5. Source: Bruce Joyce & Beverly Showers. Student Achievement Through Staff Development (2002)
6. Source: Bruce Joyce & Beverly Showers. Student Achievement Through Staff Development (2002)
7. Source: Bruce Joyce & Beverly Showers. Student Achievement Through Staff Development (2002)
8. Source: Bruce Joyce & Beverly Showers. Student Achievement Through Staff Development (2002)
9. What’s Effective Professional Learning?
PD Activities
% of teachers
that will
KNOW it
% of teachers that
will be able to
DO it
Presentation of information/theory 5-10% 5%
Presentation of information/theory
+ Modeling and Demonstration
10-20% 5%
Presentation of information/theory
+ Modeling and Demonstration
+ Practice and Feedback
80-90% 5-10%
Presentation of information/theory
+ Modeling & Demonstration
+ Practice & Feedback
+ Coaching/Mentoring
90% 80-90%
Source: Bruce Joyce & Beverly Showers. Student Achievement Through Staff Development (2002)
15. Video libraries
Self-reflection
Collaboration
Feedback & Coaching
Analyzing student learning
How they’re using it
16. Success Factors
Systemic Support
Time
Clarity about goals
Tools & Resources
Change Support
Culture
17. What are the systemic challenges?
Source: Bruce Joyce & Beverly Showers. Student Achievement Through Staff Development (2002)
Editor's Notes
Thank you Graham and good morning to everyone.
We’re all here today because we share the belief that teaching quality is the most important factor in student success. And the research supports our belief – what a teacher says and does in the classroom every day has a bigger impact on student achievement than any thing else. So preparing teachers for success is absolutely critical for student success.
But the research also shows that we’re not always doing This. Too often, we’re not giving our teachers the support they need to be successful.
For example, a study of teacher PD in the US was released last year called the Mirage Report. For two years they studied three large US school districts by surveying more than 10,000 teachers and 500 school leaders.
And they learned some interesting things:
They found that these schools spend a shocking amount on PD – far more than anyone knew. On average, they spent $18000k (12700 pounds) per year, per teacher. At this rate, the 50 largest school districts in the US spend $8 billion (5.6 billion pounds) on teacher PD annually. For a bit of context there are more than 13,000 school districts in the US.
Despite this massive expenditure, the Report also found that most teachers didn’t improve year to year even though many of them were lacking some fundamental skills.
The reason is that most of the PD these teachers receive just isn’t very helpful. They’re not being provided with clear information about their strengths and weaknesses so they can improve.
They authors of the Mirage Report provide three recommendations:
We need to redefine what it means to help teachers improve. Professional development should be redefined as observable and measurable progress towards an ambitious standard for teaching and learning. Then we need to reevaluate existing PD against this new definition. We need to abandon ineffective practices and explore innovative approaches. And finally, we need to reinvent how to support effective teaching at scale. To do this, we have to make systemic changes to how we train teachers for their jobs.
The Mirage Report is helpful, and I always appreciate alliteration, but it’s not very specific. I think we need to anchor these recommendations in a research-based framework that describes the specific experiences that teachers need in order to improve.
Over the past several decades, US education researchers Bruce Joyce and Beverly Showers have been synthesizing the research on what makes PD effective. They developed a framework based on these studies that identifies four critical activities that are necessary for PD to be effective. This table shows the framework in three columns. The first column lists different types of PD activities. The second column shows the % of teachers that will know or understand a new instructional practice as a result of that activity. The third column shows the % of teachers that will be able to actually DO or implement the instructional practice
The first activity is the presentation of information and the theory underlying a new instructional practice that a teacher is adopting. This often happens in the form of reading and workshops.
If this is the only PD activity that a teacher receives, the research shows that only 5-10% would develop a deep understanding of it and that only 5% would actually be able to implement the new practice in their classroom.
I want to make clear that this kind of activity is necessary, in fact all of these activities are necessary, but in isolation they are insufficient. Unfortunately, far too often workshops are the only PD that teachers receive,
When we add to the presentation of information and theory opportunities for teachers to also see models and demonstration of a new practice, as many as 20% of teachers learn the new practice.
But still, only 5% of teachers will be able to successfully implement the practice in their classrooms.
If we add to those two activities, opportunities for teachers to to practice what they’ve seen modeled and to receive feedback about their practice, we see a huge jump in their understanding. 90% of teachers will deeply understand the new practice.
But still, only 10% will be able to successfully implement the new practice in their classrooms.
If we add to all those previous experiences coaching and mentoring, then we start to see professional learning that’s truly effective.
It’s only when teachers have all of these experiences together that we see the majority actually KNOW) new instructional practices AND are able to implement (DO) it in their classrooms.
