The term “professional development” can evoke strong emotions in educators—they either love PD or hate it.
In an EdWeek Research Center survey of 876 educators conducted online from Feb. 12 to March 17, 12% of the participants said the PD they received in the last year was “very irrelevant” and 21% said it was “somewhat relevant.” About a third of respondents said PD they received in the last year was very or somewhat irrelevant to their job.
Educators noted that without follow-up or feedback, one-and-done PD sessions aren’t helpful. Over 40% said that the PD they received in the last year didn’t address their actual classroom challenges or wasn’t related to the topic they focus on.
Designing effective PD isn’t simple because it needs to be relevant, timely, and have coaching or feedback embedded into its structure. Some educators have found ways to buck the trend of boring or irrelevant training.
Jenna Davis, an English-language development coach at the Metro Nashville school district, has helped implement a co-teaching model in schools with a high population of English learners. The district has moved away from a one-and-done model of PD for its English-language teachers; instead, coaches like Davis are embedded in schools to give continuous feedback to teachers and help them tackle problems as they crop up.
“The PD that’s related to what you’re doing every day in your classroom is definitely what sticks,” said Davis at an Education Week K-12 Essentials Forum on ways to create engaging PD, held online on Jun. 18. Davis was joined by two other veteran educators who shared tips for designing effective and engaging professional development.
Create cycles of inquiry
Professional development sticks when it is stretched out, said Joe Schroeder, the associate executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School Administrators, who spoke on the webinar. Schroeder has created and run a yearlong training program for school leaders for the last 14 years. Leaders who attend must bring a problem of practice—something they’re trying to tackle in their schools—to a group of mentors and peers for discussion and feedback. The cohort meets a few times a year, and at each meeting, the leaders provide feedback data and results from new strategies they have tried.
“When people say they hate PD, it’s because they were given the idea, but not the support to actually practice it,” Schroeder said. A year gives school leaders time to track data on the changes they make and try different strategies to keep improving the results.
Practice isn’t enough, Schroeder added. To make PD stick, coaches need to go into classrooms to see if the changes are being implemented. It’s not a “gotcha” moment, Schroeder emphasized, but a supportive gesture. “You can start by creating a safe space for [leaders] to grow, and get in some reps. Then you start showing up in classrooms to monitor if the PD is being used.”
The Metro Nashville district has also stepped away from one-and-done PD for its teachers. Davis said recent PD sessions have focused on the same type of “inquiry cycles” that Schroeder uses.
During a recent PD session, teachers taught a lesson in front of their peers to get their feedback and to practice their newly learned skills. Initially hesitant, the educators eventually found a flow and got more comfortable with practicing in front of their colleagues. Their classrooms have now become “models” that other educators can come into observe.
“You could see the ripple effect on the culture and climate in the school [buildings],” said Davis.
Narrow the focus
Practice and feedback work in tandem in good PD design. But the starting point is just as important, said Schroeder. While new issues like artificial intelligence are important, Schroeder said it’s best to “find one or two deep [topics] that are a match with our situation, and then [stick] with that in some depth. Activity is not [impact].”
When leaders sign up to train with Schroeder, he encourages them to pick one problem—student achievement in a subject, for instance—to work on.
But districts and schools have multiple challenges and educators with multiple training needs. How can they meet all of them?
Davis said differentiation is key. The Metro Nashville district has created different training pathways for teachers to choose from, instruction of English learners being one of them. English learners now make up 60% of the 81,000 students in the district, which means more educators—including those who don’t specialize in English language instruction—need training on working with this student population.
In response, the district has created an “English learner pathway” through which teachers, counselors, coaches, interventionists, and special education specialists can access content and curricula on the topic.
“We were able to build their toolbox as EL educators as well,” said David. “It’s been powerful.”
