National
Partnership Offers Advice for Implementing Learner-Centered Professional
Development
A Valuable Professional
Development Resource Evolves from a National Collaborative Effort
“Community
and leadership cannot occur if teachers remain isolated
from each other...schools must institute policies and procedures
that support teacher collaboration, risk-taking, and collegiality...and
teachers taking on leadership roles within and outside of
the school. Developing this community requires recognition
that professional development is a life-long process that
is best nurtured within the norms and culture of the school.”
Susan
Loucks-Horsley, 1999
Former Director of the National Institute for Science Education's
Professional Development Project at WestEd
and former Director of K-12 Professional Development and
Outreach at the Center for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering
Education of the National
Research Council
|
In 1999, the National Partnership
for Excellence and Accountability in Teaching (NPEAT) and
the Learning First Alliance
brought together representatives of schools and school districts
where outstanding professional development is underway. Re-visioning
Professional Development: What Learner-Centered Professional
Development Looks Like tells the story that these leaders,
and many of the nation’s leading researchers who participated
in the conference, told one another about how best to facilitate
teacher learning that results in student learning and how to implement
the necessary policies and practices. NPEAT is a voluntary association
of 29 national organizations. NPEAT engages in collaborative research-based
action to achieve teaching excellence that raises student performance.
The following is a sample of the advice offered in this valuable
professional development resource.
- Expert teachers are constantly curious about the progress
of their students, using a variety of ways to evaluate student
learning. They draw insights from analyzing student work, knowing
that the work can be no better than their own assignments. Thus,
student work tells them of their learning needs as well as those
of their students.
- Expert teachers relate their instruction and students’
learning to agreed-upon standards, that they have studied and
used to align their curriculum and teaching strategies.
- Expert teachers also know what makes up good professional
development and how it should support what they do in their
classrooms.
In the new view of professional development, teachers are engaged
in professional learning every day, all day long. It pervades
the classroom and the school. It is embedded in the assignments
and analyses that teachers perform every day as they continually
draw understanding about their performance from student performance.
- Teachers learn together.
- Teachers solve problems in teams or as a whole faculty because
every teacher feels responsible for the success of every student
in the school community.
- Teachers build expertise within their own environment, becoming
avid seekers of research and best practices that will help themselves
and others.
- Learner-centered professional development focuses on students.
Principals are partners in shaping and participating in teachers’
learning.
- The goal of all the professionals in a school is to make sure
professional development supports both their own and their students’
continuous learning opportunities.
- Professional development makes it possible for teachers to
become reflective practitioners and to build upon what they
know, just like their students.
Contrasting
the old and the new
|
| Learner-centered professional development
is radically different in both form and substance from activities
traditionally described as professional development. Here
are some differences between traditional and learner-centered
professional development. |
| Traditional Professional Development |
Learner-Centered Professional
Development |
| Fragmented, unfocused. Activities
based on preferences |
Focuses on what students are to learn and how to make sure
all students do learn. Examines multiple measures of student
learning and development |
| Little or no effort to assess
student needs or provide consistent feedback to teachers |
Systematic inquiry by teachers
focused on student work that identifies both student and teacher
learning needs |
| Little or superficial reference
to standards for students or teachers |
Standards for student performance
and for professional development are well understood and widely
shared |
| Disconnected from the day-to-day
experiences of teachers |
Learning through professional
development embedded in the daily work of teachers |
| Learning about . .
. |
Learning to . . . |
| Emphasis on discrete individual
skills, e.g., cooperative learning, that do not require interaction
among teachers on shared concerns |
A focus on problem solving among
teams and/or whole faculty |
| Deference to “outside”
experts unfamiliar with particular environments of teachers |
Goal of building expertise within
a school that knows how to draw upon learning opportunities
and research beyond the school |
| Central office control over professional
development activities |
Principals and teachers plan and
implement most professional development |
| Little, if any, correlation between
professional development and school improvement plans |
Professional development considered
central to continuous school improvement |
| Reliance on workshop-type offerings
with little feedback for teacher participants |
Continuous professional development
that uses feedback and reflection to deepen teachers’
knowledge and skills |
| Source: Re-visioning
Professional Development: What Learner-Centered Professional
Development Looks Like, National Staff Development Council |
For more information or to order a copy of this report, contact:
National Staff Development Council,
P.O. Box 240, Oxford OH 45056, (800) 727-7288, www.nsdc.org/bookstore.htm.
Price: $10, single copy. Discounts available for bulk orders. |
