The need for a change in the staff development practices in school systems has been well documented by many researchers and teachers. The debate in how to create an effective staff development program follows the same type of debate now central in the news and media on traditional vs.progressive and transformative practices.
Traditional education focuses on asking only questions, which there are definitive answers to.
In a progressive system, the process is as important as the product. The actual answer is not as important as to how the answer was achieved. Transformative education seeks to find the context with which we see the answers to develop a deeper more meaningful learning. These ideas are results-driven education, systems thinking, and constructivism. Results driven education starts off with an end product and then develops the steps to get to that end.