Value-Added Professional Development

Peggy Corbett
Jul 20, 2009

Traditionally, teachers have been solitary creatures working in isolation. They retreated to their classrooms, closed their doors, and continued to do all their work alone. The Learning-Focused Model offers incentives and support in overcoming this reluctance to collaborate. It encourages professional exchanges across experience levels and sustained support and development for staff. Longitudinal studies show that in such cultures, teachers and districts thrive.

Learning-Focused provides professional development characterized by practices that are content focused, linked to correcting a well-defined problem, sustained, situated in or near classrooms, and rooted in the curriculum they teach. The research is clear that this model is more cost and value-efficient than the traditional models that offer no support and follow up (Olson 14).

Typical staff development approaches, especially the one-shot workshop, do not result in improved practices. Resources devoted to workshops presented by experts who are disconnected from teachers' everyday practices are for the most part wasted. An abundance of research maintains that teachers need ongoing professional interaction with colleagues that focuses on specific teaching and learning issues. Learning-Focused workshops and conferencing provide this on-site support.

James Stigler, the noted UCLA professor of psychology famous for the TIMSS (Third International Math and Science Study), describes professional development needs by identifying critical elements needed to expand teacher knowledge: the ability to analyze practice, both other teachers and their own; the ability to think about relationships between teaching and learning in a cause and effect way; the need to be exposed to alternative practices; and the judgment to know when to employ which method...and how to analyze and explore alternative practices (7). Certainly these criteria are evident in any Learning-Focused venue. Additionally, the emphasis on standards and the Know-Understand-Do Organizer provides a cohesion that supports districts in preparing for state-mandated testing without sacrificing authent ic instruction. This emphasis helps teachers move beyond seeing themselves in an instructional race against the clock to cover standards with a goal of raising student test scores on a single test (Tomlinson 8). Through the Learning-Focused model, teachers are encouraged to distinguish whether they are using standards as a curriculum or if the standards are reflected in the curriculum.

Learning-Focused also enables districts to maintain an appropriate level of momentum. Researchers report that teacher support of standards dropped from 73% in 1999 to just over 50% in 2001. The drop was attributed to a lack of curriculum and professional development tied to standards (Olson 14). There is clearly a critical need for on-site support of and ongoing training of standards use.

Another danger is lapsing into complacency, assuming that once the initial introduction is made and training of standards takes place that the momentum will continue. Referring to the knowledge base mentioned above, if teachers are operating in isolation there is a strong chance that assumptions will be made about knowledge of standards with new teachers. For standards-driven operations to succeed there must be ongoing training, alignment, and assessment for all teachers. An eventual result of this type of on-going collaboration would be the creation of a knowledge base for all to share, rather than individual teachers developing a limited knowledge base on their own (Stigler 7). School districts that are providing a seamless Learning-Focused transition among elementary, middle, and high school can at test to its power.

Another challenge lies in creating a common vision among people with different beliefs (Stigler 10). Providing on-site resources increases the likelihood that curriculum and teaching improvements will become integrated and sustained qualities in a school's culture. In the process of "structuring their planning and analysis into their world and the work of the institution" teachers and their leaders can change the context and culture and provide a way of recognizing collective work so that professional expertise is tended and extended, helping to build a strong professional learning community (Calhoun 25). Mike Schmoker, a leading school improvement consultant, maintains substantial results are inevitable when teachers regularly work together and collectively to design, adapt, and assess instructional strategies targeted directly at specific standards of low student performance reveal ed by assessment data (14). Each component of the Learning-Focused model provides professional development that affects teachers' daily activities, is grounded in research and practice, and opens the door for enthusiastic collaboration in a collegial environment.

Works Cited:

Calhoun, Emily. "Action Research for School Improvement" Educational Leadership.
V59. No. 6, March, 2002. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Alexandria, VA. 2002.

Olson, Lynn. "Editorial Projects in Education" Education Week. . V. XX1.No. 29, April 3,    2002.

Schmoker, Mike. The Results Fieldbook: Practical Strategies from Dramatically
Improved Schools. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Alexandria, VA. 2001.

Stigler, James. The Teaching Gap. Free Press, 1999.
Tomlinson, Carol Ann. The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners. ASCD, 1999.