STANDARDS ASSESSMENT INVENTORY. Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard. With support from

STANDARDS ASSESSMENT INVENTORY Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard This resource brief is designed to support next actions for those educators who are using their results from the Standards Assessment Inventory 2 to improve professional learning. This brief includes an overview of the standard, next steps for continuous improvement in three categories, and tools and readings that support improvement in each of those categories. With support from

Standards Assessment Inventory Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard Learning Designs standard overview Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students integrates theories, research, and models of human learning to achieve its intended outcomes. One of the most visible components of professional learning is the design of the learning experience. Learning design is the how of professional learning. It is the way educators gain knowledge, skills, dispositions, and practices and translate new practices into their daily work. Professional learning research helps inform decisions about which learning designs are most effective for different kinds of learning outcomes, learners, and situations. For example, a book study is effective for gaining new knowledge, yet it is not particularly effective when that knowledge needs to be transferred into new classroom practices. Helping educators make strategic decisions about learning designs is the focus of this standard, which involves three key ideas: (1) applying learning theories, research, and models; (2) selecting learning designs; and (3) promoting active engagement. Apply learning theories, research, and models. What are the best practices when it comes to adult learning? What methods are most effective when learning new information? Are other methods more effective when the desired outcome is putting that new knowledge into practice? Just as a single model of instruction is not effective for all students at all times, the same is true for adult learners. Those engaged in professional learning benefit from a variety of learning designs tailed to the outcomes they want to achieve, their learning preferences, and the context that surrounds their learning. Research points to common characteristics of effective professional learning designs. They involve: Active engagement of the learner; Modeling of new strategies; Reflection on the use of new practices; Application of new practices in the learner s own classroom or work environment; Effective and constructive feedback on the use of new practices; Ongoing support and assistance, especially during implementation; and Learning Forward 2

Standards Assessment Inventory Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard Formative and summative assessments of practice. Learning designs come in many different configurations. Professional learning designs can occur face-to-face, online, or as a hybrid of both. Learning designs can focus on individual, team, schoolwide, or districtwide goals and can be formal or informal. The most effective professional learning occurs close to the place of implementation, preferably as a part of the regular workday. However, educators do learn after hours and in the summers as well. For example, extended summer institutes and university coursework provide opportunities for educator learning. Online learning programs, web-based resources, and online collaboration offer additional learning opportunities. Multiple designs are typically used so that educators can (1) gain new knowledge, (2) observe expert modeling of new practices, (3) engage in lowrisk practice and receive feedback about new classroom strategies, and (4) receive ongoing support that assists educators to transfer new practices into their repertoire of instructional strategies and techniques. Learning designs seem to be most effective when they are job-embedded and collaborative. Being job-embedded means the learning is grounded in day-to-day teaching practice and is designed to enhance teachers content-specific instructional practices with the intent of improving student learning (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995; Hirsh, 2009). Jobembedded learning can take place in the classroom with students, such as in the case of an instructional coach working side-by-side with a teacher to co-plan, co-teach, and co-debrief a lesson. It might also include learning in the classroom without students, such as when a team of teachers collaborates to develop common lessons to implement in their own classrooms and then comes together to compare student results and the lesson s usefulness to accomplish its intended outcomes. Finally, job-embedded learning might take place at school outside the classroom either when students are present or away from school. This form of job-embedded learning focuses on issues of real-time classroom practices and occurs on specific days set aside for professional learning or during schoolwide learning. Job-embedded does not include learning activities that take place outside of school, away from students, and that are removed from instructional issues and practices with content not immediately applicable to the classroom. An example of non-job-embedded learning is attending a two- Learning Forward 3

Standards Assessment Inventory Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard week summer institute and practicing new strategies with summer school students whom participants do not ordinarily teach. Technology-supported learning designs are especially useful for enhancing and extending opportunities for learning. Networks, online courses, blogs, interactive communities, Nings, wikis, and videostreaming make sharing, constructing, and analyzing information about new practices available to educators to fit their schedule. Technology expands the possibilities for personalizing, differentiating, and expanding educator learning. Select learning designs. All learning designs are not equally effective for all situations, people, and goals. Many factors need to be considered when making a decision about which learning design will be used to attain a specific goal. Clear and specific short- and long-term goals and objectives or SMART goals are a prerequisite to selecting a learning design. The best learning designs model the practices that are expected to occur after the learning. For example, if teachers are expected to use an inquiry process during science instruction, their professional learning should also integrate the use of an inquiry process in developing teachers understanding and use of inquiry. Multiple designs allow a progression through distinct levels of learning knowledge, initial application, routine implementation, and refined practice over time. Change research has emphasized that adults benefit from multiple opportunities to use, refine, and receive feedback until new practices become fully integrated as routine practices. Educators need to be involved in making decisions about the learning designs used for individual, team, schoolwide, and districtwide professional learning. As a result, another set of factors to consider when selecting learning designs involves educators experiences, preferences, backgrounds, beliefs, motivations, interests, and levels of commitment. It is important to build educators understanding of adult learning and change theory so that they are able to make well-informed decisions about learning designs. Promote active engagement. Active engagement, which requires educators to learn from and with each other, is the hallmark of effective professional learning. It promotes deep understanding and the realistic application of new learning in the classroom. For example, a Learning Forward 4

