7-Concluding+Thoughts

In our research, four overarching themes seemed to recur. They are as follows:

1) Professional Development must be brain-based, in addition to being high-interest and high-need based (Sousa, 2009).

  2) It is more likely that teachers will change their teaching practices when professional development is linked to the programs they are teaching and the standards and assessments that they use (Holland, 2005) .

3) Teachers need to have extended opportunities to better understand student learning, curriculum materials and instruction, and subject-matter content. This can boost the performance of both teachers and students (Holland, 2005).

4) **__ALL__** PD activities must be evaluated on multiple levels to ensure that it is meeting the needs of teachers and students (Gruskey, 2002).

**//Districts - both rural and urban should: //** 1) Thoroughly investigate online and videoconferencing professional development opportunities and invest in the hardware and software. 2) Join together to create a co-op to schedule on-site as well as virtual professional developments. 3) Find more creative ways to use in-house experts (teachers, paraprofessionals, curriculum experts) and how to use more online resources to provide the needed training for teachers and staff.