Professional Learning for Personal Development

Professional Learning for Personal Development

            Recently I finished reading "4 O'Clock Faculty" by Rich Czyz. I highly recommend the book as it provides ways to make professional learning meaningful, engaging, and personally relevant. If we want to change the way students learn, we must change the way adults learn. Effective school leaders understand the needs of their teachers as learners. For me, a starting point in differentiated professional development and understanding the needs of teachers draws from Michael Huberman’s “The Lives of Teachers”. Relying on concepts of developmental psychology, Huberman (1993) indicated that teachers travel through several different stages.

Career Stages and Development Needs

Stage	Name	Years in Field (approximation)	Developmental Theory and Needs
1	Preservice	0	Training and preparing for the profession.
2	Induction	1-2	Survival stage: Seeks safety and desires to learn the day-to-day operations of the school and the complexities of facing new situations in the classroom
3	Competency	3-5	Confidence in work mounts as does understanding.
4	Enthusiasm	5-8	Actively seeks out professional development and other opportunities for professional growth; high job satisfaction
5	Career frustration	Varies	Teacher burnout
6	Stability	Varies	Complacency sets in; innovation is low
7	Career wind-down	Varies	Coasts through on past performance; status lets teacher get by without exerting much effort
8	Career exit	Varies	End of a teaching career

Source: Adapted from Huberman (1993)

            Huberman shares that not all teachers move through all of these stages, that movement can be unpredictable, and that teachers can move in and out of stages at varied rates. The above adaptation of Huberman’s stages allows for a school leader to garner some insight into what professional growth opportunities might meet the needs of teachers. Just know that there are no caveats as teacher’s practice, beliefs, and knowledge changes through experiences, both personal and professional. One idea in utilizing Huberman's work would be to have teachers identify their current stage of development. Having teacher share with the school leader where they perceive they are could help in identifying goals and next steps. Ultimately, as school leaders, we must know our people. Planning for professional development starts there. 

            Another very important phase of implementing a results-based and differentiated professional development plan is planning. To often, professional development within our schools or school districts is a mish-mash of isolated events where one learning session is not connected to the next. Professional development is effective when it meets goals and aligns to the needs of personnel and the school. As a school leader, planning starts with knowing what professional development is needed. A deep analysis of student achievement data coupled with a deep analysis of teacher performance data can help pinpoint a specific professional development need or needs for your teachers. In addition, we must know what resources are needed to provide the professional development. Beyond that, we must know what follow-up activities are needed to support the application and extension of skills learned during professional development. Lastly, we must evaluate the overall impact of professional development on its impact on teacher performance and student outcomes. We could provide 1000 hours of amazing professional learning. However, if pedagogy is not changing, that 1000 hours means nothing. This will provide a framework for developing a professional development plan. We must know who will conduct the professional development. Leveraging the talent we have within our buildings in this regard is paramount. Great leaders develop other great leaders and know how to strategically align resources to best accomplish goals. Effective school leaders find opportunities for teachers to share their expertise with others. Conducting an expertise survey where teachers self identify areas of strength where they are willing to share their knowledge with their colleagues is one mechanism to leverage talent. Another idea would be to have teachers do a presentation for their colleagues building upon the learning they experienced at the conference or workshop they attended.

            Some schools have formed professional learning teams to support adult learning. A professional development team can be made up of school leaders, teacher leaders serving as team leads, and teachers serving in the other support roles. The focus of the professional development team would be to shape the focus of professional development for the school year. The team would be responsible for identifying the professional development needs of the school, then sharing them out with the staff for their feedback prior to deciding as a collective to move forward with this area of focus. From there, a yearlong agenda with a timeline can be developed. Knowing who in house can fulfill a need is essential, along with knowing what areas of expertise they bring. This allows for the school leader to best leverage the resources they have to build professional capital within their current staff. Knowing what external resources and personnel are available as well will help to fill gaps that exist that cannot be filled with internal expertise. Planning for professional development is a multi-faceted and important step. Once we have a professional development plan in place, the next step is to implement it.

            For professional development to be successful, teachers have to know the why. What is the purpose? We must provide teachers this answer and be clear on how the initiative is going to be carried out and what is expected of them as learners. As I mentioned, we must provide teachers with the voice in planning and selecting the initiative. There buy-in is essential to seeing the professional development plan be effective. Having an introductory meeting with your staff can clarify the purpose of the professional development, how it’s going to be carried out, and what the expectations are of everyone (both providers and participants). This approach will provide the coherence necessary for the initiative to be successful and responsive to the learning needs of the teachers in our buildings.

            In order to have a results-based professional development we must develop a follow-up plan and assessment the effectiveness of the professional development. Having a follow-up plan allows progress to be monitored and feedback to be provided to both the providers and participants. By monitoring throughout the professional development cycle ensures that teachers have the supports they need as learners. Modifications can be made that better facilitate teacher learning due to having a process to follow-up plan in place. The school leader must be visible in classrooms and evaluating if changes in pedagogy are happening. Providing feedback to teachers around the implementation of professional learning supports making the pedagogical shifts we want to see in all classrooms. I love this image from Katie Martin "10 Characteristics of Professional Learning that Shifts Practice." Does your current professional learning contain these characteristics? 

            Resources for schools are scarce. Wasting money on professional development that does not help teachers grow and that does not improve student achievement is a poor use of taxpayer money. As school leaders, we must assess how teachers are implementing the content of professional development and the impact professional development is having on student achievement.

            Informally, professional development can be assessed with brief surveys at the end of each session. Those brief survey questions can provide both school leaders and professional development providers with insight into presentation including teacher perception and questions regarding the topic. Finding ways to incorporate feedback into your professional development sessions not only improves the quality and provides insights to make shifts if necessary, it can be increase staff participation and collaboration.

            Connecting the implementation of professional development with supervision and observation is another form of informal observation. Through informal classroom observations, school leaders can evaluate if teachers are transferring their learning into their practice, what skills teachers are struggling to implement, what is working in practice (how and why), the ongoing support and resources that teachers need, follow-up activities needed to support implementation, and teachers who are willing to let others observe their teaching. These informal assessments can be used to inform the direction of professional development throughout the school year and should be utilized in conjunction with the analysis of a formal assessment. 

            Using a formal assessment tool such as a survey that combines both scale and narrative-responses to open-ended questions provides school leaders with data to analyze regarding the professional development. This analysis of data provides school leaders with the capability to identify strengths and weaknesses of the professional development and to what extend have teachers implement newly learned skills. Connecting professional development to school goals and objectives such as those found within a Unified Improvement Plan allows for the school leader to analyze data from formal sources such as standardized assessments to gauge where students are experiencing difficulties. These data sets can assist school leaders in identifying gaps in a teacher’s knowledge or application of knowledge, which leads to identifying the professional development that will fill those gaps.

            Teachers are the most important human resource within our schools. Providing them with differentiated, meaningful, engaging, personally-relevant, and results-based professional development school leaders can make a lasting investment in improving outcomes for all students.