Professional Development Overview: Support for Practitioners

Professional development (PD) systems are made up of connected services and supports with a common goal to build an effective workforce. To raise quality and retain effective educators, PD systems can combine promising PD and workforce strategies at the practitioner, program, and system levels. This overview focuses on the practitioner level. It provides a brief definition of PD, its purpose, how it is delivered, and a summary of what sequential and portable PD is and why it is important. It also includes a few specific examples of sequential and portable PD and entry-level PD.