A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

How Can We Change Professional Development to Strengthen the Skills of Current Leaders?

Preparing current administrators for new modes of leadership will require changes in content and delivery of professional development. Many formal professional development options for principals do not address the skills that leaders really need or they neglect recent research on effective teaching and schooling. Leaders in some districts have tried to compensate by forming grassroots networks for collegial learning. The challenge now is to expand these efforts, so they reach more people and last longer, without destroying the sense of ownership of one's own learning that makes these networks effective.

New Models of Professional Development

Schools and districts are implementing new approaches to help administrators grow intellectually and acquire new skills. In many districts, professional development is virtually indistinguishable from daily practice; roles and relationships are structured so that people learn continuously as they go about their work. Here are some examples of professional development highlighted at the Forum:

• At summer institutes in Bellevue, Washington, principals evaluate videotapes of teachers teaching; they are looking less at the specific methods the teacher is using than at what the children are learning. Through this type of close observation, principals come to see the kinds of teaching that produce higher student learning, and they gain practice in talking with teachers about effective and ineffective instruction.

• In New York's Community District #2, principal support groups study one important topic?such as standards for evaluating student work?throughout the whole school year. Small groups of principals investigate various aspects of this topic, then exchange information with the larger group. The principals also spend a part of the summer doing individual research on a critical issue, then report to the larger group in August. The idea is to build a culture that rewards individual and group learning.

• Principals in Boston have created their own networks to work collaboratively on a "big idea": how to improve literacy in every school in the district. Having a unifying idea like literacy helps principals to become more concrete in their reading, study, and discussion, and to look more closely at the quality of work students are doing.

How are these districts paying for these forms of professional development, which are often more intensive and expensive than traditional workshops? Usually by reallocating existing resources. Community District #2 spends about 6 percent of its budget on professional development for teachers and principals?much higher than the average share. Much of this funding has come from cutting the numbers of district--level administrators, assistant principals, curriculum coordinators, and other midlevel administrative staff. In Boston, principals have supported their professional development by pooling a small share of resources from each school.

Key Elements of Professional Development

Forum participants identified key elements that ought to guide changes in professional development for leaders. In particular, they recommended that professional development for administrators should:

• be based on a few core standards for what leaders should know and be able to do?with the chief standard being a deep understanding of teaching, learning, and school improvement;

• take place in the participant's own school or context, rather than being delivered from outside;

• put people to work on solving real problems;

• use networks of peers, or "critical friends";

• be controlled by the participants; and

• incorporate research findings about good teaching and productive schools.

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