Archived Information

Improving Professional Development

Promising Policy Options

Fortunately, some policymakers and practitioners have come up with new approaches that are promising, though we know little about their costs or effects as yet.

These approaches to teacher professional development are consistent with the guiding principles outlined in the sidebar in the previous section and share some common characteristics. They respect the expertise of accomplished teachers. They are integrated with teachers' work. They are based on current research on teaching and learning. They recognize teachers as a valuable source of information regarding effective professional development and include them in its design and implementation. The examples below are good starting points for incorporating these ideas.

Joint Work and Job Enrichment. Joint work refers to shared responsibility for tasks, such as in team teaching, curriculum committees, or other jobs that create interdependence among teachers and require cooperation. Joint work promotes learning on the job because it provides opportunities for productive exchange among teachers and reflection about practice. Job enrichment refers to the expansion of teachers' work in ways that require new skills, such as the scoring of portfolios in Vermont or serving as mentors to beginning teachers in Connecticut. These new responsibilities include opportunities for teachers to discuss their practice and share ideas.

Teacher Networks. Teacher networks tend to focus on specific subject-matter and seek to deepen teachers' understanding of content and their facility with new teaching strategies. They offer teachers access to a "professional community" in which their expertise and experience are respected and where they can be active participants in professional discourse about improving practice. Networks have high credibility with teachers, and appear to have positive effects on their motivation, knowledge of pedagogy and subject-matter, willingness to take risks, and commitment to improvement. The National Writing Project, Urban Math Collaboratives, California's subject-matter collaboratives and Vermont's portfolio networks are examples of teacher networks.

Collaborations Between Schools and Colleges. Professional development opportunities cannot be provided in sufficient intensity and for sufficient numbers of teachers unless the schools and colleges work together. Some organizations, such as the American Association for Higher Education and its affiliate, the Education Trust, as well as the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation, Knight Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Rockefeller Foundation are actively promoting and supporting partnerships between colleges and schools. While these initiatives vary in size and focus and remain quite fragile, dependent in many instances on external funding and often operating at the margins of the institutions, they hold great promise for strengthening professional development. As current reforms require teachers to deepen their knowledge of subject-matter, it is important that these initiatives involve liberal arts faculty as well as those in schools of education.

Professional Development (or Practice) Schools. Professional development schools are a special form of collaboration between public schools and higher education. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development has documented several hundred of these institutions which are roughly analogous to teaching hospitals. While much attention has been given to their potential role in the pre-service preparation of teachers, they also could play an important role in professional development. They could bring both novice and experienced teachers together with university clinical faculty in a professional setting to improve their practice through observation, low-risk experimentation, reflection and coaching.

National Board Certification. The National Board of Professional Teaching Standards has worked with teachers and national teacher organizations to establish standards and assessment procedures for recognition of exemplary teachers. The Board hopes that teachers who achieve "national board certification" will be given responsibilities commensurate with their abilities, such as mentoring beginning teachers or developing curricula, and that local policymakers will use its standards to guide their professional development programs. The process of applying for certification itself is thought to be excellent professional development for teachers as it requires them to document their practice, reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, and demonstrate specific knowledge and skill.

Teachers as Researchers. Increasing numbers of teachers are conducting research in their classrooms and schools in cooperation with their colleagues and university faculty. While some of these research projects are defined by academic interests, many are directed at problems identified by the teachers themselves. There is considerable evidence that involving teachers in research can stimulate discussion, help organizations define problems, and lead to changes in practice and policy.

Implications for Policymakers.

• Focusing professional development on core problems of teaching and learning. Teachers need more opportunities to become intellectually engaged with their subject-matter and to deepen their understandings of key concepts. They need opportunities to try new approaches in environments that are supportive.

• Balancing individual and organization interests in professional development, and restructuring incentives so that they are more closely aligned. Professional development arrangements should support schoolwide improvement, stimulate individual growth and engagement in teaching, and support career advancement.

• Embedding more professional development in the workplace so it is more closely related to teachers' work experience. Teachers should have access to their colleagues and be encouraged to share, discuss, and reflect on their practice. Time must be provided for these collegial activities.