Standards Assessment Inventory Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard learning goal may be to improve student reading comprehension within the content areas. A learning team consisting of social studies teachers might begin by reading and discussing chapters of a book on reading strategies, using a discussion protocol to frame their conversation about the text. They then practice applying this information to the classroom by developing common lessons in their content. Pairs draft lesson plans and request that their learning team members help them refine and improve the lesson through the use of another protocol such as the tuning protocol. After each pair s lesson has been reviewed and refined, the team asks their instructional coach to review the lessons. Then, while the coach works with one classroom, the partners co-teach the lesson while the other team members observe. Once the lesson has been completed, the partners plus the other team members share their observations and revise the lesson again, if warranted. This process continues until the members feel ready to write lessons independently and use them in the classroom. At this point, the members bring student work to the team meetings, where it is analyzed to determine the impact on student learning. This team-based learning includes multiple designs that promote active engagement, allows educators to select their own learning designs, and provides several opportunities for collegial collaboration. Next steps for continuous improvement There are a number of actions to take to improve the selection and use of designs for professional learning designs. These strategies will be provided in three sections: (1) Developing Ideas for a school to begin identifying and implementing a variety of professional learning designs, (2) Strengthening ideas for a school to strengthen or enhance the current use of professional learning designs, and (3) Comprehensive ideas that might be helpful to all schools concerning their designs for professional learning. The tools listed under each strategy follow this narrative of actions and strategies and are included in this packet. Learning Forward 5

Standards Assessment Inventory Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard Developing 1. Each school should tap the expertise of a school leadership team or a professional learning committee to support its efforts to improve professional learning. If a team does not exist, one should be formed that includes representatives from all departments or grade levels. This team should become knowledgeable about high-quality professional learning and the variety of professional learning designs available. The members will serve as resources to individual learning teams as well as to the school as a whole about the variety of ways staff members could learn beyond the customary workshop format. Chapter 2: Process: Selecting the design that works with context and content. (2008). Powerful designs for professional learning, 2nd edition, Edited by Lois Brown Easton. Oxford, OH: NSDC. Learning designs: Study, learn, design: Repeat as necessary, by Bruce R. Joyce and Emily F. Calhoun. (2011, August). JSD, 32 (4), 46-51, 69. Powerful designs for professional learning, 2nd edition, Edited by Lois Brown Easton. Oxford, OH: NSDC. Order the book online at www.learningforward.org/bookstore/learning-designs-andfacilitation/2012/06/07/powerful-designs-for-professional-learning-2nd-edition or call 800-727-7288. Expanding your vision of professional development, by Joan Richardson. (2005, September). The Learning Principal, 5 (1), 4-5. Tap the power of peers, by Lois Brown Easton. (2008, September). Teachers Teaching Teachers, 4 (1), 1-4. Best practices for professional learning. (2010). Change, lead, succeed: Building capacity with school leadership teams, by Linda Munger and Valerie von Frank. Oxford, OH: NSDC. Stop hanging fans do the laundry! by Parker McMullen. (2006, Winter). JSD, 27 (1), 80, 72. Learning Forward 6

Standards Assessment Inventory Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard 2. Planning professional learning requires knowledge of not only various professional learning designs but also the appropriate use of those designs. Many of the designs require certain conditions and factors such as a high level of trust among team members or high and low structures for a protocol to be effective. Decisions about learning designs require an understanding of factors to consider when selecting designs. Based on this review, the professional learning committee, school leadership team, or collaborative learning teams determines which learning design might be most appropriate to address the factors identified and educators learning outcomes. As educators engage in the learning process, they provide formative and summative feedback about their learning experiences and include information on the appropriateness of the learning design to support their learning and achieve the intended outcomes. Module 4: What will we do in our professional learning teams? (2011). Minds in motion: Creating a community of collaborative learners. Oxford, OH: Learning Forward and Rochester City School District. Protocols: A facilitator s best friend, by Lois Brown Easton. (2009, February/March). Tools for Schools, 12 (3), 1-3. Group wise: Strategies for examining student work together, by Joan Richardson. (2001, February/March). Tools for Schools, 4 (4), 1-2. Success analysis protocol. (2009, February/March). Tools for Schools, 12 (3), 6-7. Peeling a standard. (2006). Collaborative professional learning in school and beyond: A tool kit for New Jersey educators, by Joellen Killion. Oxford, OH: NSDC and New Jersey Department of Education. Keep an eye on the finish line, by Joellen Killion. (2007, October). Teachers Teaching Teachers, 3 (2), 6-8. Apply knowledge of learning, by Joellen Killion. (2008, October). Teachers Teaching Teachers, 4 (2), 7-9. Learning Forward 7

