Running head: Part 1 Training Project

Orientation Training for Correctional Education Instructors

Nancy C. Archie

Strayer University

Education

EDU 535

Daniel Hauenstein

Sunday, April 17, 2011

This paper introduces the type of organization and discusses the plan to revise new instructor orientation plans and training events for an alternative school environment that services offender populations.

Running head: Part 1 Training Project Orientation for Instructors New To the Correctional Environment Type of organization The target organization delivers educational services, both academic and career and technical, to youth and adult offenders in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Its mission statement is as follows: To provide quality educational programs that enable incarcerated youth and adults to become responsible, productive, tax-paying members of their communities. (Department of Correctional Education, 2011) Department focus

The departments focus is continually driven by two factors (Department of Correctional Education, 2011), first to provide individuals the opportunity to excel to the highest level of education they can achieve and second to reduce recidivisma return to incarcerationthrough providing GEDs and workforce skills. The department operates as an alternative school systemcomplete with school board with its funding coming from state and federal subsidiaries. Juvenile youth schools are governed by the same policies as govern the public school divisions, while adult schools operate the same as literacy and career training centers. The system must respond to the changes in national and state educational policy as well as institutional policies from the Department of Corrections. Within these parameters, the school system adapts its operations to the internal policies and external policies from the department of corrections and department of juvenile justice which are two separate agencies. To maintain some clarity of purpose the organization has to provide training in the areas of teacher professional development and public safety measures. Blanchard and Thacker describe this response as continuous improvement measures due to changing demographics

Running head: Part 1 Training Project

(Blanchard & Thacker, 2010, p. 23). The four areas inventoried involve assessing training needs of each individual; with the subsequent responses used to develop three training events per yeartiered for the instructors disciplines. Materials are created and revised, such as the training procedures that are being used for this project, to match current needs and a summative assessment is done to closely review the effectiveness of each training event. Training and learning content DCE (the department of correctional education) states that its goal is to (Department of Correctional Education, 2011) enhance the professional skills and knowledge of all instructors and support staff and to provide tools and resources to help in the success of their work. This is accomplished both as classroom and online instruction through 40 hours of approved training in the instructors content area or a related area that will aid in succession. Yearly learning goals are required from each instructor as part of their yearly performance appraisal these include conference attendance, scholarly studies or leadership assignments. The training extends to both staff and supervisory levels and needs are identified, as previously stated, through assessment survey. Learner characteristics Staff participating in the learning events posssess diverse intelligence quotients therefore training events must specifically and generally address varied intelligences, cognitive styles, psychosocial and ethnic traits. (Daigre, 2002). Regina M. Daigra has painted the picture that is DCE. While most of the administrators are degreed and the academic instructors hold at minimum bachelor degrees; only some of the career and technical instructors hold degrees beyond a GED or high school diploma (Department of Correctional Education, 2011). All instructors must be licensed in their expert area as highly qualified by VDOE (Virginia

Running head: Part 1 Training Project Department of Education). HR and HRD are responsible for ensuring that all instructional staff maintain their endorsements. Training content (Daigre, 2002) therefore must be in its delivery understandable by all, presented to the target audience so it enables the participants to demonstrate a change of reference through reflection and repositioning of viewpoints. As instructors are hired straight from college or from the field, the training offered must also emphasize psychosocial aspects unique to the correctional atmosphere to ensure teacher effectiveness, safety and success. Attitudes toward training content

DCE training coordinator does adhere to the three considerations Blanchard and Thacker term levels of change and resistance (Blanchard & Thacker, 2010); HRD examines how the entity DCE has to change to adapt to its collaborative agency, the department of corrections policy changes and agendas. Most recently because of government mission change regarding offender reintegration; an entire faction of the agency was moved under the management of the department of corrections; leaving residual tasks to be re-assigned to other staff after retraining. The event caused HRD to have to reactively implement training processes to keep some services from falling out of alignment with the organizational mission. The third internal change, as described in Blanchard/Thacker text (p.38) identifying performance change to enable desired performance to occur is the need to revise the new instructor orientation material which is the basis for this paper. Deficiencies KSAs must address Through the changes that are occurring because of the new governor iniative to reduce recidivism using evidence based strategy, the DCEs HRD has to address the challenge of repacking course content and delivery to match the needs of the iniative. Training includes

Running head: Part 1 Training Project training instructors in new task areas, i.e. computer literacy curriculums to be taught in

conjunction with building trades to provide short term release offenders with necessary computer skills when they are released. Blanchard and Thacker term (Blanchard & Thacker, 2010, p.30) these identifiable deficiences under strategic choices made to gain competitive strategy. The choices made by DCE will ultimately be evaluated by its collaborative agency acting as an external environment as to whether the content and delivery aligns with the governors missiontherefore, DCE must include this external factor in its own mission alignment. Core technologies used to deliver educational content to all instructors have been organic in its design which has many times clashed with the mechanistic design of the department of corrections. KSAs will be improved by training events that outline both design styles to inform and increase participants understanding. Recommended next steps The current training material has been requested to be evaluated During the evaluation, this reviewer will use the tactical activities outlined in class text (Blanchard & Thacker, 2010, p.29) to ascertain and align unit objects, unit strategies and employee (teacher) objectives currently used in the new orientation process.

Running head: Part 1 Training Project References

Blanchard, P. N., & Thacker, J. W. (2010). Effective training: systems, strategies & practice (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, USA: Prentice Hall. Daigre, R. M. (2002, February 1). Anglefire.com. Retrieved April 15, 2011, from Chapter 4 instructional analyses: analyzing learners: http://www.angelfire.com/la2/learners/learners.html Department of Correctional Education. (2011, April 8). Virginia.gov. Retrieved April 15, 2011, from http://www.dce.virginia.gov/