eacher development is the flip side of the coin of school change and improvement," declares Shirley Hord, Program Manager for SEDL’s Strategies for Increasing School Success. Likewise, Willis Hawley and Linda Valli note, "One of the most persistent findings from research on school improvement is, in fact, the symbiotic relationship between professional development and school improvement efforts . . . The two processes are so tightly woven that their effects are almost impossible to disentangle."¹

Hord explains, "Schools and teachers often cannot produce the kind of behaviors or skills reform demands because they haven’t learned how. If you keep on doing what you’ve been doing, you’re going to keep getting the same results. And what we’re aiming for in school reform is better results. That behooves us to take on new programs, new skills, new knowledge, and new behaviors that will produce better results. The goal of professional development is to help people to change their knowledge, their insights, their skills, their behaviors, and their attitudes."

Professional development that accomplishes this level of change goes beyond the one-shot workshops that have been commonplace and largely ineffective. Hawley and Valli maintain greater investments have not been made in professional development because "its presumed beneficiaries, teachers, have little positive to say about its usefulness."²

In the past decade, however, many researchers, advocacy groups, and organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers and the National Staff Development Council (NSDC), have come to recognize the importance of professional development in school improvement, causing the emergence f a new paradigm of professional development. The new paradigm reflects professional development as a shared process that

• fosters sustained collaboration among staff members and includes teachers as active participants,
  
  
• emphasizes issues related to the individual school and relies on internal as well as external expertise,
  
  
• increases theoretical understanding, and
  
  
• recognizes that change is a long-term process.³

The new paradigm, in other words, fosters school improvement and the development of professional learning communities in schools. This type of ongoing, collaborative professional development supports focused, integrated work over a long period of time and differs from traditional professional development that "relies almost exclusively on outside experts and materials without integrating these resources into existing systems of peer collaboration."⁴

Creating this kind of professional development program not only requires teachers and principals to think about professional development in a different way; it requires commitment from everyone involved—the district, the principal, and the teachers.

It requires a commitment of time and resources beyond what districts and schools are accustomed to allocating for professional development. In fact, the NSDC recommends that 25 percent of teachers’ time be dedicated to learning and collaborative work with other teachers.⁵ This type of professional development also requires teachers to become committed to teamwork and collaboration, even though such collaboration may initially seem clumsy and awkward, even unproductive.⁶

	Dennis Sparks, NSCD executive director

NSDC Executive Director Dennis Sparks says, "If change is going to occur in the classroom between teachers and students, a massive amount of support is required, in the school and in the classroom. Teachers need coaching—usually a great deal of coaching to change what are some fairly complex skills. They need to be part of ongoing groups, like action research groups and study groups that meet on a regular basis."⁷

Sparks suggests that teachers meet at least weekly to discuss data on student achievement, their students’ work, lesson plans, and focus on things they think will make the school better.

Likewise, Mike Schmoker, author of Results: The Key to Continuous Improvement advises: "Successful teams need to have such focused interaction on a fairly regular basis–probably once a month for each student learning goal that we set. Experience has taught us that any less than six strategically scheduled opportunities per year can kill momentum and severely jeopardize the chances of improvement."⁸

The teamwork and collaboration in this type of ongoing professional development helps to create a culture of collective responsibility and helps teachers develop a sense of ownership in the school reform program. Collective responsibility develops as the teachers work toward the clear, shared goals established when planning for the comprehensive school reform program–all teachers begin to share responsibility for all students’ achievement; these goals are reinforced in all classrooms by all teachers. Collective responsibility leads to increased teacher efficacy, according to Fred Newmann and Gary Wehlage, authors of Successful School Restructuring. They note, "A culture of collective responsibility puts more peer pressure and accountability on staff who may not have carried their fair share, but it can also ease the burden on teachers, who have worked hard in isolation but who felt unable to help some students."⁹

Creating a Professional Development Program at Your School

Like the school reform process, creating a professional development program that supports collaboration and improved teaching and learning is not an easy or quick process. Table 1 can provide some guidance for the planning process. By assessing the teachers’ and students’ needs, the school can develop a good mix of activities for professional development. The mix may include training provided by the national reform model a school has adopted and/or training from an external assistance provider. It should also rely on internal resources that may take the form of coaching, providing feedback, a "critical friends" group, teacher inquiry, or regularly assessing student work. The important consideration is that the professional development plan should lead to improved student learning and move the school toward reaching its vision.

Dennis Sparks and Susan Loucks-Horsley defined five models of staff development for teachers. The models reflect assumptions about how teachers learn and may be useful to schools and districts when developing professional development plans and activities (see Table 2).

Table 1. Overview of the Planning Process

Source: Adapted from David Collins (1998). Achieving Your Vision of Professional Development: How to Assess Your Needs and Get What You Want. Greensboro, NC: SERVE.

Table 2. Five Methods

Source: Sparks, Dennis and Susan Loucks-Horsley (1989). Five Models of Staff Development for Teachers, Journal of Staff Development 10(4), pp. 40-57.

How Did Sierra Vista and Sunrise Measure Up?

In many ways Sierra Vista is ideal regarding professional development. There is a continually growing respect among teachers, students, and families that helps to create a community of support for learning and change.

