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

Improving Professional Development Practices

Most districts support teachers' investment in their professional knowledge and skills. Teachers take advantage of classes sponsored by their districts, work on advanced certificates or degrees, and attend workshops and summer institutes. Yet, these efforts often have little impact on student learning because they tend to be disjointed, unfocused, and offer teachers few opportunities to learn by doing and reflecting on practice with their colleagues. In other words, professional development frequently lacks connections to practice and to high standards of student achievement or teacher development.

Changing these patterns in professional development is quite a challenge. Short-term, disjointed development activities represent a significant "industry" in education. However, focused professional development that is based on high standards of teaching and learning and that profoundly changes practice is essential to improved teaching and better student achievement.

Fortunately, there is now much agreement about what professional development should be. It should be focused on what teachers in individual schools need to know and be able to do for their students. Teachers should work together to design and implement professional development based on shared concerns and strengths. Ultimately, professional development should build "professional communities" committed to higher student learning. Data about student performance and student work should become tools for pulling a school faculty together to work collaboratively on helping students reach agreed-upon standards. Teachers want--and research confirms the wisdom of--continuous learning opportunities that are focused, reflective, and coherent.

Recent research on professional development opportunities in California, for example, reveals the importance of quality professional development. The study found that fourth-grade students taught by teachers who participated in content-specific professional development on math skills over an extended period of time achieved higher scores on the then-existing state test than did students whose teachers attended typical workshop-type development activities.

Two important tools for shaping such professional development have emerged in recent years. One is the professional development school. It replaces the traditional relationship between college campuses and K-12 schools--a volunteer veteran teacher supervising individual student teachers for a limited time. Instead, professional development schools are partnerships with two-way benefits--the whole school is transformed into a clinical site dedicated to best practice and professional growth, while the university faculty gains knowledge from hands-on work in the school.

The other development is teacher networking. Teachers of like minds often find ways to get together, such as the North Dakota Study Group for progressive educators or Vermont's Bread Loaf network for rural educators. In recent years, spurred by a foundation-funded collaborative in math and the humanities, teacher networks have become a major force for professional growth. Telecommunications make networking even more accessible and flexible.

Renewal of Professional Development
In San Francisco

The district has put together a package of professional development opportunities which schools are allowed to tailor to their special needs. Uniform professional development would not work in a system like San Francisco, where the 64,000 students speak 39 different languages and the enrollment covers the spectrum of family income and academic abilities. The district also faces a special challenge in the turnover rate of its teaching staff. It hires about 200 new teachers a year; 35 percent of the teaching force has less than four years' teaching experience.

The district's Professional Development Initiative (PDI) focuses on the three core academic areas that the district believes are most important for student success in the future--literacy, math and science. This initiative designs professional development for individual teachers and for individual schools. It also offers centralized resources. The various components include:

• New teacher support: in addition to an orientation program, new teachers can receive mentoring and ongoing support from the Beginning Teachers Support and Assessment Program.
  
• Program support: content leadership teams, mentors and resource staff help school sites implement the district's curriculum, material adaptations, and best-practice strategies.
  
• On-site support: school site plans identify what the staff needs, and the district has a menu for meeting those needs. The menu includes models, resources, content information, consultants, ideas for teaming and coaching, and other forms of professional development.
  
• Professional development plans: district departments and school sites must make professional development plans just like individual teachers. These plans encourage the administrators to conduct independent research and to begin other initiatives that bring about instructional improvement.
• Model schools: a cadre of 26 schools serve as models for site-based professional development, sharing the lessons they learn and the resources they develop throughout the district. Another group, the Focus Schools, share common curricular themes, such as environmental sciences or math and science, and they form networks for professional development.
• Master practitioners: teachers, administrators and classified staff who have been identified as having expertise related to the student learning goals provide a variety of support services, such as modeling and coaching. Opportunities are also available that encourage individual and group leadership in professional development such as organizing and leading forums on school and classroom changes, focus groups and ongoing institutes. A new administrators' institute, for example, brought all administrators together for three days to discuss standards that were followed by eight sessions on the same subject during the 1996-97 school year. Each administrator chose a specific content area on which to concentrate.
  
• Learning Resource Bank: in addition to typical professional resources, the Bank provides electronic links for school sites to libraries and universities.

If the district doesn't have what schools or individuals need for professional development, the central office goes outside--to university programs, businesses, community organizations and foundations--to get it.

In addition to the eight district professional development days, school sites must find time for teachers to work together on professional growth, such as common preparation periods, substitute release time, or staggered schedules.

This focused professional development plan with its multiple resources and efforts available across the district produces results. Student scores on standardized tests have increased significantly in reading and math for three consecutive years. Students are spending more time studying science. Five years ago, 80 percent of the elementary teachers reported that they taught science less than 30 minutes a week. Middle schools, on the average, offered only one and one-half years of science and only three high schools offered science in the ninth grade. Science is one of the academic areas that professional development focuses on, and now elementary students are receiving an average of 140 minutes a week of science instruction, and three years of science are included in the middle school curriculum.

In addition, the district finds teachers using more interactive learning, and whole schools are aligning curriculum and professional development to the district's standards. This documentation is possible because San Francisco included another important element in its plan, a process to determine if the district's efforts in professional development pay off where it must count--in higher student achievement.

