Most professional development is a plan to fail because too many school districts do not take advantage of what we know about quality professional development. Typical professional development is more about the obligation to inform teachers about issues and prepare teachers for events than it is about the opportunity to train teachers to improve student achievement.
There is a small but growing body of professional study about professional development. “What Makes Professional Development Effective – Results from a National Sample of Teachers” by Garet et al tells us –
- The most common type of professional development is the after-school and summer workshop. And, the most criticized form of PD is the after-school and summer workshop.
- Many teachers are not prepared to implement teaching practices based upon high standards of deeper student understanding and competency. Many teachers learned to teach using models of learning and teaching that focused heavily on memorizing facts and little upon developing deeper understandings and this is how they teach on a daily basis.
- PD that assists teachers to learn new teaching methods shares several features. These include the involvement of teachers in a rich, multiple-year experience in collaborative planning of instruction; the clear linkage of improved teaching practices with the improvement of student achievement; PD that is clearly focused upon student thinking, the curriculum to be learned and pedagogy; and, open access to alternative ideas and methods about teaching and the opportunity to observe and experiment with these and then reflect upon their effectiveness.
- Two significant impediments to high quality PD are cost and balanced effort. Professional development is one of the first cuts when budgets are reduced while the cost of teacher time and travel and training increases. Because of limited financial resources, PD always is underfunded and on the cheap. And, most PD leaders try to provide some training to all teachers at the detriment of providing quality training to any teachers.
http://www.imoberg.com/files/Unit_D_ch._24_–_Garet_et_al._article.pdf
We also know that PD that is displayed as a logical plan has a higher chance of success. Logical plans are based upon local data, clearly describe student and teacher learning needs, explicitly describe professional learning outcomes in terms of improved content knowledge and teaching skills, specify needed support in terms of time and resources that will be applied to the PD experience, and explain how the effects of the content and skills PD will be evaluated.
http://mdk12.org/share/pdf/MarylandTeacherProfessionalDevelopmentPlanningGuide.pdf
Yet, this is what a typical beginning-of-the-school year explanation of a school district PD plan sounds like.
Thank you Dr. Jones for explaining the district’s instructional goals for this school year. Everyone shares your concerns regarding the district’s need to improve student achievement in reading and math.
Our professional development plan for the school year is very promising. This summer we planned the entire year’s PD calendar to assure that everyone is professionally prepared for another outstanding school year.
The two pre-service days will provide all teachers with an overview of all the changes within the district since the last school year with reports from every district department. During the two days, approximately six hours will be allowed for classroom preparations.
A 30-minute staff meeting is scheduled for the second Monday of each month. These after school meetings will help teachers prepare for things like the statewide testing in October, the Open House in November, Christmas concerts in December, and first semester grades in January.
Four in-service days are scheduled; one each quarter of the school year. There will be three presentations on each day to allow our district coordinators to inform all teachers of how we are meeting the state mandates related to their departments. There will be time for teachers to ask questions at each session.
Teacher requests to attend professional conferences were submitted last spring and we have allocated substitute teacher time and travel money to as many requests as we could. In order to provide conference attendance to as many teachers as possible, only one day of multiple day conferences was approved and mileage reimbursements are limited to 50 miles.
Also, meetings are scheduled for all Title 1 and Title 3 teachers, as well as all special education teachers, to review new regulations for these programs. Due to our limited sub budget, we are not able to provide substitute teachers to cover your absences for these meetings. Children will be assigned to regular ed for additional classroom time.
The National Staff Development Council completed a multi-year study of professional development in US schools and recommends these points for improved PD.
1. PD should be intensive, ongoing, and connected to practice.
2. PD should focus on student learning and address the teaching of specific content.
3. PD should align with school improvement priorities and goals.
4. PD should build strong working relationships among teachers.
http://learningforward.org/docs/pdf/nsdcstudy2009.pdf
So, plan your PD locally. And, plan your local PD with a backwards design.
Develop and commit to intensive and ongoing training of cadres of teachers who share similar teaching assignments for a group of students at the same school site. Multiple cadres can mean multiple groups within a school, multiple schools, and cadres from multiple school districts.
Commitment means providing adequate released time for massed instruction of specific content and pedagogical skills followed with adequate distributed time for application of, reflection about, and reinforcement of what has been learned.
Commitment also means diminishing the usual distractors of PD. Bring the PD closer to the teachers’ work site instead of having them spend released time traveling to the training. Supply adequate time for the teachers being trained to prepare students and substitute teachers for their significant absences from the classroom. And, connect principals and curriculum supervisors to the training so that everyone responsible for improving student achievement is on the same page.
Quality PD is not the same PD for every teacher. Commit to training teachers relative to their relationship to district priorities and goals. The provision of quality PD also does not mean that all teachers are engaged in PD all of the time or at the same time. It is okay for some teachers to be engaged in PD while others are not.
Finally, understand the difference between informing and training. Assuring that all teachers are informed about current issues and concerns related to the classroom, grade level, school and school district is the work of communications. Communications is not professional development. Staff meetings and newsletters and blogs and wikis are appropriate for good vehicles for communications. A half-day workshop or seminar can enhance the sharing of information. However, these episodic meetings regardless of frequency are no substitute for intensive, continuous and goals-based professional development.
Consider the significance of student teaching to the initial training of a teacher. Most teachers believe that their student teaching was the most important, formative experience in their preparation as a teacher. In order to effect significant changes and improvement in a veteran teacher’s content understanding and pedagogical skills, effective PD practices must present a student teaching-like commitment of time and resources, instruction and practice, reflection and reinforcement if educational leaders have any hope of causing real improvements in student achievement.