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Professional development often is viewed as simply pulling teachers out of the classroom for a day or two a year to provide them with a "sit-and-get" session on the topic du jour. Many educators now realize that such efforts rarely have much effect on teachers’ practices and, more important, on students’ learning. Although designing a relevant, effective program is challenging, the rewards for teachers and students are well worth the time and effort. An inservice "obligation" can turn into an important opportunity for gaining new skills and advancing reform efforts. One district official described the benefits of focusing professional development on reform efforts this way: "Teachers have benefitted from in-services on general topics like time management, to be sure. But when we figured out the specific things teachers and staff needed to learn to make reform successful and refocused our professional development efforts on those areas, the payoffs were tremendous. Teachers gained a new level of confidence in the classroom and comfort with reform, which translated into a better climate and, most important, improved student achievement." Step 1: Identify the Initiative Effective professional development is a key component of successful schools and districts. To design an effective professional development program, school leaders need to make sure that every activity is focused on student learning. Schools should be learning communities - not just for students, but for teachers, administrators, and staff members. For some schools, this may be a departure from the past when professional development was primarily focused on the needs of adults in the school, such as offering teachers sessions on stress management. But as teachers have pointed out, an inservice on stress management often misses the point. Teachers are stressed out because they are under increasing pressure to raise student achievement. So what they really need is help in accomplishing this. In this section, we presume that a school or district has undertaken a needs assessment and decided to focus their efforts on linking professional development to student learning. Step 2: Use Guiding Questions to Create Specific Questions After identifying the initiative, the guiding question for each domain can be translated into more specific questions, as shown in Exhibit 7 below. These questions are offered as examples of the kinds of questions school leaders might ask.
Step 3: Consider Possible Actions Revamping staff development to focus on improving student achievement is no small undertaking. In this section, we discuss some lessons that can be learned by thinking systemically about this issue and asking the specific questions listed in Exhibit 7. These lessons are drawn from a variety of sources, including input from school leaders and reviews of relevant literature, including Professional Development: Learning from the Best: A Toolkit for Schools and Districts Based on Model Professional Development Award Winners (Hassel, 1999). This joint NCREL/McREL publication offers lessons learned from several sites that have won national recognition for designing staff development programs that boosted student achievement.
Technical Domain Implications
Q. How can we make sure staff development efforts are focused on improving classroom practices (e.g., instruction and assessment)? A key feature of all national professional development award winners is that their staff development efforts have the explicit goal of improving student learning, usually by finding ways to improve classroom practices. Moreover, these activities are integrated into daily activities or can be quickly applied in the classroom. At one model professional development award-winning school, for example, teachers’ professional development experiences included formal training as well as on-the-job coaching from outside consultants to help them understand and use specific instructional programs to raise students’ literacy scores. Possible Actions Q. How can we use student assessment data from both large-scale and classroom assessments to guide staff development? Student performance data should be used to measure whether changes in teaching practice have improved student achievement. Leaders of schools in which teachers have significantly improved their instructional practices credit the use of assessment results and other forms of data to guide professional development. Test scores and other data can guide the selection of staff development activities by pointing to areas in need of improvement. It’s also important to examine various forms of student performance data, including disaggregated data, to determine whether professional development efforts are having a positive effect on all student groups. Although examining assessment data can lead to important insights about areas for improvement, this feedback doesn’t always result in a complete picture. For example, low 8th grade science scores could be caused by a wide variety of factors - from a weak curriculum or gaps in earlier curricula to ineffective instructional strategies at one or several grade levels, to poor student test-taking skills. Thus, it’s important to gather qualitative data as well, including feedback from faculty meetings and informal conversations with teachers. Possible Actions
Personal Domain Implications
