How did that happen? Now, there’s a common question asked by many who try to understand how an event or a situation or a set of events and situations came to be. In the weeks following Thanksgiving, one may ask “how did that happen?” when needing one more notch in the belt to hold up a pair of pants or a skirt. One looks for causes, usually something to point at, in order to explain the current condition. Some causes or reasons come easily to mind. Others are more difficult to divine.
Attribution is a concept used in psychology to explore the processes that we use to explain the causes of behavior or events or situations that we believe need explaining.
Explanatory attributions allow us, as best as we are able, to understand a particular problem that may have complex and complicated reasons. When we discuss attributing factors, we use logic and inference. We point directly to some attributes, like the extra helping of turkey and dressing and the double wedge of pumpkin pie and the late night bowl of left-over dressing on Thanksgiving day, when we step on the scale the following Sunday. “If only I had not eaten…” Some attributes are more difficult to point at. The fact that Uncle Pete and your grandfather and your father each had an endomorphic body shape, the stomach section of the body is wider than the hips, may lead us to an inference about our heredity and propensity for adding weight where it is difficult to lose. Whether through the use of logic or inference, we like to make causal statements and point at the attributes that lead us to our current conditions. Something or somebody must be the cause, perhaps the blame.
Public education is fertile ground for attribution. Johnny can’t read. There must be a cause. Algebra is difficult. There must be a cause. Student daily absenteeism from school increases as the student progresses through the grades. Of course, there is a cause. Children in the U.S. do not achieve the same as their international age peers on exams of reading, math and science. There must be a cause. Logical or inferential, there must be a cause.
In his Education Week Spotlight article, “Staff Development for Teachers Deemed Fragmented,” Stephen Sawchuk reports that “Although American teachers spend more time working in classrooms than do instructors in some of the top-performing European and Asian countries, U.S. students have scored in the middle of the pack on a number of prominent international exams in recent years.
That paradox appears to stem at least in part from a failing of the United States’ systems for supporting professional learning, concludes a new report released here last week. American teachers, it finds, are not given as many opportunities for on-the-job training as their international peers, and their effectiveness appears to suffer as a result.”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/02/11/21development-2.h28.html
The finger is pointed. The “subsequent” mediocre achievement of Unites States children on international tests is attributed to the “antecedent” failure of our nation’s education systems to properly provide our teachers with effective professional development. Is this as good as pointing at the extra servings on Thanksgiving Day? Not quite, but let’s explore. There must be a cause.
What is professional development?
By definition, a professional is one whose work “relates to a job that requires special education, training or skill.” Consequently, professional development is the continuing education of a professional for the purpose of furthering the professional’s expertise in using the requisite knowledge, skills and processes of that profession. A somewhat circular statement, but it works.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/professional
To achieve an understanding of professional development for teachers one must find a comfortable chair and be patient. Professional development for teachers is one of those very large industries that lie just below the public radar. It does not receive the daily press of the health care industry or pharmaceutical industry or even the dairy products industry. But, it is LARGE and looming. Millions of dollars are spent annually on professional development for teachers. According to the Huffington Post, “The federal government gives local school districts more than $1 billion annually for training programs. New York City schools spent close to $100 million last year just on private consultants.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/improving-teachers-millio_n_1568103.html
So, what is professional development for a teacher? A scan of Education Week’s Professional Development Directory displays 38 categories of PD topics and within each category scores of listings. For example, under the category of “Effective Teaching Strategies” there are 99 listings. From A to Z, Action Learning Systems, Inc to Zia Learning, Inc, a PD-seeker can find everything from national multi—day workshops to online courses for graduate credit to multi-media kits designed for a school faculty’s in-service program. There are courses to train teachers in the latest teaching strategies, principals in effective supervision and coaching models, and everyone in the use of computer-based technologies. The fact that there is so much PD on the market leads to consumer confusion regarding what the best continuing education to resolve a school’s or a teacher’s educational challenges might be. Caveat emptor!
http://pddirectory.edweek.org/search-companies-by-category/effective-teaching-strategies
If professional development is an attribute for internationally non-competitive, student achievement, what could turn PD from being a cause of mediocrity to a cause of improvement and success?
The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education sponsored the “Transforming Schooling and Teaching: Teacher Professional Series” project led by Linda Darling-Hammond. As reported by Sawchuk in his EdWeek article, “Ms. Darling-Hammond and her colleagues extensively reviewed the research literature on professional development. The review included a synthesis of results from those studies employing the most scientifically rigorous research methodologies.
That synthesis found that training programs of a certain duration—30 to 100 hours of time over six months to a year—positively influenced student achievement, while those with fewer than 14 hours had little effect.
The report’s authors also drew on qualitative research to outline common features of professional development that appear to be associated with changes in teacher practices. Such features include a sustained curriculum that is connected to teachers’ classroom practice, focuses on specific content, aligns with school improvement goals, and fosters collaboration among a school’s staff. Professional-development practices in some of the top-performing industrialized countries frequently align to such a research base, while those in the United States largely contradict it.”
