Effective Professional Development

Unlike most professionals, teachers have traditionally had no time built into their work schedules for their own professional development. Most teachers spend the entire work day with their students, with little time left for collective reflection, refinement, or even discussion with their colleagues or superiors. Consider such important workplace concepts as teamwork, networks, shared resources, mentorship, mutual respect, trust, and competition. How can teachers improve without
opportunities for collaboration? And how can schools improve without teachers improving?

Schools are only as good as their teachers, regardless of how high their standards, how up-to-date their technology, or how innovative their programs. But if teachers aren’t given adequate opportunities to learn, they may have little chance of meeting the ever-increasing demands placed upon them. For this reason,
professional development for teachers is increasingly considered a critical component of improving schools.

Currently 24 states require that schools or districts set aside time for professional development. Forty-four states fund professional development and 33 of these states provide professional development funds to all districts in the state.

For most teachers today, however, professional development
translates to Wednesday afternoon workshops—“in-service” or “staff development” sessions during which colleagues gather in a common room to learn about the latest hot topic, often determined by administrators or state legislators. But these one-shot strategy sessions, often delivered by professionals who are out of touch with the rapidly changing needs, interests, and composition of students and teachers, are out of sync with the reform agenda for schools. Educators are finding professional development an area ripe for some rethinking and redefining.

Major foundations are investing heavily in promising practices and studies of professional development. Teachers’ learning tops the U.S. Department of Education’s priorities. The National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future, a 26-member blue-ribbon panel funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, has issued its recommendations on strengthening
professional development over teachers’ entire careers in “What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future.”

The increased attention to professional development brings with it an emerging consensus about the principles of effective approaches to professional development. First, teachers should be involved in planning their own learning experiences, rather than being passive recipients of knowledge. Second, they need to be linked to a larger “learning community” that can bring in expertise and ideas to complement their work. Third, professional development must be better balanced between meeting the needs of individual teachers and advancing the organizational goals of their schools and districts.

Teacher networks and school-university
collaboratives are helping spur new ways of thinking about
professional development. Teachers’ unions are playing a vital role in advocating and providing for their members’ continued learning. The Internet, with its capacity for creating connections and sharing resources, holds promise, as well.

According to the Department of Education, the mission of
professional development is to prepare and support educators to help all students achieve high standards of learning and development.

As a means to that end, professional development:

• focuses on teachers as central to student learning, yet includes all other members of the school community.

• focuses on individual, collegial, and
organizational improvement.

• respects and nurtures the intellectual and leadership capacity of teachers, principals, and others in the school community.

• reflects best available research and practice in teaching, learning, and leadership.

• enables teachers to develop further expertise in subject content, teaching strategies, uses of technologies, and other essential elements in teaching to high standards.

• promotes continuous inquiry and improvement embedded in the daily life of schools.

• is planned collaboratively by those who will participate in and facilitate that development.

• requires substantial time and other resources.

• is driven by a coherent long-term plan.

• is evaluated ultimately on the basis of its impact on teacher effectiveness and student learning, and this assessment guides subsequent professional development efforts.

For more information on professional development as proposed by the Department of Education, visit http://www.ed.gov/G2K/bridge.html.

Reprinted with permission from www.edweek.com.