Professional development can be used to build the capacity of teachers. There are effective best practices in leading teachers through continual learning opportunities.
2. Objectives
Understand one framework for teacher
learning and supervision
Explore several practices of professional
development and renewal
Gain insight into the power of collaborative
culture
3. Building Capacity
Building the capacity of teachers is important
because it is a key factor in improving student
achievement.
With your table group, come up with a
definition of “capacity” as it relates to this
quotation.
4. Some Background
Purpose of Supervision: To help teachers improve
What the teacher knows
The development of teaching skills
Teacher’s ability to make more informed professional decisions
Be a better problem solver
To inquire into his or her own practice
Traditional means of improvement: in-service in which supervisors
choose programs
More recent means of improvement: professional development in
which teachers play a key role in deciding the direction and nature of
their professional improvement
Neither in-service nor professional development is expansive and
penetrating enough to tap the full potential for teachers to grow
personally and professionally (Bollin, Falk and colleagues).
5. Frameworks for Growth
When supervision shifts away from providing
improvement experiences and opportunities,
renewal begins to dominate (Bolin).
Supervision as renewal is more fully
integrated into the everyday life of the school.
Teachers commit to sharing their practice
and to helping each other create collaborative
communities of practice.
6. Capacity as Personal and
Professional
Think about a time that you wanted to learn how to
do something (i.e. play an instrument, learn a
language, perfect a hobby, etc.).
What drove you to do something about the fact that you
didn’t have the knowledge or skill.
What would have happened if you didn’t pursue the
knowledge or skill?
How does this relate to teaching?
7. In-service Training
Directive and structured
Responsibility in hands of someone other than teacher
Emphasis on the development of job-related skills through the
provision of training and practice experiences
Assumed that teachers have limited capacity or will to figure
things our for themselves
Serves less to provide growth and more to meet legal
requirements
Program activities selected and developed for uniform
dissemination without giving serious consideration to the
purposes of such activities or the needs of individual teachers
8. In-Service
Assumptions
Knowledge stands above
the teacher.
Knowledge is instrumental.
It tells the teacher what to
do.
Teaching is a job and
teachers are technicians.
Mastery of skills is
important.
Roles
Teacher is consumer of
knowledge
Principal is an expert
Practices
Emphasize technical
competence
Build individual teacher’s
skills
Through training and
practice
By planning and delivering
training
9. Professional Development
Develops professional expertise by involving teachers in problem
solving and action research
Teachers and supervisors share responsibility for planning,
development and provision of staff development activities
Focus is much less on training than on puzzling, inquiring, and
solving problems.
Provides teachers with the opportunity to reflect on their practice
and share with others.
Characterized by “intensity of personal involvement, immediate
consequences for classroom practice, stimulation and ego
support by meaningful associates in this situation, and initiating
by teacher rather than outside” (Thelen).
10. Professional Development
Assumptions
The teacher stands above
knowledge.
Knowledge is conceptual. It
informs the teacher’s
decisions.
Teaching is a profession
and teachers are experts.
Development of expertise is
important.
Roles
Teacher is constructor of
knowledge.
Principal is a colleague.
Practices
Emphasize clinical
competence.
Build professional
community
Through problem solving
and inquiry
By emphasizing inquiry,
problem solving and
research
11. Renewal
The development of the personal and professional self through
reflection and reevaluation
Renewal implies doing over again, revising, making new yet
restoring, reestablishing, and revaluing (Bolin).
Teacher engages in the process for himself or herself
Assumes a need for teachers to grow and develop on the job
Less of a function of polishing existing skills or of keeping up with
the latest developments and more a function of solving problems
and of changing as individuals.
12. Renewal
Assumptions
Knowledge is in the
teacher.
Knowledge is personal. It
connects teachers to
themselves and others.
Teaching is a calling and
teachers are servants.
Development of personal
and professional self is
important.
