Professional Development of Teachers

Professional development of teachers involves a wide variety of specialized workshops, training, education, and advanced professional learning opportunities intended to help teachers improve their professional knowledge, competence, skill, and effectiveness. Professional development of teachers has been a major focus of school reform efforts in recent years. This entry first describes the core features of effective professional development of teachers, and the challenges to ensuring professional development are effective. It then looks at how professional development programs for teachers are evaluated.

Effective professional development of teachers deepens content knowledge, transforms teaching practices, and fosters individual and group learning. There are several key factors to consider in designing professional development programs for teachers. Professional development is most effective when teachers are treated as professionals and active learners who construct their own understanding and the development programs are situated in classroom practice.

Several core features have a positive impact on teachers’ self-reported knowledge, skills, and changes in classroom practice. These include a focus on content knowledge and numerous opportunities for active learning (e.g., reviewing student work samples, reviewing feedback on teaching). Also, professional development activities are most effective when they are congruent with other learning activities that teachers take part in, including professional conversation with other teachers.

Certain structural features of professional development also can positively affect teacher learning. The collective participation of teachers from the same school, grade, or subject can have a positive impact on professional learning. In addition, activities that are sustained over time support professional learning and classroom practices.

Although the benefits of effective professional development for teachers are numerous, there are also several challenges. High-quality professional development for all teachers is expensive. In addition, it is difficult to assess and evaluate teacher knowledge and instructional practices.

The poor reputation of traditional, professional development often overshadows effective professional development models. Although professional development of teachers is often required, facilitators and administrators cannot mandate professional learning. The constant negotiation of content, purpose, control, and discourse style is often discouraging for administrators and facilitators of professional development. The intense and sustained hard work and unstable nature of funding are also challenges that require consideration.

[Page 1307]Evaluation of professional development can provide evidence that programs were effective in strengthening teachers’ content knowledge, instructional practices, and student learning. The planning evaluation is the groundwork for all other evaluations that provide understanding of what should be accomplished, implementation guidelines, and desired outcomes.

Formative evaluation is ongoing and provides evidence of whether professional development is going as planned, documents progress, and identifies areas for improvement. Summative evaluation is completed at the end of professional development and describes what was accomplished, the strengths and weaknesses of the program, and its value to the participants. The participants’ reaction, participants’ learning, organization support and change, participants’ use of new knowledge and skills, and student learning outcomes are the five levels of evaluating professional development.

See also Teacher Evaluation; Teachers’ Associations