The ‘Core’ of Professional Development

New wine requires new wineskins 

In Allison Gulamhussein’s outstanding article in ASBJ, “Professional Development and the Common Core”, she lays out what I believe could be a framework for broad, systemic education reform. That’s a big deal – and  doable -  but it would require effort and patience. Note: I’ve borrowed the original print title and liberally from the article itself. 

Beginning with this: “research consistently shows that teachers predominately ask students fact-recall questions, and studies analyzing classroom instruction have found that 85 percent of instruction is lecture, recitation, or seatwork, activities which often require very little critical thought.” Further, it was found that “the following were rarely seen in classrooms: student participation in meaning-making and reasoning, investigation and problem-based approaches, questioning strategies, and student generation of ideas and questions.”  

(Note: while this ‘traditional’ approach is not universal, it’s probably safe to assume that it remains most prevalent in the schools with the highest proportion of struggling students – the schools that lack the resources, both financial and in the teaching environment, to attract and support quality teachers.) But I digress.

This is the issue that the Common Core was designed to address, and the reason I continue to believe that much of the criticism of the CC is misplaced – the CC actually points us in the right direction, away from rote memorization and towards the development of critical thinking.  But it is grossly unrealistic to think that we can change a century of teaching practice overnight – especially when we haven’t put in place the kind of supports that teachers will need to make this work. 

So, what is the plan?  Typically, it’s ‘professional development’ of the workshop variety. (And as recently noted in this article, not enough teachers have received even that.) 

 

But what does the research say? “Despite its prevalence, the workshop model’s track record for changing teachers’ practice … is abysmal… a comprehensive study of professional development research found that programs shorter than 14 hours (such as workshops) had no effect on student achievement.”

Why not?  “Traditional forms (of PD) are based on the assumption that the biggest challenge facing teachers is “a lack of knowledge of effective practice.” However, the challenge for teachers isn’t in “acquiring knowledge of new strategies, but in implementing those strategies in the classroom.” Which, if you think about it, is true of  learning any new, complex skill: “first attempts to integrate new skills into practice are awkward, often requiring several practices before the skill is mastered.”

Again, the research: “With traditional professional development, only 10 percent of teachers transfer the skill. However, when supported during implementation, 95 percent of teachers transferred the new skill into their classrooms.”

And what would quality support look like?  “Support takes two forms: coaching and collaboration (an example of which is) the professional learning community – a group of teachers teaching the same content who innovate together and support each other.” 

This brings up the issue of capacity. In our high school, each principal will be responsible for hundreds of quality, time-intensive teaching evaluations each year. Where will they find the time to do this in addition to their current responsibilities? - another reason why the coaching and collaboration models that Allison mentions will be so important. (The development of which will require that schools make an intentional effort to develop cultures of cooperation and trust.)  For many schools, this will be a new and time-consuming task. 

It’s also going to take years to develop reliable and appropriate assessments for these new skills – for both students and teachers. I am deeply skeptical that the ‘bubble tests’ that have been developed to measure “student achievement” (i.e., PA’s Keystone exams) are even remotely capable of this. But there is a similar issue in regards to teaching assessments.

While Pennsylvania’s adoption of the Charlotte Danielson model of teacher evaluation is clearly a step in the right direction, how much professional development have principals received?  One 2-day workshop? (See paragraph six, above.)  It’s going to take years for principals – the primary teacher evaluators  - to get this right.  In the meantime, what are the checks and balances?  Yet we are placing enormous stakes on the outcomes of  these evaluations.

As Gulamhussein notes with justifiable irony: “traditional professional development aims to show teachers how to implement a model of learning that professional development itself ignores when training teachers.”