Standards Assessment Inventory Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard Strengthening 1. There are many considerations when planning professional learning. School leadership teams begin by assessing educator learning needs, current professional learning, and school context. Analyzing student achievement data to determine student learning needs is the first step of deciding the content of professional learning. It is also important to consider educators backgrounds, experience, and preparation; school culture; leadership capacity and style; and the change process. Many school leaders and staff have developed expertise at launching new initiatives, which includes the beginning stages of professional learning namely, learning new information. To impact student learning, adult learning needs to include both support for educators as they translate new practices into their classrooms and strategies to build commitment and perseverance, two important attitudes in change, so that educators consistently use the new practices. When school administration and school leadership teams understand and use the Backmapping Model for Planning Results-Based Professional Learning, they will be able to build into their professional learning plan specific actions to develop knowledge and skills, foster attitudes for change, and support implementation. After analyzing the learning needs of students and educators, those planning professional learning consider other factors that are likely to influence the selection of a learning design and the success of professional learning. With this information in mind, they can weigh the pros and cons of specific designs and determine which learning design or combination of designs will be most useful to achieve the intended outcomes for change in educator practice and student learning. Chapter 9: Planning effective professional learning. (2009). Becoming a learning school, by Joellen Killion and Patricia Roy. Oxford, OH: NSDC. Self-assessment of current planning for professional learning. (2011). Minds in motion: Creating a community of collaborative learners. Oxford, OH: Learning Forward and Rochester City School District. Keep an eye on the finish line, by Joellen Killion. (2007, October). Teachers Teaching Teachers, 3 (2), 6-8. (Tool included in Developing section of this packet.) Learning Forward 8

Standards Assessment Inventory Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard 2. School leadership teams explore the variety of professional learning designs available. Once needs and context are clear, those planning professional learning can weigh the pros and cons of specific designs to determine which learning design or combination of designs will be most useful to achieve the intended outcomes for change in educator practice and student learning. The best professional learning designs match the learning needs and conditions prevalent within the school or learning team. The principal, school leadership team (SLT), and instructional coach expand their repertoire of collaborative, job-embedded strategies; protocols for examining student work; action research strategies, and other forms of professional learning. Together the principal, SLT, and coaches help the entire faculty understand how different learning designs work and support them in choosing the designs that match most closely with individual, team, and schoolwide professional learning goals. Ripe for the picking: Collection of 21 strategies satisfies a taste for context and content, by Lois Brown Easton. (2005, September). Teachers Teaching Teachers, 1 (1), 10-16. Expanding your vision of professional development, by Joan Richardson. (2005, September). The Learning Principal, 5 (1), 4-5. (Tool included in Developing section of this packet.) Tools for Schools. (2001, August/September). This issue is devoted to designing learning teams to develop collaboration among teachers. Tools for Schools. (2001, February/March). This issue is devoted to strategies for teams to use in examining student work together. Tap the power of peers, by Lois Brown Easton. (2008, September). Teachers Teaching Teachers, 4 (1), 1-4. The tuning protocol. (2005, October). Teachers Teaching Teachers, 1 (2), 8. Learning Forward 9