San Francisco was one of five recipients recognized in 1997 in the U.S. Department of Education's first National Awards Program for Model Professional Development.

Partnerships in Southern Maine

The partnership links 30 school districts, three private schools, Maine College of Art, Southern Maine Technical College, and the University of Southern Maine. Its director, a professor at the university, is granted release time for partnership work and is aided by two partnership associates, both of whom are former teachers in partnership schools. Teachers and administrators staff the partnership because it is a school-based, educator-driven school reform effort.

The partnership began when a professor and dean at the university invited six area superintendents to help them form a mutual support organization based on the ideas of teacher education reformer John Goodlad. The organizers began by inviting others to join Educator Groups, which met monthly for dinner with no agenda other than to share ideas and information. This reliance on the interests and expertise of those involved in the partnership is still its strongest characteristic.

The partnership reaches out to reform-minded networks, such as the Coalition of Essential Schools, the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching, and the National Education Association's Center for Innovation. Yet, its affiliations must fit with the partnership's respect for the professional knowledge of those it serves directly. Since it began, the partnership has:

• Developed collaborative work in the area of standards and assessments, such as the School Quality Review Initiative in which schools conduct self-assessments and respond to assessments by visiting teams;
  
• Established linkages with local businesses and business leaders, such as a shadowing project between CEOs and superintendents;
  
• Established a new teacher education program at the University of Southern Maine that is located in partnership schools and co-directed by university and school-based educators;
  
• Fostered and given publication opportunities to teachers who write about their personal and school experiences with changes in practice; and
• Strengthened and expanded the conversation/networking purpose of the partnership.

A new project is the Electronic Marketplace (ELM), designed jointly with the Old Orchard Beach school district and the Department of Engineering at the University of Southern Maine. This project is providing an interactive, multi-media Web site with resources linked to Maine's Learning Results, the state's standards and performance indicators in eight content areas. The collection includes learning units, assessments, scoring guides, examples of student work and Internet sources for each grade-level standard in each content area.

The partnership attributes its success to its respect for the professional knowledge of educators and its nurturing of teachers' potential as inventors and change agents.

The League of Professional Schools in Georgia

Founded by the Program for School Improvement in the College of Education at the University of Georgia, the League is open to any school where at least 80 percent of the school staff is willing to work on a school-based improvement program that they identify. Currently, more than 100 schools at all grade levels in different types of communities belong to the League.

Initially designed to help schools make site-based decision making work, the League has become much more than a support for new governance. It promotes self-assessments among the schools, encourages inclusive decision making, and develops teacher leadership throughout member schools.

League member schools agree to use a three-part framework to guide their school improvement efforts: the governance of the school is democratic, involving everyone; the staff focuses its collaboration on the school's own shared vision of exemplary teaching and learning; and action research--that is, research conducted by teachers in classrooms--is an ongoing component.

Formal services that benefit members include a two-day planning and orientation workshop for a school team, quarterly meetings, a newsletter, an annual league conference, an on-site facilitation visit by a League practitioner or associate, special summer institutes related to issues of most interest to teachers and principals in the schools, an information retrieval system, and assistance with action research.

These resources and opportunities enable the League schools to move more steadily through the troubling and risky first stages of school change. The League philosophy about schools as democratic workplaces serves them well during this phase because, as one study ⁽²⁴⁾ found, "when people were given opportunities to take part in a dialogue where they were encouraged to ask questions, express their skepticism or support, seek clarification, and hear what others were thinking, they were much more likely to have a deeper understanding of what the change was about." Teachers progressed to doing action research and using other information that gave them the courage to "stand up and state their beliefs to their colleagues."

The League schools have implemented a variety of ways to improve student learning--from a transition program for ninth graders that lowered dropout rates and improved achievement, to academic initiatives that have moved schools to become more student centered. Teachers and principals agree almost unanimously that their school's efforts under the League's guidance have resulted in improved student learning and attitudes toward learning. Moreover, the respondents in the study overwhelmingly believed that the League influence had improved teacher involvement in decision making, implementation of decisions, and attitudes toward teaching and learning.

There was a similar impact upon principals. They began to model what was important in the school by becoming more involved with curriculum issues. According to League teachers and principals, the opportunities to form networks at meetings and institutes were the most beneficial.

Characteristics of Promising
Professional Development Programs

• They focus on teachers as central to student learning, yet include all other members of the school community.
• They focus on individual, collegial, and organizational improvement.
• They respect and nurture the intellectual and leadership capacities of teachers, principals, and others in the school community.
• They reflect the best available research and practice in teaching, learning, and leadership.
• They enable teachers to develop further expertise in subject content, teaching strategies, uses of technologies, and other essential elements in teaching to high standards.
• They promote continuous inquiry and improvement in the daily life of schools.
• They are planned collaboratively by those who will participate in and facilitate that development.
• They require substantial time and other resources.
• They are driven by a coherent and long-term plan.
• They are evaluated ultimately on the basis of their impact on teacher effectiveness and student learning, and this assessment guides subsequent professional development efforts.

[The Induction of New Teachers]

[Improving Teacher Accountability and Incentives]