Perhaps no other aspect of the teacher-quality system in the United States suffers from an identity crisis as severe as that of professional development.
Few in the education field discount the eminently logical idea that teachers should be supported in the continuous improvement of their craft. But as a term for describing ongoing training investments in the teaching force, 鈥減rofessional development鈥� has become both ubiquitous and all but meaningless.
Though frequently invoked by lawmakers and consultants, most recently in states鈥� applications for the federal Race to the Top competition, professional development plans generally incorporate little context about who will provide the training and for what purpose. That this situation endures, despite a focus during the past decade on data analysis and research to improve instruction, is both a testament to the complexity of the professional-development enterprise, and its greatest problem: Mediocre, scattershot training, apart from doing little to help students, is a burden for teachers.
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鈥淎t some point, you are in this meeting and feel you鈥檝e been there two million times before, and it starts to grate,鈥� said Jess Rhoades Bonilla, an 11th grade English teacher in New York City. 鈥淚t can be a teacher-morale issue as well as not a good use of time.鈥�
New developments in education policy portend a crossroads of sorts for the field of professional development. For one, the idea of 鈥渢eacher effectiveness鈥� is now front and center on the state and national policy agenda. In theory, the idea dovetails with the goal of professional development: to ensure that teachers have opportunities to improve their craft and are given tools with which to do so, and that school systems have a way of determining whether students learn more as a result.
Yet advocates acknowledge that professional development risks marginalization in the teacher-effectiveness conversation unless it is able to articulate clearly its place in producing better teachers.
鈥淭he hard truth is that, until recently, the field of professional development has been underdeveloped and immature,鈥� said M. Hayes Mizell, a distinguished senior fellow at Learning Forward, a nonprofit group and membership organization that works to improve the quality of ongoing training. 鈥淚t has tolerated a lot of sloppy thinking, practice, and results. It has not been willing to 鈥榗all out鈥� ineffective practice and ineffective policy. ... It has not devoted attention to outcomes.鈥�
In this special report, 91制片厂视频 Week takes a detailed look at some of the critical issues faced by those charged with upgrading the quality of post-preparation teacher training.
Among other topics, this package of stories attempts to offer new insights into some of the fundamental questions about such training鈥檚 research base, its cost and its implementation in districts, and the changing marketplace for professional-development providers. The report also aims to launch conversations about changes in the field, including advancement in the curriculum of professional development and a new focus on serving an increasingly diverse student population.
Changing Landscape
Teacher-quality policy has evolved dramatically since 1996, when 91制片厂视频 Week last examined professional development in a special report.
At that time, teacher quality was still largely defined by teachers鈥� characteristics, such as the selectivity of teacher education program attended, credentials held, educational attainment, and state licensing status. But as analyses of longitudinal data linking teachers to student test scores have become common, researchers have discovered that such individual characteristics are by themselves only weakly predictive of student academic success.
These mini-profiles鈥攊ncluding video interviews鈥攁re meant to provide insight, but not to serve as representative examples of the districts in which they teach or programs in question. Their diverse experiences highlight the challenges districts face in providing high-quality training matched to each teacher鈥檚 needs.
In the past two years, policymaking has moved toward linking student outcomes to teacher performance. But as teacher tenure, hiring, seniority, and dismissal policies increasingly come under that microscope, comparatively little attention has been paid to ways to boost the effectiveness of the majority of educators who will remain in classrooms across the country.
From a policy standpoint, that could be partly because of the vast number of initiatives that purportedly invest in enhancing teachers鈥� knowledge and skills.
鈥淲e鈥檝e recognized professional development as important, but we don鈥檛 have very clear standards for what we鈥檙e looking for and we don鈥檛 have much accountability for what teachers engage in,鈥� said Jennifer King Rice, a professor of education policy at the University of Maryland College Park. 鈥淚t opens the floodgates for just about anything to be called professional development.鈥�
Practices that fall under the broad heading conceivably include everything from teacher induction and contractually set in-service days to content coaching, recertification credits, and participation in professional associations and networks.