Roles
Teacher is internalizer of
knowledge
Principal is a friend
Practices
Emphasize personal and
critical competencies
Build caring community
Through reflection and
reevaluation
By encouraging reflection,
conversation, and
discourse
13. Designing Professional
Development Opportunities
Offer meaningful intellectual, social, and emotional engagement
with ideas, with materials, and with colleagues
Take account of the context of teaching and the experience of
other teachers
Offer support for informed dissent as a means to evaluate
alternatives and to scrutinize underlying assumptions for what is
being proposed or done.
Place classroom practice in the larger context of purposes and
practices of schooling.
Provide teachers with ways they an see and act upon the
connections among students’ experience, classroom practice,
and school wide structures and cultures.
Prepare teachers to employ the techniques and perspectives of
inquiry in an effort to increase their capacity to generate
knowledge and to assess the knowledge claimed by others.
(Judith Warren Little)
14. Empowering Teachers
Enable teachers to exercise more control over their
classrooms.
More control is needed for teachers to make the
changes in their practices that are necessary for them to
teach more effectively.
Participation in a professional community of like-minded
colleagues has a significant effect on their ability to know
better what to do in the classroom and to adapt their
teaching strategies to more effectively meet student
needs.
(Milbrey McLaughlin)
15. Professional Community
Ideal setting for teacher learning and for providing the
professional development opportunities which enhance this
learning
Learning and teaching depend heavily upon creating, sustaining,
and expanding a community of research practice.
Members of the community are critically dependent on each
other
Collaborative learning is not just nice but necessary for survival
Interdependence promotes an atmosphere of joint responsibility,
mutual respect, and a sense of personal and group identity.
16. Building a Professional
Community
At your table group brainstorm several
benefits of a professional community.
What must change in the current system to
encourage the development of a professional
community?
17. Benefits of a Professional
Community
Encourage teachers to reflect on their own practice
Acknowledge that teachers develop at different rates and at any given
time are more ready to learn some things than others
Acknowledge that teachers have different talents and interests
Give high priority to conversation and dialogue among teachers
Provide for collaborative learning among teachers
Emphasize caring relationships and felt interdependencies
Call for teachers to respond morally to their work
View teachers as supervisors of learning communities in their own
classrooms.
18. Research on Teacher Learning
and Teacher Effectiveness
According to Dennis Sparks and Stephanie Hirch
(National Staff Development Council), effective
teacher learning is
Focused on helping teachers become deeply immersed in
subject matter and teaching methods
Curriculum-centered and standards based
Sustained, rigorous, and cumulative
Directly linked to what teachers do in their classrooms
We cannot expect teachers to use yesterday’s training to
prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s future.
19. Effective Practices
Programs conducted in school settings and linked to schoolwide efforts
Teachers participating as helpers to each other and as planners, with
administrators, of in-service activities
Emphasis on self-instruction with differentiated training opportunities
Teachers in active roles, choosing goals and activities for themselves
Emphasis on demonstration, supervised trials and feedback; training
that is concrete and ongoing over time
Ongoing assistance and support available on request
(Sparks and Susan Loucks-Horsley)
20. Results: Eisenhower Professional
Development Program
Structural Features
Form
Duration
Participation
Core Features
Content Focus
Active Learning
Coherence
Specifically our research indicates that professional development should
focus on deepening teacher content knowledge and knowledge of how
students learn particular content, on providing opportunities for active
learning and on encouraging coherence in teachers’ professional
development experiences. Schools and districts should pursue these goals
by using activities that have greater duration and that include collective
participation. Although reform forms of professional development [i.e. study
groups, mentoring, peer inquiry, teacher networks] are more effective than
traditional forms [i.e. workshops], the advantages are explained primarily by
greater duration of the activities.
