Webinars

1. Note your group's section assignments.
2. Assign facilitator, timekeeper, and reporter/note-taker for your group.
3. Read the information about the group's assigned sections, using the discussion prompts below, discuss and note what you learned about your group's assigned section.
4. Prepare to share highlights of what your group learned and discussed.

Assignments

• Overview: Everyone
• Primary Purpose and Outcomes: Groups 1 and 2
• Key Activities: Groups 3 and 4
• State Leadership Team (SLT): Groups 5 and 6
• Implementation Sites: Groups 7 and 8
• Data and Evaluation Systems: Groups 9 and 10
• Key Effective TA Practices to Implement: Groups 11 & 12

Discussion Prompts

• Key Takeaways: What were the most important insights or takeaways from your group's assigned section? What stood out to you, and why?
• Connection to Current Practice: How do the key ideas from your section align with what's currently happening in your group members' professional contexts?
  • What practices are already in place that reflect these ideas?
  • Where are there gaps or opportunities for further growth?
• Stakeholder Inclusion: When thinking about the needs analysis component discussed in your section:
  • Who (by role or perspective) did your group feel should be involved in that conversation?
  • Whose voices are essential to ensure the process is equitable and informed?

• Choose one of the following two scenarios your group will read:
  • Scenario 1: MidState Early Learning Collaborative Scenario Activity
  • Scenario 2: The State Office for Early Learning (SOEL).
• The scenario will include some key Needs Analysis characteristics and leave out others.
• Using the prompts, discuss the scenario and prepare to share highlights from your discussion with the whole group.

The MidState Early Learning Collaborative (MELC) was preparing to host a regional professional development (PD) session aimed at strengthening inclusive practices across early childhood education settings. The planning team, led by Jasmine (PD coordinator) and Marcus (program director), was excited to build on the momentum of their last training event and had just eight weeks to pull everything together.

They started by reviewing feedback surveys from the previous year's PD sessions. Most participants had expressed interest in strategies for inclusion and better communication with families, so Jasmine and Marcus decided to center the upcoming PD around those topics. They also reached out to a few center directors they had worked with before to get their informal take on current needs. With those inputs, they finalized the training focus within a week.

The team was confident that their in-house trainers could lead the sessions and identified a few staff who had recently attended national conferences. Jasmine and Marcus drafted the session agenda and began working on logistics, booking a local community center for an in-person event. They sent registration flyers to their regular mailing list of center directors and instructional coaches.

The planning moved quickly. While Jasmine briefly floated the idea of reaching out to some local agencies or university partners, the team decided to keep things simple due to the short timeline. They were also unsure who to contact, so they opted to move forward with the resources they already had.

The training day came, and attendance was lower than expected. A few attendees mentioned that the timing and location made it hard to attend, especially for those working in rural areas. Several educators who attended shared that the content felt somewhat generic and didn't speak to the specific challenges they were facing in their programs. Others noted that while inclusion was a great focus, they were unsure how to apply what they'd learned without broader changes in their site policies or staffing support.

After the event, Jasmine and Marcus met to reflect. They were surprised by the feedback and wondered how they could have better tailored the PD experience to support more practical implementation in the field.

The State Office for Early Learning (SOEL) had been tasked with developing a new professional development (PD) initiative focused on strengthening inclusive practices in early childhood education settings across the state. The initiative was part of a broader effort to align with IDEA requirements and increase access to quality inclusion for young children with disabilities.

To begin the planning process, SOEL convened their State Leadership Team (SLT), a group formed a year earlier with representatives from state departments (education, health, and human services), local districts, family advocacy organizations, higher education, and early intervention programs. The group met virtually to begin the needs analysis process and discuss initial priorities. During the meeting, the SLT reviewed state data on preschool inclusion rates, educator workforce shortages, and regional service delivery trends. Members shared insights from their respective sectors—highlighting issues such as technology gaps in rural areas, uneven family engagement practices, and the lack of alignment between early intervention and preschool transitions.

Several SLT members voiced concerns about relying solely on state-level data. A family representative asked if families had been consulted directly, while a district special education leader wondered whether providers in different program types (for example, Head Start, community-based centers) were experiencing the same challenges. The team agreed to form a small workgroup to dig deeper, but progress was slow.

