Teach Effectively!

2 Responses to “Lame professional development”

1. 1 Angela Maiers
   27 September 2007 at 5:58 pm

   This post caught my eye. As a consultant providing professional development for teachers and schools, I hear many stories. I would be interested in your thoughts on what can make professional development more productive and powerful. Every child deserves a teacher that is knowledgeable, passionate, and equipped to manage learning within the classroom. So how do we achieve that goal in the most meaningful way? Love to hear your thoughts.

2. 2 JohnL
   3 October 2007 at 5:08 am

   Angela, thanks for the inquiry. Here are some notes for a start. To be productive and powerful, professional development should

   1. Present practices, procedures, and methods that have consistently been shown by research to cause higher levels of outcomes for students;
   2. Provide explicit models of how to implement those practices, procedures, and methods;
   3. Include adequate opportunities for participants to practice implementing those effective practices, procedures, and methods;
   4. Incorporate systematic feedback about how participating teachers are implementing those practices, procedures, and methods;
   5. Demonstrate how to assess whether those effective practices, procedures, and methods are, in fact, having the expected effects of students’ performance;
   6. Follow up in participants’ classrooms and provide additional models and feedback about implementing the effective practices, procedures, and methods (as well as the progress-monitoring methods); and
   7. Provide a little rationale and explanation.

   In short, I’d like to see professional development that teaches effectively.

   I welcome corrections, amplifications, and such. These are simply some quickly drafted notes.