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Administrative Services
We provide the following administrative services:
- Management for Vocational-Technical Professional Personnel Development
- Professional Development Advisory Committee (PDAC)
- Technology and Information Services
Management for Vocational-Technical Professional Personnel Development
The Center provides off-campus professional education programs and services throughout Pennsylvania's 17-county eastern region to educators who teach and work with career and technical education students.
The Center's responsibilities include the following:
- Providing for the management of Center programs and resources;
- Maintaining a research program and field-based professional certification programs for teachers, administrators, and education specialists;
- Providing continuing professional education and technical updating experiences for teachers and administrators through outreach courses, workshops, and seminars, including services to teachers of students who are learning disabled and/or learning disadvantaged;
- Providing for the development and testing of teachers' occupational competence and work experience;
- Maintaining recruitment/placement systems and a curriculum development and dissemination system;
- Establishing and maintaining a professional advisory committee responsible for vocational-technical professional personnel development policy issues in eastern Pennsylvania.
Professional Development Advisory Committee (PDAC)
The Center maintains a Professional Development Advisory Committee that operates as a filter for program development. The PDAC considers and processes information relative to the professional needs of Career and Technical educators in the 17 counties in eastern Pennsylvania. Based on this information, the PDAC advises and assists Center personnel in providing appropriate professional development services. Currently, membership in the PDAC comprises 17 persons representing Career and Technical education: teachers, specialists, and administrators; general education; business and industry; postsecondary education; youth groups; vocational professional associations; and graduate Career and Technical students. The Committee meets three times a year: fall, winter, and spring.
Technology and Information Services
The Center relies on efficient technology in realizing its objectives. The Center's systems emphasize two broad goals: (1) building the Center's capacity to maximize services through appropriate technology; and (2) building the capacity of local school districts to maximize teaching and learning through appropriate technology. The focus of each service is described in the following sections:
Administrative Technology Services
The Center uses technology to perform the following administrative services and functions:
- secretarial services and records management
- student registration
- publication and information dissemination
- electronic communication between Center staff
Instructional Technology Services
Through the use of instructional technology, the Center seeks to enhance student outcomes and teacher performance by:
- delivering instruction to off-campus sites in the teacher education program
- improving interactive instruction in the teacher education program
- managing the teacher education program
- disseminating instructional information
- fostering support networks among student teachers by means of electronic communication
Outreach Technology Services
The Center's outreach technology services are used to:
- help vocational teachers in eastern Pennsylvania develop the skill and affect necessary in using high technology to deliver instruction
- assist vocational teachers in updating their skills and keeping abreast of new technologies
- work with local school districts in eastern Pennsylvania to foster the use of technology in delivering instruction and disseminating information to vocational students
Related Information
The foundation of Career and Technical education has always been associated with the workplace, and, by statute, trade and industrial Career and Technical teachers in Pennsylvania must have certified occupational experience before they begin teaching. Ironically, there is great potential for Career and Technical teachers to lose touch with technological advances and new procedures in their occupational specialty once they embark on a teaching career. This condition has the potential to increase in magnitude as their time away from the workplace increases. The challenge for teachers is to keep abreast of advances in technology or new procedures in the workplace.
Different strategies are used to keep teachers abreast of current technological trends in the workplace. A promising innovation that uses the Internet to perform technical updating was developed at the Temple Center and is being expanded throughout school districts and technical schools in eastern Pennsylvania this year.