The Arkansas Department of Education has partnered with the Arkansas Educational Television Network to meet the professional development needs of K-12 licensed educators by offering research-based, technology-delivered professional development courses to improve academic and teaching knowledge and skills of certified personnel.

Over the last few years, education leaders in Arkansas have developed comprehensive professional development policies to improve student performance. These efforts were recognized in Education Week's 2008 Quality Counts report as being among the best in the country.

AETN, the Arkansas Department of Education and ASCD www.ascd.org, the internationally renowned producer of books, video, audio and onsite professional development for educators and leadership, have partnered to enhance professional development opportunities for Arkansas educators through the ArkansasIDEAS www.arkansasideas.org professional development website.  This partnership expands the ArkansasIDEAS professional development offerings to nearly 6,000 hours.  Arkansas is the first and only state to offer this partnership with ASCD and to offer its educators access to the best educational authors, scholars and expert practitioners in the world as well as to ASCD’s entire library of award-winning online courses. ArkansasIDEAS and ASCD’s interactive, self-paced courses provide growth opportunities in leadership, teaching strategies and curriculum content.   Founded in 1943, ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, www.ascd.org) is an educational leadership organization dedicated to advancing best practices and policies for the success of each learner.

Whether you are developing a plan for yourself, your school or your district, these resources will help you stay focused on student and adult learning needs and anticipated outcomes as you move through the planning process.

In this section of the site, you will learn

• What quality professional development looks like
• How quality professional development is defined and
• Ways to sustain quality professional development through job-embedded, results-driven approaches to learning

Available On-Site Workshops

• In Their Words Workshop