Obstacles Abound
In addition, scholars point to problems with how the training is selected and provided.
鈥淓very time the superintendent goes to a conference, the teachers get worried, because they know he鈥檚 going to come back with something he wants to try,鈥� said Thomas R. Guskey, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Kentucky, in Lexington. 鈥淲e should start where students鈥� weaknesses and shortcomings are and then seek strategies or techniques to help [teachers] understand those shortcomings.鈥�
A popular model for doing that is the 鈥減rofessional learning community,鈥� or PLC, in which school-level teams of teachers meet periodically during school hours to examine student work from common assignments, brainstorm ways to instruct students who haven鈥檛 yet mastered standards, and evaluate the results of reteaching. Such efforts appeal to teachers like Ms. Bonilla.
鈥淥ne ineffective way of doing PD is very top-down, giving little control to teachers and treating all departments and all teachers the same way,鈥� she said.
The hard truth is that, until recently, the field of professional development has been underdeveloped and immature."
As with all teacher training, the team-based approach can be done well or poorly. Supporters of the model stress that merely putting teachers in a conference room once a week doesn鈥檛, by itself, yield better professional development.
鈥淭here鈥檚 probably not a district out there that doesn鈥檛 think it鈥檚 doing PLCs,鈥� said Judy Haptonstall, the superintendent of the 5,000-student Roaring Fork district, in Colorado, which for eight years has set aside time each month for teachers to work together. 鈥淏ut the heart of it has to be about planning for good instruction and evaluating teaching.鈥�
Indeed, the relationship of professional development to teacher evaluation is among the murkier areas for educators to make sense of. Evaluation, the centerpiece of the Obama administration鈥檚 teacher-quality plans, ideally provides teachers with specific feedback about how to improve their craft.
Some educators, like officials at the Learning Forward group, formerly the National Staff Development Council, worry that the focus on individual teacher evaluation will dominate discussions about professional development, causing it to be seen as a remediation tool rather than a process for collective, schoolwide improvement.
But Timothy Daly, the president of the New Teacher Project, a New York City-based training organization, argues that better alignment between individual and schoolwide training is crucial for making professional development relevant.
鈥淵ou cannot possibly have good professional development without a [formal] evaluation that tells you the skills that need to be developed and without a subsequent evaluation that lets you know whether they鈥檝e been improved,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t helps set the curriculum for professional development.鈥�
Key Shifts
As such debates wind on, a variety of for-profit and nonprofit providers, both local and national, continue to populate a lucrative marketplace for professional development, and they are beginning to respond to the call to move training closer to schools.
Federal data suggest that a steady increase in teacher hiring during the past decade may have been caused by the phenomenon of the instructional-coaching model for professional development. And also document an increase in the number of teachers who report participating in a mentoring program. (鈥淪lew of Layoffs May Be Linked to Overhiring,鈥� May 19, 2010.)
What all the spending on personnel, programming, and teacher release time actually buys remains hard to determine, because districts typically amalgamate federal, state, and local dollars for those purposes鈥攁nd do little to track their impact on teacher and student learning.
Despite all the challenges in the field, there are signs of rejuvenation, too. Providers of all sorts are creating new programming to respond to new needs, such as helping general teachers work with special populations of students.
On the cutting edge is a way of thinking about professional development that focuses not just on content but also on the minute-by-minute ways teachers make pedagogical decisions in classrooms.
And finally, there are teachers in every building and every school who are dedicated to constant improvement. They include teachers like Corey R. Sell, an 11-year veteran of the field who for years has grabbed bits and pieces of everything from academic journals to in-service workshops that he felt would make him a better teacher.
Now all that remains is figuring out how to get all teachers to share that degree of professional commitment. That is not an easy task, says the 5th grade teacher in Arlington, Va., when some teachers prefer to close their classroom doors and new ones come into a culture that鈥檚 not always committed to ongoing learning.
鈥淚f I could find a way to get my own school to be innovative, to disrupt itself,鈥� Mr. Sell said, 鈥淚鈥檇 do it in a moment.鈥�
