High school biology educator and credential coach Kati Bergen sums up the thought that passes through many teachers’ minds during the waning hours of summer spent in mandatory in-service training: “Why am I having to do training on classroom management, from somebody who doesn’t know my students, when I have reached the highest rating on my prior evaluations from the administration?”
While in-service training has its place, it also comes with limitations. Sitting through rigid, structured lectures can stifle teacher engagement, and topics may lack relevance to specific classroom needs.
With Gale eBooks: Professional Learning, districts and educators can customize their professional learning opportunities—and do it at a lower cost through unlimited simultaneous access to materials from top publishers.
Flexible, Effective Professional Development with Gale eBooks
With the award-winning Gale eBooks: Professional Learning platform, we aim to tackle the limitations and challenges associated with traditional in-service training head-on. By delivering on-demand material from industry-leading partners, Gale can help your district implement a robust training program that results in greater professional outcomes and job satisfaction.
Quality Resources From Trusted PD Experts
We’ve partnered with the top PD publishers, including ASCD, Corwin Press, ISTE, Solution Tree, and more, to bring you thousands of digital titles that improve student learning through evidence-based pedagogical strategies.
To further support teachers’ needs, we also offer the option to upgrade PD collections to include framework alignments, including the Danielson and Marzano models. This feature eliminates the need for administrators to invest additional time and resources ensuring that your professional development program aligns with district, school-wide, and individual growth goals.
Convenience
Access to Gale’s professional development titles means that teachers can engage with high-quality, relevant materials on their own terms and timelines. Whether at home or on the road, the Gale eBooks library is just a click away. With 24/7 availability, educators can enjoy the summer months without compromising their much-deserved leisure time.
Built-In Accessibility Tools
While we typically think of accommodations for student learning needs, educators also benefit from personalized content. The Gale eBooks platform offers material in more than 50 languages, as well as ReadSpeaker text-to-speech tools. These resources allow users to transform eBooks into downloadable audio files, giving educators even more flexibility for how and when they learn.
Self-Paced Learning
Though attention spans peak during adulthood, our ability to maintain focus on a particular task lasts about 20 minutes before a cycle of focus-lapsing and refocusing begins.
While many professional development lecturers are now integrating more collaborative and activity-based learning to help reduce these lapses, it’s simply not possible for educators to learn effectively for the entire duration of an 8-hour in-service day.
The format of Gale’s resources empowers educators to take control of their learning, achieving greater engagement and comprehension by chunking content into manageable pieces across multiple sessions.
Cost-Effective
The National Council on Teacher Quality found that school districts spend an average of $18,000 per teacher annually on in-person professional development programs. Assuming a cost of $25 per copy, even cost-saving measures taken by using printed books in place of in-person programs can still add up. Not to mention accessibility issues, engagement, and the ever-present risk of hard copies getting lost.
Digital content available through Gale eBooks: Professional Learning offers the same titles with unlimited and simultaneous lifetime user access for less than $1,000. This allows districts to reallocate finances to support other needs—or create a far more diverse and dynamic professional development library for the same budget.
got243041780-sch-gale-ebook-professional-learning-funding-support-one-sheetCollaborative
While we all understand the benefits of dedicated training and learning opportunities, we also know that one of the most effective ways we learn is from one another.
Teacher collaboration has been shown to improve student academic outcomes. It increases job satisfaction through stronger social connections and allows teachers to tap into their coworkers’ experience and insights when problem-solving.
Our platform encourages collaboration with integration support for G Suite for Education and Microsoft Office 365 tools so educators can work together using the programs they already know.
Gale’s Themed Professional Development Collections
Gale eBooks: Professional Learning includes more than 50 evidence-based collections, rich in content, and curated to enhance teaching and leadership practices. Here are some of our favorite themed collections to get you started.
Science of Reading Collection
Research into how children learn how to read—the science of reading—consists of five core components: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
However, data from the National Council on Teacher Quality found that only 25% of teacher preparation programs adequately cover all five of these core components, and another 25% don’t adequately cover any.
Our Science of Reading Collection can help fill the gaps, particularly for newly hired teachers needing supplemental resources and evidence-based strategies.
Titles include:
Classroom Management and Behavior Collection
Well-managed classrooms ensure that students feel safe and productive in their learning environments—but it can be difficult to meet the social-emotional needs of all learners.
With the Classroom Management and Behavior Collection, teachers can access advanced prevention and intervention strategies to address the root of behavioral concerns and create a more positive classroom dynamic.
Titles include:
Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching Collection
Students’ cultural and linguistic differences are assets—not obstacles. Adopting inclusive educational practices that respect these needs is necessary for every learner to succeed. Gale’s Culturally Responsive Teaching Collection equips educators with techniques for adapting curriculum in a way that is equitable and accessible to all.
Titles include:
- Teaching Literacy in Troubled Times: Identity, Inquiry, and Social Action at the Heart of Instruction
Talented and Gifted Collection
Discussions about differentiated learning tend to center around helping students struggling with the content to the detriment of those on the other side of the spectrum.
The Talented & Gifted Collection provides specialized methods for students who require an accelerated or enriched curriculum, keeping them engaged, motivated, and passionate about learning.
Titles include:
Technology Collection
When teachers foster an appreciation for and proficiency with technology, they lead by example as students develop digital fluency skills.
The Technology Collection supports educators with materials that help them leverage digital tools and the latest technological developments, including practical strategies for integrating AI in the classroom.
Titles include:
There’s still time before summer begins to give your educators the tools they need to help every student reach their full potential. With Gale eBooks: Professional Learning, you can maximize your funding spend with lifetime access to high-quality, district-aligned materials to help meet your PD needs. To learn more, contact your local sales representative or browse our full list of collections.