Little has been written about opportunities for support staff to participate in
professional development. Most of the related literature cites professional
development for middle and upper management people. This study examined a
particular in-service approach to professional development for support staff of the
Greater Victoria School District (#61). In this approach, employees were centrally
involved in suggesting topics for courses and workshops, facilitating workshops as
resident experts, and engaged as participants. The purpose of the study was to: 1)
understand voluntary participation; 2) examine the relationship between work-related
learning and learning for personal growth and, 3) compare the cost of the in-service
approach to two alternative options. The researcher gathered information from three
sources: 1) a five-year database which tracked participation activities in a
longitudinal quantitative study; 2) results of Boshier's Education Participation Scale
(A Form) circulated to provide quantitative data of a cross-sectional study of
participation and, 3) a series of interviews with twelve participants, recording their
perspectives on the staff development program. A cost-effectiveness analysis was
also conducted to determine the most economic approach to professional
development. Some important findings of this study were the similar patterns of
participation according to national figures of adult education participation in the
Statistics Canada 2001 report. Examining variables of gender and frequency, a) this
study found 71 percent male and 74 percent female participation in work-related
courses compared to national figures of 62 percent male and 62 percent female
participation in work-related adult education. And b) nationally 30 percent of adult
Canadians participated in adult education compared to 26 percent of the population
in this study. Evidence supported the fact that staff development participants
preferred professional development topics rather than personal growth subjects. In
the school calendar year, 1995/96 participants engaged in 66 percent work related
courses, which evolved to 80 percent by 1999/00. The development of competent
professional development programming involved more than predicting the needs of
employees interested in remaining current in their job skills, or preparing for career
advancement. Competent practice of professional development for support staff was
positively influenced by a collaborative approach of all stakeholders; management,
staff and, program facilitators. This study has implications for human resource
personnel and training directors, employees, and others interested in workplace
learning. It also shows that employees voluntarily suggest both professional and
personal growth topics as important to their individual roles. The collaborative model
studied here may be of interest and value in a variety of organizational settings, even
those within a hierarchical structure. There are some promising avenues of future
research which could also be explored. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/7933 |
| Date | 19 April 2017 |
| Creators | Ives, Mary Elizabeth Louise |
| Contributors | Devlin, Laurence E. |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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