New Directions in Professional Development
by Douglas S. Fleming
Bringing change to the area of professional development presents a two-part
challenge. On the one hand, we must learn to challenge those ideas which we have
accepted without questioning. At the same time, we must re-examine those ideas
we have questioned without actually attempting. This is how a school becomes a
genuine learning community, a community that is producing new knowledge about
itself and using that knowledge to strengthen conditions for teaching and
learning. If we accept that continuous professional development is essential to
school improvement and to educational restructuring, we must clarify our vision
of what quality professional development means and how professional development
programs should be planned, implemented, and assessed.
What Quality Professional Development Means
In Building Systems for Professional Growth, Arbuckle
and Murray (1989) cite ten features of effective staff
development programs:
Collegiality and collaboration. The programs allow
time for teachers, administrators, and other school staff to
talk and work together.
 Teacher
experimentation and risk-taking. Sometimes, this means
eliminating or suspending policies or practices which actually
impede innovation.
Access and use of available knowledge. This doesn't
just mean teachers have access to the Internet or to education
research and journal articles. It means that teachers have
access to data on their school and performance data on their
students, as well as data from schools around the country, and
that they use this knowledge to guide their decisions about
curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Participant involvement. Teachers have opportunities
to use new tools or ideas to discuss and make decisions on
issues facing them in their daily work.
Time. Adequate time for professional development is
included in the school calendar and, ideally, in the school
schedule.
Building-level leadership. Leadership at the building
level ensures the sustained attention and support needed to
learn new skills.
Incentives and rewards. The school or district
provides appropriate incentives and rewards for extra time
invested in professional development activity.
Geared toward adult learners. Professional
development programs incorporate knowledge about adult learning
and how individuals and organizations change.
Clear linkages. There is a clear link between the
professional development activity, individual teacher needs, and
school and district goals.
Consistency. Professional development programs are
consistent with the philosophy and structure of the school or
district.
How Professional Development Programs Are Changing
Dennis Sparks (1994) captures some of the ways in which
professional development programs are undergoing changes:
-
Schools and districts are
offering fewer catch-all, smorgasbord menus and
concentrating available resources on programs that foster
team development and support overall organizational goals.
-
The specific content of staff
development programs is being decided less by the district
central office and more by individual schools.
-
The format for staff development
programs involves less lecturing and information giving and
more direct application and information use.
-
Staff development programs are
not planned and conducted by outside experts or professional
trainers, but by local planners and facilitators. Programs
are relevant and provide opportunities for
teacher-to-teacher dialogue.
-
Staff development programs are
viewed less as a special, add-on feature and more as a "part
of the job" of professional renewal. This means that they
are often held during the regular working day, not at the
end of it.
-
Teachers are not the only
individuals targeted for learning. The whole system learns
together when professional development opportunities are
expanded to include parents, business representatives,
community members, higher education partners,
administrators, teacher aides, and volunteers.
- The days of smile sheets are over. In the old days,
professional development was assessed on the basis of
whether participants had "fun," received "great handouts,"
or saw "something neat." Today's staff development programs
must meet higher standards. Professional development
designers must now provide opportunities for participants to
practice the methods demonstrated, give them feedback on
their efforts, and help them apply their new knowledge in
the classroom.
The New Ground on Which We Stand
The challenges ahead for teachers, curriculum coordinators,
staff developers, and building administrators include:
-
creating a shared language about
adult learning and professional development;
-
producing new understandings
about learning environments that facilitate skill
development and knowledge transfer;
-
building a variety of
opportunities, matched to the job needs of active
professionals, into professional development programs; and
- urging our schools-and the organizations that support
them-to make classroom coaching, group facilitation, formal
presentation, and work team consultation a part of teachers'
legitimate roles.
Viewing Change Systemically
A "systems" approach to professional development planning
seeks to identify and align relationships between the components
of a system, anticipate resistance to innovations, seek a
"ripple effect" throughout the entire system, and use the points
of greatest leverage to bring about change.
 Figure
1 depicts the components of an educational system. In the
center of the circle are the most vital components of a school:
what is taught (curriculum); how it is taught (instructional
techniques); how teachers find out what students have learned
(assessment approaches); and how the staff are scheduled and
grouped to serve students (organization). These are the decision
points over which schools can exercise the greatest direct
influence. Surrounding these central variables are some enabling
conditions-library and media, staff development, supervision and
evaluation, budget, and staffing.