Ms. Martinez wisely recognized the advantages of the school’s becoming a learning community and did everything possible to encourage her staff to work together to maintain a focus on student learning and their own learning.

"We’ve started looking at professional development in a different way—every conversation can end up being a learning experience," reports a Sierra Vista teacher.

Ms. Martinez set an excellent example for her staff through her own reading and professional development activities. By attending sessions along with her staff, she was not only able to help her staff implement what they learned in training sessions, but she was able to foresee some of the concerns that arose among staff members.

And Sierra Vista was a fortunate school, not just because of Ms. Martinez, but also because it had district support. The school was able to plan its own professional development activities and decide how the money the district allocates for such activities was spent.

At Sunrise, Ms. Smith was accustomed to allowing teachers to act independently. This extended to professional development as well. Though she recognized the need for the model developer’s training to continue as it had before she arrived at Sunrise, she did not realize the importance of a coordinated effort for professional development to help the school reach the goals of its reform program. She herself admitted she was too overwhelmed with other problems to get the training she needed to ensure implementation of the comprehensive school reform program was effective.

Ms. Smith’s approach to professional development best fits the individually guided staff development model, which assumes that "adults learn most efficiently when they initiate and plan their learning activities."10 As a result of her approach, teachers tended to sign up for sessions that sounded fun or interesting to them, but many of these sessions did not address critical skills the teachers needed for the reform program or for working with the students who challenged their old ways of teaching.

The principal’s attempt to introduce teacher portfolios was a good one–the portfolios could serve as a springboard for teachers to discuss their practice. However, the resistance of some teachers to portfolios indicates the need for more discussion and information regarding the benefits of the portfolios. Also, the portfolios should have been connected to the school’s CSR program in a meaningful way.

In addition to the individually planned staff development at Sunrise, the superintendent’s mandatory district-wide sessions consumed some of the time that teachers could have used to work collaboratively, hold discussions centered around their instruction, or acquire the additional technology training they so wanted. Sunrise staff lacked sufficient common time for meeting and discussion where shared values, expectations and understandings could evolve, reinforcing the focus on the reform program. Although Ms. Smith kept up with grade-level team leaders, her inclination to be a more hands off leader helped reinforce teacher isolation and independence.

It is interesting that the two grade-level teams at Sunrise were functioning as small professional learning communities. This was due in large part to the grade-level team leaders. Here was another missed opportunity—Ms. Smith could have invited those grade-level teams to make presentations to the larger group regarding how they worked or had team members lead whole-group discussions, modeling how their grade-level teams functioned.

For Discussion or Reflection

• How can our shared vision guide us in creating a professional development program?
  
  
• What resources are available to guide us in the selection of professional development opportunities?

Sharron Havens Getting the Most From Professional Development Sessions with External Providers Sharron Havens, the assistant superintendent for instruction in Lonoke, Arkansas, where schools are involved in the CSRD program, has advice for administrators planning to team up with external providers for professional development. The professional development training should be research based. "We like to have evidence of how successfully it has been implemented in other schools, especially in schools that are similar to ours,’" says Havens. It is important that the presenters–if they are not currently practicing educators—have been in the classroom recently. "Teachers want to see that the presenters really know how this is implemented at a classroom level," reports Havens. "They’ll listen to research for a while from a college professor, but it needs to be backed up with some practical implementation." After a training session, find sites where the practices are being implemented successfully and allow teachers to visit those sites. Help teachers make connections between the professional development training and the way we will implement it in the classroom. Havens says, "One of my roles is to find research that can help the teachers better understand the particular issue. Sometimes just sitting around with teachers and talking about the topic will help them make the necessary connections.

¹Hawley, Willis D., and Linda Valli (1999). "The Essentials of Effective Professional Development: A New Consensus" in Teaching as the Learning Profession: Handbook of Policy and Practice, edited by Linda Darling-Hammond and Gary Sykes. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, p. 129.

²Ibid, p. 134.

³Ibid. p. 134-144. See also Linda Darling-Hammond and Milbrey W. McLaughlin (1995), "Policies that Support Professional Development in an Era of Reform," Phi Delta Kappan, April 1995, 597-604.

⁴King, M. Bruce and Fred M. Newmann (April 2000). "Will Teacher Learning Advance School Goals?" Phi Delta Kappan, p. 576-580. See also Appendix F, "National Staff Development Council Standards for Staff Development" in David Collins (1997). Achieving Your Vision of Professional Development: How to Assess Your Needs and Get What you Want. Greensboro, NC: SERVE, p. 181-183.

⁵SEDL interview with Dennis Sparks, executive director NSDC, February 2, 2000.

⁶Schmoker, Mike (1999). Results: The Key to Continuous Improvement, 2nd Edition. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, p. 15.

⁷SEDL interview with Dennis Sparks, February 2, 2000.

⁸Schmoker, Mike Results, p. 18.

⁹Newmann, Fred M. and Gary C. Wehlage (1995). Successful School Restructuring. Madison, Wisconsin: Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools, p. 31

¹⁰Sparks, Dennis, and Susan Loucks-Horsley (1989). Five Models of Staff Development for Teachers. Journal of Staff Development 10(4), p. 42.