• Ensuring that high-quality professional development opportunities are accessible to teachers who serve the most vulnerable students. The teachers of the children of the poor, of isolated minorities, of immigrant families, and others who are at high risk of failure in the schools often work under the most difficult conditions and have less time for interaction and less opportunity to improve their practice.

• Improving the productivity of professional development. We cannot afford the laissez-faire, inefficient approach that has been taken to professional development. We need standards for schools and for providers, technical assistance in design and implementation, and monitoring to ensure that funds are targeted and well-used. This is especially important in low-performing schools.

Given these policy goals, there are clearly some actions that state policymakers should avoid. It would make little sense to expand the resources devoted to professional development without attending to improvements in quality. Given the sparse evidence about what works, it makes sense to avoid heavy investments in any single approach to professional development. All professional development strategies should be treated as hypotheses to be tested, and encouraging multiple strategies would be more prudent than mandating a single approach.

Policymakers should also be aware of the risks of focusing solely on the short-run, immediate needs generated by the implementation of school reforms. Improving teaching is a long-term problem. Focusing on the short-term can lead to superficial compliance with new policies and the neglect of long-term investments in teachers' knowledge of subject-matter and pedagogy.

What steps might state policymakers take to push professional development in the right direction? There are several areas in which action by state leaders could produce benefits.

• Increasing awareness among educational leaders. Policymakers should reach out to key stakeholders such as local board members, school administrators, teacher leaders, and university faculty and engage them in discussions about the adequacy of existing professional development opportunities and the alternatives. Many individuals have stakes in the current arrangements and these audiences need to be convinced that new forms of professional development are required to effectively support reforms in standards, curriculum, and instruction.

• Increasing public support and awareness. The public also must be convinced that new forms of professional development are needed and that time and money should be allocated to support them. Parents hear from teachers that professional development is ineffective and do not want more time and money wasted on it. Since more than 80 percent of existing professional development funds are locally controlled, the support of local communities is critical to the strengthening of professional development.

• Reviewing policies and practice.State policymakers should take advantage of new federal initiatives and review the policies, practices, and programs that shape professional development in their states. A thorough policy review is essential to determine what changes in structures and incentives, if any, are needed to support the reform agenda in a particular state. A framework for such a review is presented in a sidebar.

• Setting standards and priorities. Standards could provide much-needed guidance for both state and local professional development activities. If state policymakers adopt guidelines for the design, character, conduct, and content of professional development, based on input from educators and linked to state performance and content standards, they could enhance the likelihood that the time and resources dedicated to professional development are put to good use.

• Providing more time. States must increase the time available for teacher interaction and professional development. Some common approaches that might be used to create more time for professional development are presented in a sidebar.

• Strengthening teacher roles. The all-to-common failure to involve teachers in the planning and delivery of professional development undermines its legitimacy and efficacy. The failure to use exemplary teachers to lead professional development wastes talent, increases costs, and contributes to the division between research and practice. States could lead the way by making more use of outstanding teachers in their own professional development activities, linking professional development to school-based management--shifting both the responsibility and the funds to the school site, and involving teachers in setting standards for professional development and recertification. A number of states have already taken such steps.

• Supporting local adoption or demonstrations of promising approaches. The alternative approaches to professional development described above are sufficiently promising to warrant state support for local initiatives or for the implementation of demonstration projects.

• Re-thinking incentives. Policymakers should consider altering the incentives affecting teachers' participation in professional activities by permitting service to "count" toward re-certification, especially if the service involves research or reflection on good practice, learning new content or skills, and/or teaching or mentoring. They may consider using teacher portfolios for recertification. They might even consider eliminating the award of CEUs for workshops or in-service experiences that do not meet minimum standards for quality, or giving salary increments only for graduate coursework that is related to teachers' current or future assignments. They might even want to expand existing subsidies for advanced study in content or pedagogy for all teachers or for teachers from low-performing schools.

[Professional Development Today]

[Conclusion: Going to Scale]