Standards Assessment Inventory Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard Comprehensive 1. Schools use external providers wisely. When contracting with an outside consultant, school leaders should work with the consultant to be sure that he or she uses learning designs that mirror instructional practices teachers are expected to use in their classroom and that the content the consultant addresses aligns with student content standards and educator performance standards and learning needs. For example, if the consultant facilitates professional learning on differentiated instruction, the consultant should model differentiation so that adult learners experiences the instructional strategies during professional learning and understand more fully how the strategies can be implemented in their classrooms. Weighing the workshop, by Katherine A. Little and Kristina Ayers Paul. (2009, December). JSD 30 (5), 26-30. 2. School and district leadership provide classroom- and school-based coaching. One of the goals of a coach is supporting classroom implementation of new instructional strategies. Instructional coaching provides individualized support to educators in their own classrooms within teams of peers. Coaches support educators to apply new strategies in practice and dramatically increase educators ability to use professional learning to solve problems of practice and increase student achievement. Coaching is a fundamental learning design to support individual, team, and schoolwide learning. Selecting coaches, by Joellen Killion and Cindy Harrison. (2007, April). The Learning System, 2 (7), 1, 6-7. Coaching: The key to translating research into practice lies in continuous, jobembedded learning with ongoing support, by Jim Knight. (2009, Winter). JSD, 30 (1). How to be a wise consumer of coaching, by David Yopp, Elizabeth A. Burroughs,Jennifer Luebeck, Clare Heidema, Arlene Mitchell, and John Sutton. (2011, February). JSD, 3 (21) 50-53. Five key points to building a coaching plan, by Jim Knight. (2007, Winter). JSD 28 (1), 26-31. Tools: Clarify the coaching role & student achievement coach expectation. (2011, Learning Forward 10

Standards Assessment Inventory Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard February). The Leading Teacher, 6 (5), 5-6. 3. School leadership teams use Learning Forward s Innovation Configuration maps. The IC maps provide desired outcomes for every standard. The IC map for the SLT for Learning Designs appears below (it is near the end of the packet of tools. Similar IC maps for teachers, coaches, and principals are available from www.learningforward.org/bookstore. The IC maps, such as the one for SLT, provides a way for educators to assess their current practice and build an improvement plan by describing behaviors associated with more advanced practice. While the IC map included focuses on SLT, other maps can assist principals, coaches, and teachers understand what their responsibilities are related to effective learning designs for professional learning. Order Standards into practice: School-based roles. Innovation Configuration maps for Standards for Professional Learning from Learning Forward (800-727-7288 or www.learningforward.org/bookstore). Using the IC maps as a self-assessment. (2012). Standards into practice: School-based roles. Innovation Configuration maps for Standards for Professional Learning. Oxford, OH: Learning Forward. School leadership team: Learning Designs. (2012). Standards into practice: Schoolbased roles. Innovation Configuration maps for Standards for Professional Learning. Oxford, OH: Learning Forward. Learning Forward 11

STANDARDS ASSESSMENT INVENTORY Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard Tools to support DEVELOPING strategies

Chapter 2 n Process Process Selecting the design that works with context and content By Lois Brown Easton Imagine a school that has, over years, created an environment conducive to professional learning and the environment for adults has paid off with increased student learning. School staff know that they can always improve on their learning one sign that they are truly a professional learning community. Other signs are the clarity of staff members vision, a focus on student results, and enthusiasm for collaborating. Teachers open their classrooms to each other and share student work. This school has the context for adult learning. As part of their learning, the adults in this school routinely collect and analyze data from various sources. Data help staff members know what their students need to know and, therefore, what they need to learn so that their students can learn better. Staff know the content they must study. At the beginning of every school year, teachers analyze their context and study the data for content needs. When they are clear on both, they address the processes they will undertake for their learning how they will learn. They select strategies that will help them make the changes that will improve student achievement. Then they begin their own learning for the year, working together in various ways and setting aside time in January and June to come together to share what they have learned, take stock of their progress (check the data), and plan for continuing or changing what they are doing as adults in this professional learning community. This chapter is about selecting the processes professional learning strategies that help adults learn. The strategies themselves are described in detail in the chapters in Part II of this book. This chapter will help you determine which strategies might fit a particular context and lead to teachers learning the specific content to help students learn. Let s go back to that fictional school and imagine that www.nsdc.org Powerful Designs for Professional Learning n 23