Other supporting conditions, further removed from the
school's direct influence, affect the central variables.
Supporting conditions include state and federal mandates, parent
and community support, and district policies and procedures,
some of which might actually impede innovation.
Using systems thinking helps professional developers to be
better prepared for unanticipated consequences, to plan
contingency measures, and to redirect communication efforts so
the necessary stakeholder groups are included in the planning
process. It also enables them to assess the likelihood of a
program's success.
Five Models of Professional Development
Dennis Sparks and Susan Loucks-Horsley (1990) believe that
professional development opportunities must provide variety in
focus, duration, and intensity. They describe five models of
professional development:
 Individually
guided staff development. Teachers read professional
publications, discuss practices with colleagues, and experiment
with new strategies on their own initiative. This model may be
used with or without a formal goal-setting process that is part
of the school's or district's supervision or evaluation plan. An
underlying assumption of this model is that individuals can best
judge their own learning needs and act on them. The professional
development needs of a veteran teacher nearing retirement are
different from those of a beginning teacher, so professional
development experiences must be varied.
Observation/assessment. Teachers serve as
mentors to beginning teachers, or engage in collegial
observation (peer coaching) programs, in order to provide
feedback on classroom behaviors consistent with individual or
school goals. Underlying assumptions are that reflection and
analysis are a means to professional growth, and that reflection
can be enhanced by outside observation. When teachers have
opportunities to get practical feedback from other teachers and
can see positive classroom changes as a result of taking new
approaches, they are more apt to continue to improve. Research
by Joyce and Showers (1988) showed that significant classroom
change was associated with teacher training followed by peer
coaching and feedback.
Involvement in a development/improvement process.
Teachers are asked to develop or adapt curriculum, design new
programs, or engage in systematic improvement processes. One
assumption underlying this model is that adults learn most
effectively when they have a need to know or a problem to solve.
Another is that through the process of joint involvement,
teachers will be more likely to share ideas about teaching and
learning in general. Statewide, all-school, and district-level
efforts illustrate the variety of ways teachers are involved in
development and improvement processes. Many involve shared
decision making and projects designed to improve the school as a
whole. Research suggests that these efforts are most successful
when participants identify a limited number of "ideal practices"
around which to focus their initiatives.
Training. Traditional staff development
programs include formal presentations, lectures, demonstrations,
role playing, and/or small-group activities that are based on a
clear set of objectives. For example, an objective might be,
"participants will be able to describe five conditions for a
cooperative learning activity," or "participants will be able to
demonstrate use of open-ended questions in introducing a class
activity." A significant assumption underlying this model is
that traditional staff development (one-shot, large-group,
expert-presented) adequately prepares teachers to change present
practices and replicate new ones in their classrooms. Research
suggests that the training component works most effectively when
followed up by classroom coaching, personal feedback, and
troubleshooting meetings.
 Continuous
inquiry. Teacher inquiry is gaining acceptance as a
legitimate form of staff development. Research has shown that
teachers who have studied their own classrooms make more
informed decisions about when and how to apply research, develop
more supportive and collegial relationships with one another,
and develop a broader perspective. Teacher inquiry may be an
individual or a collaborative activity. Sometimes labeled
"action research" or "quality improvement," the process starts
by asking questions, followed by developing a plan, collecting
data, and analyzing the data in order to detect patterns and
draw conclusions. Finally, findings are used to drive decisions
and adjust practices. An important assumption underlying this
model is that teachers will develop new understandings as they
formulate their own questions and collect their own data to
answer them.
High Quality Professional Development Experiences
The purpose of professional development is to improve student
learning through increased knowledge, skill, and problem-solving
capacity among educators and other community stakeholders.
High-quality professional development is marked by variety and
flexibility in its duration, intensity, and frequency. In
coherent and systemic professional development experiences,
participants:
- Understand both the broad goals and the specific
objectives of the program.
- Experience or simulate the roles/tasks for which they
are being prepared.
- Learn about opportunities for continuing
education/networking meetings.
- Use a variety of materials and engage in activities that
illustrate key concepts.
- Work in safe, comfortable environments that promote the
practice of new skills and the application of new tools.
- Serve as teachers and resources to one another.
- Build a learning community-a social system based on
mutual respect and trust.
- Assess their own learning and reflect on program
components.
- Generate new information and/or commitments that are
shared with the whole group.