21. Successful Professional
Development
Must be grounded in inquiry, reflection, and experimentation that are
participant driven
Must be collaborative, involving a sharing of knowledge among
educators and a focus on teachers’ communities of practice rather than
on individual teachers
Must be a sustained, ongoing, intensive, and supported by modeling,
coaching, and the collective solving of specific problems of practice
Must be connected to and derived from teachers’ work with their
students
Must engage teachers in concrete tasks of teaching, assessment,
observation and reflection that illuminate the processes of learning and
development
Must be connected to other aspects of school change
22. A Design for Planning
Five components that constitute a design framework for
planning: intents, substance, performance expectations,
approach, and responsibility
Consider the following questions to bring a sense of coherence
to the planning process:
What are we trying to accomplish?
What will teachers be able to know and do as a result of
engaging in professional development?
What aspects of good teaching will be the focus on our learning
efforts?
How can we assess our progress as learners?
In what ways can our professional development activities and
procedures be improved?
How shall we proceed from here?
Who will be responsible for what?
23. Intents
It is essential to be concerned with four levels
of intent.
Knowledge level – I know it.
Comprehension level – I understand it.
Application level – I can do it.
Value level – I will do it.
24. Substance
Four critical factors in good teaching which can be improved
through appropriate teacher growth and development (Louis
Rubin):
Teacher’s sense of purpose
Teacher’s perception of students
Teacher’s knowledge of subject matter
Teacher’s mastery of technique
A comprehensive staff development program is concerned with
all four of the critical factors.
25. Performance Expectations
Know How – I know how to teach and help students learn. (Talk to me.)
I can teach effectively and am able to get students to learn. (Observe
me.)
I will teach effectively and I will meet other responsibilities all the time,
even when no one is looking. (Look at lesson plans, assignments,
student work; Use walk-throughs.)
I will grow on the job. (Observe me, ask me to share ideas with
colleagues, look for changes in my teaching practice.)
Self-employed professionals (doctors, accountants and others) are
forced by competition and by visible product evaluation to give major
attention to the will-grow dimension. Teachers have not felt external
pressure for continuing professional growth. High-stakes testing and
other performance expectations are bring more attention to this area.
26. Approach and Responsibility
Traditional Approaches and Supervisory
Responsibility
In-servicing teachers
Best when a problem can be defined as a deficit in
knowledge of some kind
Accompanied by clear objectives and conventional well-
executed instruction.
Teachers assume passive role and are exposed to logically
structured programs and activities.
Represent a minimum commitment to teacher growth and
development
27. Approach and Responsibility
continued
Informal Approaches and Teacher
Responsibility
Exploration and discovery by teachers
Provides teachers with a rich environment for
professional learning
Teachers are personally involved, work
collaboratively with others and have immediate
consequences for classroom practice
28. Approach and Responsibility
continued
Shared Approaches and
Shared Responsibility
Low-key, classroom-
focused, teacher-
oriented and
particularistic.
Teachers’ capacities,
needs and interests are
paramount, but sufficient
planning and structure is
introduced to bridge the
gap between these
interests and school
program and instruction
needs.
Teachers are actively involved in contributing data,
information or feeling; solving a problem; or conducting
an analysis.
Supervisors share in the contributing, solving, and
conducting activities above as colleagues of the
teachers.
In colleagueship supervisors and teachers work together
as professional associates bound by the common
purpose of improvement of teaching and learning
Staff development activities generally require study of an
actual situation or a real problem and use live data, either
from self-analysis or from observations of others.
Feedback is provided, by supervisors, by other teachers,
or as a result of joint analysis, which permits teachers to
compare observations with intents and beliefs, and
personal reactions of others.
The emphasis is on direct improvement of teaching and
learning in the classroom.
29. Learning Communities
With your table group, list structures in your
school that support learning communities.
What must change in your school to support
learning communities?
30. To take away…
Ability is seen as an expandable repertoire of
skills and habits, professionals are defined as
individual who are continually learning rather
than as people who already know. Their
roles include both teacher and learner,
master and apprentice, and these roles are
continually shifting according to context.