And if the purpose of PD is actually improve student achievement, then this HAS to be our goal. .We have to provide teachers with all of these activities.
The Mirage report that I mentioned earlier found that we’re not providing teachers with these experiences in the US. This has been found in studies for decades. But it’s not just a problem in the US. The TALIS survey is an international survey of teaching and learning conducted by OECD. The findings are representative of over 5 million teachers in 34 countries. TALIS found that 78% of teachers spend their PD time reading professional literature, and 82% of teachers attend workshops. But only 28% visit other schools for observations and only 35% participate in mentoring and peer observations. So providing these activities for teachers is a challenge all over the world.
So what’s going on here? These research findings are widely know, yet we continue to spend billions of dollars on ineffective or insufficient PD around the world. The reason is that it’s really hard! It’s logistically challenging to provide teachers with opportunities for observation and feedback. Schools commonly provide the activities at the top of the framework because they’re easier to achieve. The further you go down this table, the harder it gets. When the bell rings, a teacher’s focus is on the students. There’s no time to walk down the hall to learn by watching a colleague. And coaches are in short supply, so it’s challenging for them to get to all of the teachers to provide feedback.
All of that background leads to the work that I do which I wanted to share with you today. I work at an education non-profit in in Seattle, Washington called Washington STEM where we’re trying to improve STEM education and career outcomes for students across the entire state. For a little bit of context, we have about 1 million students in Washington and about 60,000 teachers.
We’re very focused trying to improve PD for STEM teachers. We want to figure out how to overcome the logistical challenges and give more teachers all of the experiences that make professional learning effective. Now, technology has transformed every aspect of our lives: how we share data, how we access media, and how we connect with each other. Can it also transform how we prepare teachers to be successful in the classroom?
Three years ago, we launched an initiative we call STEM-PD, to answer this big question:
To answer the question we granted IRIS Connect technology to 50 schools across Washington state. The educators at these schools are all committed to helping us understand how to integrate video into their PD. We’ve been collecting evaluation data through observations, focus groups, questionnaires to understand how the schools are integrating the technology into their PD, to identify the conditions necessary for success, and to measure impact on the quality of PD.
Here’s some of what we’ve learned.
First, we’ve learned that deeply integrating video into teacher PD is a significant change for schools. And so we need to pat close attention to the science of Change Management.
One of the key tenets of change management is that change is a process, not an event. It takes time and it’s important to attend to the needs of educators at every stage in the process. These teachers are undergoing three kinds of changes:
They have to adopt a new technology. They need to learn the nuances of using the technology to record and analyze the teaching and learning in their classroom.
Second schools often have to make cultural changes to create an environment of trust where teachers are willing to give and receive feedback about their teaching in a collaborative, trusting environment.
And the school system needs to make changes to provide teachers with the time, the guidance, and the support necessary to integrate video into their PD.
Despite the challenge of these changes, the educators in STEM-PD have used the IRIS Connect technology a lot:
[numbers]
These numbers represent the experiences in the Joyce and Showers framework. They represent modeling, observation, feedback, mentoring, and coaching. These are same educators told us that, in the past, they have rarely been given the opportunity to observe others teach, to observe themselves teach, or to get feedback about their teaching.
So, these are pretty remarkable numbers. And they are pretty compelling evidence that the answer to you big question is, YES can technology can enable effective PD.
In addition to looking at usage metrics, we are also observing these schools, conducting focus groups, and questionnaires.
These schools are creating video libraries of their practices to observe models of instruction, they’re self-reflecting in private, they’re collaborating in video clubs, they’re sharing video with colleagues and coaches to receive feedback. And they’re able to analyze student learning in ways that were not possible previously.
Not all of the schools in our study have been as successful as West Hills STEM Academy. Those schools that have been successful have all enabled some key factors.
First, the entire system has to supports teachers in the process of using video for PD. The district, the school, the principal, and teacher peers need to make some significant changes to provide teachers with time for self-reflection, video clubs, and coaching. The goals of PD need to be made clear for teachers and aligned with the school and district goals.
Schools that have been successful have provided tools and resources: video libraries, protocols, and other resources to guide their work with video. One of the outcomes of our work is a Video PD Toolkit, which we have recently released on the IRIS Connect platform, for free.
Successful school have carefully managed the change process, addressing teachers concerns before moving ahead. It’s always opt-in and teachers are always in control.
Finally, successful schools have created trusting, collaborative culture where teachers are comfortable sharing and receiving feedback about their teaching.
As I conclude, I wanted to leave you all with a key question. As you reflect on the Joyce and Showers framework, as yourself:
(2) In your role, whether you are a student, a teacher, a head or an influencer, what can you do to help enable the education system to provide teachers with the kinds of experiences that will make our teachers successful?
Thank you.