Sawchuk also cited Stephanie Hirsh, executive director of the National Staff Development Council. “In the U.S., professional development is predominantly an individual enterprise focused on serving individuals rather than focusing on what students need.”
According to Darling-Hammond, “… no causal evidence exists to link other countries’ professional-development techniques directly to their scores on international tests, the alignment of those countries’ practices to the research “suggest[s] that there may be some connection between the opportunities for teacher development and the quality of teaching and learning that result.”
Sawchuk reported that Susan Sclafani, director of state services for the National Center on Education and the Economy, a Washington-based nonprofit group that promotes a tighter link between education and workforce development, noted that several of the top-performing countries have stricter front-end selection criteria for teachers, larger class sizes, and longer hours to facilitate on-site professional learning. The United States, in contrast, typically has lax entry standards and smaller classes, and the majority of teachers receive no more than 16 hours of training in their subject per year.
These could be new attributes for future success in causing children in the U.S. to improve their competitive status. More importantly, these could be new attributes for improved classroom instruction.
Professional development for teachers that is
• Related to the daily instructional/learning needs of the children they teach.
Until education runs out of things to test, let the “what gets tested gets taught” rule prevail. Today, this would be Common Core standards paired with college and career readiness knowledge, skills and problem-solving skills. PD should make a teacher an expert in understanding and interpreting the complexities of the Core standards and in the pedagogy for teaching these standards to all children. Being an expert is a good PD target.
Associated with “what gets tested gets taught” is “student readiness to learn.” If the teacher cannot address “readiness or unreadiness” issues, the student will not learn. PD should train teachers in the abilities to develop positive, educational relationships with each student.
Building instructional expertise and a capacity for interpersonal relationships are the elements that should drive the “what” of teacher PD.
• Customized for the teacher’s readiness to learn new professional knowledge, skills and instructional/learning processes.
Why would we ignore what we know about teaching children when we teach adults? PD must be matched with the teacher’s current professional expertise (content, pedagogical skills, instructional/learning processes) and readiness to learn. Just as importantly, PD for a teacher must be personalized and customized for the teacher’s successful growth. If so, we can expect growth in learning. If not, why are we surprised when there is no change in professional expertise? Treating the elements of readiness is the “when” of PD and is essential for its success.
• Provided in a consistent and constant manner until the teacher demonstrates competence in the new professional learning.
Every sound principle of sequential learning, pacing, transfer from prior learning, reinforcement, guided and independent practice, and monitored results must be incorporated in PD for teachers. This means that PD is a year-round, continuing education. Two-day workshops, monthly staff meetings, once-a-semester in-service days loaded with disjointed meetings, guest speakers, and stand-alone conferences do not meet the standards of best PD practice. They may be incorporated into a constant and consistent PD, but as disjointed events they only breed disinterest at best and an anti-PD attitude at worst. Segregated time on a weekly basis over many months is the ticket for success.
• Delivered close to the teacher, in clusters of educators facing similar instructional/learning challenges, makes teacher participation reasonable and acceptable.
Massed meetings held at a centralized location that necessitate a teacher to prepare for substitute teacher, drive many miles to the meeting place, sit and get generalized information in a loosely assembled grouping of teachers for six hours, and then drive back home is a sure recipe for failed PD. A teacher will grow to resent time away from the classroom, especially time spent driving to and from a meeting of massed peers and generalized delivery. PD that assembles and clusters teachers with similar instructional/learning needs presenting a similar readiness to learn in a location near their home school clearly demonstrates an awareness and accommodation of what are otherwise distractors to the teacher’s professional learning. PD is not about meeting the logistical needs of the providers; PD is all about the learning teacher.
• Based upon the best practices of instruction.
The “science of teaching” should be best practice in PD for teachers. At the end of a semester’s work, no one gains if the teacher/learner has not learned. Hence, a Hunteresque lesson design with emphasis upon higher order learning and constant checking for understanding infuses very well into professional development for teachers. If this is the standard for assuring learning success for children, the design should be adapted to adult education.
• Designed with performance-based metrics to inform, reinforce and validate the teacher’s new professional learning.
The metric of interest is how PD contributes to improved student learning and measured achievements. Part of the pre-PD design is to assay the status of student achievement. Part of the post-PD design is a second assessment of student achievement. The first purpose of professional development is to improve and extend a teacher’s professional expertise. The ultimate purpose of PD is to improve and extend student learning. Using classroom jargon, “if the assessment needle does not move in a significant, positive direction, there is a need for more but different PD. Time reteach until learning is successful.”
If our dissatisfaction with student learning performances causes us to point at the status of professional development for teachers, then we need to change the nature of that attribute. Making small adjustments through the selection of professional development on the national menu of PD will not turn the trick. The work of PD must be done differently and it is up to educational leadership to stipulate how a different PD looks and behaves. Then, if the subsequent conditions do not change as a result of different antecedents, point at the leaders.