Q. How can school leadership help create a learning community? Leadership is crucial in creating a staff development program that is linked to ongoing, improved student learning. In model professional development schools, school leaders foster a culture of inquiry by encouraging debate and discussion among staff and rewarding (often through even more professional development opportunities) those who actively participate in staff development. In one school, the principal emphasized that professional development was "expected of all staff." Yet another school assigned all staff members to serve on school improvement teams that identified issues, conducted research, and made recommendations for improvement. Experienced school leaders also recognize that a critical dimension of successful reform is broad-based leadership. In all too many schools and districts, reform efforts are driven by a single individual or a small cadre of people. Such reforms are likely to fail for two primary reasons: lack of staff support and administrative turnover. Teachers must support staff development programs if they are to realize program goals. Similarly, if the drive and momentum for change rests solely with a single leader, reform will likely come to a screeching halt if the leader leaves. Thus, it’s important to embrace an expanded view of leadership that includes people at all levels and areas of the system. In terms of staff development, this could mean, for example, tapping experienced teachers to serve as mentors for novice teachers. For a broader discussion of the qualities of leadership that are needed to sustain school reform, see Leadership for School Improvement (McREL, 2000). Possible Actions Q. How can we better use our internal communication processes to help teachers learn from one another? All too often, teachers spend their days working behind closed doors, isolated from one another’s professional knowledge. To reduce isolation and enhance teachers’ ability to learn and grow together professionally, some award-winning sites have turned everyday activities, such as classroom planning and teaching, into forums for professional development. Teams of teachers now plan, teach, and evaluate students together. This approach encourages them to exchange ideas and push each other toward excellence. Working in groups also helps them reinforce what they’ve learned through staff development activities, maximizing the impact of those efforts on student achievement. To encourage collaboration among teachers, some schools have adopted a 20-80 rule for their professional development efforts - 20 percent of their activities consist of presentations or trainer-led activities, while 80 percent consist of collegial problem solving.Possible Actions Q. How can we create a school culture that supports more intensive staff development? Redesigning a professional development program so that it is directly related to student learning undoubtedly will result in changes in a school’s established culture. Creating a community in which continuous learning and improvement - on the part of teachers, administrators, and students - is the norm rather than the exception often represents a departure from the past. Schools that have successfully created so-called learning communities have done so through a variety of strategies. Some award-winning sites, for example, have signaled this shift in culture through a succinct, clear, ever-present mission statement and through annual events during which important accomplishments gained through professional development are celebrated. Teachers in award-winning sites also note that team-teaching strategies can transform school culture. If teachers collaborate to improve student achievement, those who are unmotivated or reluctant to change their practices cannot hide. To avoid critical feedback from colleagues, ineffective or apathetic teachers often opt to seek employment elsewhere. Possible Actions
Organizational Domain Implications
Q. How can we help stakeholders (e.g., parents) understand the importance of staff development? Parents and other community members may initially view staff development efforts as simply taking time away from more important things, such as instruction. Thus, it is important to keep stakeholders not only informed about staff development efforts, but also supportive of them. Principals may want to schedule community Q&A sessions - in both large and small groups - to give parents plenty of opportunities to ask questions, air concerns, and discuss implications for their children. Bulletin boards, newsletters, and school events are other avenues for keeping stakeholders informed. Some award-winning schools have provided sessions for parents that are similar to the training teachers received. Still others have sought input from parent advisory committees in planning professional development activities. Possible Actions Q. How can we better use our resources (e.g., time) to support staff development? As noted earlier, creating teaching teams can help foster the exchange of ideas and professional growth among teachers. But creating teacher teams is only the first step. School leaders in award-winning sites emphasize the importance of giving teams adequate time to work together to plan, evaluate, and improve. Doing this may require rethinking organizational structures. Some schools, for example, have reworked their weekly class schedules to create once-a-week early-release afternoons, giving teachers a chance to convene study groups, plan integrated classes, and take time for other collaborative activities. Possible Actions Q. How can technology support staff development? If teachers are overwhelmed with the time-consuming work of recording and reporting students’ scores on assessments, they will have less time to carefully analyze these data and be less likely to identify effective improvement strategies. To reduce the data management burden on teachers, school leaders may need to consider purchasing electronic student data management systems and budgeting clerical support for data input and management. In addition, e-mail and Web pages can be used to keep parents and community members informed about professional development efforts, thereby increasing stakeholder support for such efforts. Possible Actions Next: Example 3: Responding To Accountability Demands
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