fixed service period such as a 2-year term. And, most of leaders are not from the same industry so that their expertise may not be applicable to our department.
External Environmental
Being one of major online news platforms in China, my organization is required to catch up today’s technological change. Also, in terms of economic perspective, most of subsidy organizations in China are required to be a profit making organization in near future.
Motivation
As mentioned, the background of my organization is related to the government. Actually, it is one of major three licensed news channels about financial news in China. Thus, my organization has a mission to service the public to obtain the real and true news in time. Nowadays, the business environment is rapidly changing. Ready-to-change is one of my organizational cultures. In addition, the leaders in my organization will link up the staff performance with the performance of change program to assess and provide the incentive to the good performers.
Organizational Performance
In conclusion, my organization is still ineffective as a learning organization. In financial perspective, almost of all change programs were taken a long time and used up a lot of fund. Some of them were even failed. I think the major reason of low performance because of the poor leadership. The leaders would like to implement the change program but they do not have sufficient knowledge in this industry. Therefore, they do not know what the important part in the change program is. Also, they would like to make the outstanding performance during their service period so they always make some change from time to time and forget what the organization and people really needed. However, most of change programs will be completed because people in organization are required to achieve the change programs to have their incentive. Unfortunately, those change programs are used up a lot of resource and may be out-dated due to the long duration of implementation. As a result, people in my organization are keeping change by many new change programs. I believe they are learning goes beyond their own practice but they do not explore and develop the new insights on what they are doing.
-----(Azalea Yan)
What PD would you like to see in your organization?
ReplyDeleteAccording to the above mentioned, the key factors making ineffective PD in my organization are the issues of leadership and implementation. Indeed, the ultimate objectives of all change programs should be delivered to all related staff by the leaders. Although leaders are important in the process of change, the followers should be continued the programs to achieve the ultimate objectives, instead of making some unnecessary changes if the leaders may be replaced or left. The effective project management is also essential to make the success to finish the change programs on time and within budget. Otherwise, the result of change program will be out-dated, and then it is required to make another change again. Therefore, the effective leadership and project management can tackle these two key issues in my organization in professional development. In conclusion, staff will learn from the benefit of change and start to think how to make some change on their own practice with their own ideas and insights. In the other word, “organizations learn only through individuals who learn”. (Senge, 1990, p. 139) Then, the effective PD is really happened in my organization.
--------(Azalea Yan)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSince I worked for government, our government forced on Professional Development to identify the competencies and skills required of a local civil servant. During a process facilitated, we set 7 items as below:
ReplyDelete1. Staff Effectiveness: Promoting the development and performance of staff and employees throughout the organization (requires knowledge of interpersonal relations; skill in motivation techniques; ability to identify others’ strengths and weaknesses).
2. Policy Facilitation: Helping elected officials and other community actors identify, work toward, and achieve common goals and objectives (requires knowledge of group dynamics and political behavior; skill in communication, facilitation, and consensus building techniques; ability to engage others in identifying issues and outcomes).
3. Functional and Operational Expertise and Planning (a component of Service Delivery Management).
4. Citizen Service (a component of Service Delivery management): Determining citizen needs and providing responsive, equitable services to the community (requires skill in assessing community needs and allocating resources; Knowledge of information gathering techniques).
5. Quality Assurance (a component of Service Delivery Management): Maintaining a consistently high level of quality in staff work, operational procedures, and service delivery (require knowledge of organizational processes; ability to facilitate organizational improvements; ability to set performance/productivity standards and objectives and measure results).
6. Technological Literacy (a component of Strategic Leadership): Demonstrating an understanding of information technology and ensuring that it is incorporated appropriately in plans to improve service delivery, information sharing , organizational communication, and citizen access (requires knowledge of technological options and their application).
7. Budgeting: Preparing and administering the budget (require knowledge of budgeting principles and practices, revenue sources, projection techniques, and financial control systems; skill in communicating financial information) .
---------------------by Ximeng Li
RE:Jacqueline(Yang Ye)
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Jacqueline,different organizations have differences. I think sometimes, the private companies will organize more professional development.Besides, they have much specific vision and motivation.