Test Your Professional Development IQ

Test your professional development IQ

Tools for Schools, August/September 2003

What's your professional development IQ?

Several years ago, NSDC deputy executive director Stephanie Hirsh was searching for a way to surface misperceptions about the value of professional learning in public schools. She hit on the idea of creating a test and soon she had designed the Professional Development IQ Test.

Since then, thousands of educators have downloaded the quiz from the NSDC web site and used it to begin discussions about professional development. The quiz has the advantage of being fun and informative, a non-threatening way to begin the conversation about professional learning.

We're publishing the entire quiz in this issue of Tools and also including numerous charts that will help you use it with various groups you encounter during this school year.

The goal of the quiz is to stimulate conversations about professional learning for educators. We invite you to use it in any manner that you consider appropriate to ensuring that more stakeholders understand the support that exists for professional learning as well as the relationship between quality teaching and improved learning.

We will continue to revise the IQ test. New questions and answers will be added to the web site version. Please share with us your experiences in using this quiz and send along any suggestions about how to keep it fresh and informative to Joan Richardson at joan.richardson@nsdc.org.

Link to the Professional Development IQ test

How you can use the professional development IQ test

ADMINISTER THE IQ TEST to school board members or legislators to help them learn more about professional development.
KICK OFF YOUR beginning-of-the-year meeting with parent groups by having them take the quiz. This will help them better understand the relationship between quality teaching and improved learning.
USE THE INDIVIDUAL CHARTS in the IQ test as you make presentations to your school board, state legislators, or other interest groups.
PASS OUT THE QUIZ before you speak to a local service club about educational quality issues. Ask the participants to take the quiz as they wait for their meal. Then weave the answers into your presentation or pass out the answers at the end of your speech.
OFFER THE QUIZ TO your local newspaper. We're happy to have them use it as long as they properly credit NSDC.
PUBLISH INDIVIDUAL QUESTIONS from the quiz in your school or district newsletter. Again, if you choose this option, be sure to credit NSDC and the source of information for each question and answer.