Transition-Focused Professional Development: An Annotated Bibliography of Essential Elements and Features of Professional Development

Transition professional development (PD) has been identified as a way to improve transition services; however, there is a dearth of literature on transition-focused PD. To learn more about the essential features of effective PD, 73 published articles were evaluated in the area of PD in both secondary transition and special education. Articles were selected that exemplified four essential elements for PD: (a) content focus, (b) active learning, (c) team-based participation, and (d) sustained planning and implementation. We identified specific features of PD that positively influenced teachers including (a) coaching and feedback, (b) collective participation among teachers, (c) consistent “manualized” content and training, and (d) active learning embedded in PD.