- Learn where they can acquire additional knowledge,
skills, resources, and support.
- Exercise choices in determining individual or team
learning needs.
- Develop new insights about themselves, their team,
and/or their organization.
- Create practical products, clearer understandings, and
usable plans related to the work back home.
- Achieve a stronger sense of how different role
groups-administrators, teachers, etc.Ñcan contribute to a
common purpose.
- Identify relationships between different system
components that effect the implementation of proposed
changes or plans.
- Discover where and how to obtain specific materials
(handbooks, guides, references, diagnostics, self
assessments, tools, plans, etc.).
- Practice responding to persons who may threaten or
attack another role group.
- Receive public recognition for attendance and
participation (certificate, award, credit).
- Want to learn more.
Time Strategies
-Excerpted and adapted from "It's About Time!" Report to
the 1993 National Education Association Representative Assembly,
San Francisco, CA.
- Strategy #1: Freeing-up Time (some temporary
solutions)
- An administrator covers a class so teachers can meet and
plan.
- Teaching assistants and/or college interns conduct
learning activities (planned ahead of time with the teacher)
so the teacher can attend a meeting.
- One teacher covers two classes while the other teacher
attends a meeting.
- A group of teachers plan and coordinate a community
event; students participate in a learning activity, while
teachers have the opportunity to collaborate.
- Parents, members of the business community, or
volunteers provide alternative learning activities or
enrichment programs while teachers meet.
- Strategy #2: Restructuring or Rescheduling Time
- Banking time: adding minutes to the daily schedule in
exchange for a monthly planning day.
Reducing five or ten minutes from lunch periods.
Creating a first period prior to students' arrival,
afford ing a common time for planning and collaborating.
Assigning interdisciplinary teams: a group of teachers
are responsible for a common cluster of students, enabling
the teachers to adjust daily schedules, change grouping
patterns, and better coordinate curriculum.
Eliminating formal passing times between classes; this
can free up twenty-nine minutes from the daily schedule.
- Strategy #3: Scheduling Common Planning Time
- Moving teachers around so that team members can be
located near one another.
Rescheduling: classes meet for five periods on Monday,
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Three periods are scheduled
before lunch, and two after lunch. On Wednesdays, only four
classes are held, and there is no lunch break. Students are
dismissed after the fourth period class, providing the
faculty with a two-hour block of planning time.
Shaving five minutes from the daily homeroom period
yields additional time for teacher planning, while students
gain time for activity periods, tutorials, snack breaks, or
student committee meetings.
Introducing a flex-time period that enables some students
to attend certain subjects while other teachers are free to
meet and plan.
- Strategy #4: Using Existing Time More Effectively
- Using faculty meetings to focus on planning and
collaboration, not on information dissemination or
administration.
Allocating all pre-opening workdays for teacher planning
and preparation.
Holding single-issue faculty meetings.
Networking information through a local area network or an
e-mail system.
Restricting time teachers spend on
non-instructional/planning duties.
- Strategy #5: Buying Time
- Funding a "substitute bank" of thirty to forty days per
year from which teachers withdraw time to participate in
committee work, engage in professional development
activities, or work on development projects.
Hiring permanent substitute teachers to rotate through
grade levels and provide coverage.
Seeking grant funds to pay for substitute teachers or to
provide stipends for teachers attending meetings outside the
school day.
Using staff development funds to hire teachers to present
workshops and training sessions, rather than outside
trainers and presenters.
Negotiating bargaining agreements that provide extra-duty
pay or compensation for evening/summer work activity.
Providing inservice credits from the district for
personal time devoted to the development of new programs.
Using What We Know About Adult Learning
Research on adult learning shows that educators have varying
needs, learn in different ways, and bring different skills and
experiences to the learning situation. Professional development
activities must be tailored to fit the participants. Workshops
or other training activities that are suitable for veteran
teachers may be entirely inappropriate for inexperienced
teachers, new hires, or parent volunteers.
Incorporating strategies geared toward adult learners, such
as observing, mentoring, coaching, and reflecting, enhances the
professional development experience. A skillful balance of
outside expertise and inside talent is needed to help staff
learn and apply new practices. Neither top-down or bottom-up
change efforts work by themselves all the time; both are
necessary to effect lasting change.
Figure 2. Learning Pyramid
Source: National Training Laboratories, Bethel, Maine
Selected Resources for Professional
Development Planners
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