The group met only once over the next two months due to scheduling conflicts and unclear roles. In the meantime, the PD planning timeline moved forward. A few SOEL staff developed draft learning objectives and began planning a virtual PD series focused on "inclusive environments through UDL and instructional design." They updated the SLT at the next quarterly meeting, asking for feedback on the draft agenda. Some SLT members expressed concern that their earlier input hadn't been reflected in the PD content. Others asked how the sessions would address issues like workforce burnout, policy barriers, and system misalignment that couldn't be solved through training alone. A few members questioned why the PD series was being planned before completing the deeper needs analysis they had originally discussed. One higher ed partner noted that with more time, the SLT could have supported long-term planning and developed recommendations to improve system-wide coherence.

Despite these concerns, the PD series proceeded as planned. Attendance was decent, but evaluations were mixed. Some educators found the content helpful, while others said it felt disconnected from their realities or too focused on theory. The SLT reconvened after the series to review feedback and agreed they needed to clarify their role in ongoing PD planning efforts and consider how to better integrate system-level priorities with PD support.

Individual Reflection

Reflect on how you've engaged with each essential support structure in planning the design of a professional development event. (3 minutes)

1. Read the features listed for each essential support structure and note those you've personally participated in.
2. Based on your review, place a check mark in the two boxes of the support structures that you leverage the most when design professional learning events.

Essential Support Structures

• Participate on or collaborate with the State Leadership Team (SLT)
  • to ensure the PD design process is informed and well-resourced
  • to define system-wide priorities and align PD with broader goals
  • to establish policies and allocate resources to sustain the design process
• Participate on or collaborate with the Professional Development Network (PDN)
  • to involve coaches and trainers in PD content and material design
  • to incorporate insights from local sites to tailor PD to specific contexts
  • to ensure learner input shapes PD design around their needs and preferences
  • to leverage the PDN's adult learning expertise to align content and strategies with learning goals
  • to ensure the PDN integrates current research and best practices into evidence-based PD design
  • to support the PDN in engaging external partners to bring diverse perspectives to the design process
• Participate on or collaborate with Implementation Sites
  • to gather site-specific insights and real-world examples to inform PD design
  • to use site input to align learning objectives with system and local goals
  • to incorporate site feedback to improve learner assessment and feedback strategies
• Engage with Data and Evaluation Systems
  • to analyze engagement data to inform the design of effective learning experiences
  • to use data and evaluation systems to select assessment methods and feedback tools aligned with learning goals
  • to apply data to ensure PD design is evidence-based and aligned with organizational priorities
  • to review local context data to tailor PD to site-specific needs and conditions
  • to integrate feedback from past PD to continuously improve design and outcomes

Partner Discussion

Now, in your discussion pair, reflect on and discuss where your efforts have been concentrated in terms of the essential support structures that you leverage the most in the design phase of professional development. You'll have about 10 minutes for this exchange. Make sure both of you have ample time to share and listen. (10 minutes)

Use the following guiding questions to support a thoughtful conversation:

1. Which essential support structure (for example, SLT, PDN, Data Systems, etc.) is your primary focus?
2. Which support structures or areas have you not yet engaged with or engaged in the least, and why?
3. Where have you seen the most success in your efforts, and what contributed to that success?
4. Where do you tend to get stuck? Is it tied to a specific support structure or a particular activity (for example, integrating current research into PD design)?
5. Looking ahead, what is one activity or practice on which you want to intentionally focus in your next PD design effort?

• Padlet Board with Notes

Activity Instructions

• Expand Key Activities section of the Design component of the EPIC-P Cycle
• Assign group roles: Facilitator, Timekeeper, Reporter/Recorder
• Access your group's Padlet using the provided Padlet link for your group.
• Complete your Padlet by describing what it would look like, sound like, and feel like to engage in your group's assigned key activity.
• Prepare to share with the whole group

Example of Completed Padlet for Activity

Key Activity: Understand learning strengths and needs and clearly define specific, measurable, and achievable learning objectives to guide the design process and serve as benchmarks for success.

• Looks like: Learning objectives are written to meet people where they are in their knowledge and skill levels
• Sounds like: Descriptions of the purpose and outcomes of the PD support sound like they are connected to the organization's strategic planning and overall continuous improvement priorities
• Feels like: PD support implementers and local coaches feel an authentic connection to the proposed PD content and materials