4 Questions to Guide Great Professional Development
This article is part of the 8 steps for Great Professional Development series.
The most honest joke I hear in workshops is when I introduce Rick DuFour’s 4 Professional Learning Community questions as a model for planning teacher PD. When I ask teachers to replace the word ‘student’ with ‘teacher’ it often provokes a few laughs, followed by, “why shouldn’t we expect that what contributes to effective teaching and learning for students would also follow for teachers”. Furthermore, DuFour’s questions are intended to seed interdependence within learning communities, which is also critical in planning great PD. Great PD, especially when student learning is the focus, should never be a solo initiative. For this reason, educators need to ask these four questions of each other:
What do we want all teachers to know and be able to do?
How will we know if they are able to apply that knowledge and demonstrate those capabilities?
How will we respond when some teachers do not demonstrate understanding and application of the knowledge and skills central to our school’s pedagogical beliefs?
How will we extend learning for teachers who are already proficient?
These questions are great tools for navigating Stages 6 and 7 of the change management process. Collaboratively answering these questions will make explicit the dispositions and behaviours we seek as a result of the training before there is any training. It’s not the result that we should focus on, but what the people who are critical to realising that result need to do. At a minimum, if sufficient time is invested on the first two questions, where the diagnosis is the lens for exploring these questions, the impact of PD will be greatly improved. These questions also set the stage for devising guiding policies that will inform teams on what they need to know and do, as well as how it will be evaluated, thus empowering them to identify their own training needs and take ownership of their PD. As teams start to align with the guiding policies, which ensures coherence in action across teaching teams, administrators can begin exploring questions 3 and 4, which the latter question begins to shift attention to Stage 8, consolidating and building on successful change.
4 Strategies for Effective Professional Learning
Renee Rehfeldt, a good friend, and colleague, outlined these four strategies as a way to categorize the numerous ways we can train staff, all of which can be facilitated virtually with the same or greater impact compared to face-to-face:
INTERNAL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
Teacher to teacher or staff to staff; conducted by the school for the school staff and guided by the school’s needs; i.e., PLCs, observations, book clubs, contracted facilitators (in-service PD), and mentoring.
NETWORK PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
School to school (or multiple schools); organized by schools for schools, guided by what each school needs; i.e., job-a-likes, school visits, contracted facilitators (shared cost), and conferences with staff facilitating.
EXTERNAL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
Provided by an outside organization or specialist and provides an external certification; i.e., public registration workshops, conferences with professionals facilitating and visiting consultants.
PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK
Coordinated by the individual for their own needs, interests, and professional growth; likely to involve other professionals; i.e., self-directed learning and online learning.
As highlighted in the table below, each strategy has a variety of positive and negative attributes that Renee and I have observed across hundreds of schools. These attributes are by no means a hard and fast rule and there are many exceptions, but they tend to be typical when there is no full-time PD Coordinator. Additionally, common areas of concern that schools need to consider for all four strategies are: (1) participant learning needs aren’t formally assessed or surveyed in advance, (2) staff aren’t held accountable to any learning objectives, and (3) there are no tools to evaluate the application of learning. In the table, I also try to highlight some dependencies, as in what is required to ensure the PD is effective for that respective strategy.
Leaders that are assigned the role of coordinating PD often have full-time teaching or administrative responsibilities, and in addition to a lack of time also have budgetary and resource constraints. For this reason, they are normally limited to one of the four strategies for professional learning, with internal professional learning being the most commonly employed strategy. An additional obstacle to coordinating effective PD is that PD Coordinators limit the scope of their role to specified periods of time, PD Days, which hinders staff from effectively scaffolding professional learning. PD days could be utilized more effectively if more time was allotted to plan productive sessions, which should include revisiting and bridging to past content as well as ensuring facilitators are well prepared. Unfortunately, though, these PD periods often devolve into unproductive discussions about work or are used to catch up on work. The greatest limitation of the most commonly used form of PD is the inability to demonstrate good leadership, evidenced by thoughtful planning and strong facilitation skills.
What I propose, and have been very successful in implementing with schools over the past years, is a hybrid approach to utilizing all 4 strategies, aligned to practical learning objectives that I hold senior leaders accountable to understand and assess. Over the years I have learned, as an administrator and training provider, that whatever I can’t do for lack of time or knowledge, I can outsource. This said, outsourcing comes at a high cost, so I can’t outsource everything. Many schools, unfortunately, take an all-or-nothing approach to developing their middle leaders, either by sending them to very expensive programs or not training them at all. The latter is justified by the belief they will learn on the job. The former fails to realize desired outcomes even though you pay a high cost because an environment isn’t created to apply what is learned; administrative and structural obstacles are left unaddressed within the school. The hybrid option for developing middle leadership capacity requires every stakeholder involved in the process to be held accountable:
SENIOR LEADERS: Ensure buy-in, assess needs, provide networking opportunities, mentor middle leaders and assess the impact of learning.
STAFF: Demonstrate agency by seeking out additional resources to deepen understanding of relevant content, demonstrate the application, reflect and hone new skills.
FACILITATORS: Clearly communicate learning objectives, create interactive learning environments, understand participants learning goals and provide tools to assess applications.
The hybrid approach, when bolstered by all stakeholders being held accountable to the objective of capacity-building staff, will prove to be the most effective. A simple example using all four professional learning strategies will look like this:
INTERNAL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
Have cohorts meet to assess needs and identify training options;
Provide time off the table to ‘in-house experts’ and instructional coaches to facilitate knowledge and experience sharing; and
Contract professional facilitators to virtually present and ‘set the scene’ for change. These facilitators, when not limited by ‘PD Days’ or travel budgets, can differentiate their messaging and instruction for staff at different stages of development, as well as scaffold their instruction to promote job-embedded learning.
EXTERNAL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
Nominate or invite staff to enroll for open registration programs in groups of 2-4 per division; and
Staff participating in outside workshops should present key learnings to colleagues.
NETWORKED PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
Encourage staff to host job-a-likes with peers in other schools to explore specific topics relevant to their stage of professional development; and
Staff can connect with peers in other schools through curriculum-based online networks or Facebook to identify and explore teaching and learning inquiries.
PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORKS
Encourage staff to document their journey and publish it in relevant forums;
Supplement the purchase of literature and online courses with the expectation that recipients of school funding will present key findings to colleagues; and
Encourage action learning projects bolstered by personal research.