Chapter 2 n Process staff there figured out that students need to improve their reading skills in the content areas. The teachers want to learn how to help students understand at a deep level the materials they encounter in social studies and science, for example. With help from a district administrator and support from the principal, staff members seek resources that describe powerful strategies for professional learning such as this book and select a variety of processes to help them learn. Some choose to work individually. Some work individually and then get together in groups. Some work in groups. For example, one teacher decides to access student voices by having students talk about reading in focus groups. Other teachers begin action research projects, mostly working alone but getting together every other week to share their progress and results. A small group of individuals begins a dialogue, using important articles and a book about reading in the content areas. A few content area teachers keep journals about reading in their own classrooms. Some of these individuals create portfolios of the materials they use to help students read difficult material. They reflect on the materials they put into their portfolios and make plans to share them with others. Another group conducts case discussions on reading. Several teachers, the principal, and associate principals do classroom walk-throughs that focus on reading. Another group reanalyzes the data that the school used to initiate this professional learning cycle; this group wants to know the details behind the scores that alarmed the staff about reading in the content areas. The last group examines classroom and district assessments for levels of questioning about text. Four months into their focus on reading in the content areas, they come together to share the results of their learning through a template and visual dialogue. The staff as a whole then creates a plan for action over the next four months. The action research individuals and groups continue their work, as do the journal writers and portfolio makers. The assessment group expands its work. The whole faculty continues to do classroom walk-throughs, becoming adept at forming inquiry questions to use in their meetings. Other groups begin to form. Some staff members begin meeting in Critical Friends Groups and do tuning protocols around student understanding of text. Some teachers locate videos that show content-area teachers working with students on their reading skills; they invite the rest of the faculty to analyze these videos with them. A small group decides to shadow students in another school known for its focus on critical thinking skills. The district provides several content-area teachers with a part-time literacy coach who uses strategies that appeal to their learning styles. At the end of the year, staff members gather again to share their learning. This time, they have lots of data to review, data that show students are making progress. They are better able to read materials in the content areas deeply and contribute to and even lead higher-level discussions. Yes, student test scores are better, but what counts in this school is the satisfaction staff feel when interacting with students who are reading, understanding, and thinking better in the content areas and, therefore, learning at higher levels. They make plans for next year s learning. Some want to do lesson study related to reading in science classes. Another group decides to look at assignments through the Standards in Practice process. Finally, the staff decides to ask the district to provide a school coach to help them focus on schoolwide changes they believe will help students learn. One thing they are adamant about is having mentors for new teachers next year, teachers who won t have had the experiences they have had. All the teachers in our fictional school focused on how to improve students skills in reading across the curriculum through a variety of professional learning activities. Chapter 1 discusses context, the environment that makes it possible for adults to learn and grow. The context for adult learning in this school continued to improve as all staff took responsibility for the reading skills of all students in all content areas. Chapter 3 focuses on content using data about student achievement to decide what needs to be improved. In the school description above, teachers shared what they learned on these different pathways and made plans to implement changes and continue learning. At the end of the year, they reassembled to share results and to set learning goals for themselves for the next year. The context of their work improved as a result of their professional learning experiences, and the content of their work continued to be reading, but the processes the professional learning strategies they used changed. 24 n Powerful Designs for Professional Learning National Staff Development Council

Chapter 2 n Process NSDC s Process standards Process is an important consideration for those designing and participating in professional learning that makes a difference. In fact, process is so important that the National Staff Development Council made it one of the three organizers for its standards (NSDC, 2001). According to NSDC s Process standards, staff development that improves the learning of all students: Uses disaggregated student data to determine adult learning priorities, monitor progress, and help sustain continuous improvement. (Data-Driven). In the school described at the beginning of this chapter, staff consulted data before choosing designs, then again during the year and at the end of the year. Uses multiple sources of information to guide improvement and demonstrate its impact. (Evaluation). You may also have noticed how the school dug deeply into information to learn, from using articles and books to summaries of classroom walk-throughs. What a rich collection of information they had upon which to base decisions about their own learning! Prepares educators to apply research to decision making. (Research-Based). Staff in this school consulted the traditional forms of research by reading articles and books. They worked with a literacy coach who was current on the research, and they also used their own, site-based research to help them make decisions. Uses learning strategies appropriate to the intended goal. (Design). Rather than use just one learning strategy to help them move toward their intended goal, the educators at this school used many appropriate learning strategies. Applies knowledge about human learning and change. (Learning). Early in the process of becoming a learning community, school staff asked the district director of professional development to help them learn about adult change, focusing on CBAM (Hord, Rutherford, Huling-Austin, & Hall, 1987) and other appropriate strategies. As a result, the context of the school made it possible for staff to engage in such a diverse set of learning opportunities. Provides educators with the knowledge and skills to collaborate. (Collaboration). As part of his work with this school s staff, the district director of professional development shared some basics about collaboration with the staff, but staff members regularly examined themselves as a learning community, using a survey they found on the NSDC web site (Wagner & Masden-Copas, 2002). RELATING CONTEXT, Process, AND Content This chapter provides a way educators can achieve NSDC s Process standards to improve the learning of all students. The processes are described individually in detail in Part II. To begin to determine which processes might work best for you, analyze the school s context and content needs using the tools on the CD-ROM that accompanies this book. Consider: Chapter 1: Survey based on NSDC s Context standards Chapter 1: Survey based on a school improvement model Chapter 1: Rubric based on a systems approach Chapter 3: Six-step backward planning process for professional learning Involve as many people as possible in using the tools, especially those who will be affected by the professional learning experiences that result from them. Summarize important information from the tools related to context and content. (See Handout 1 in the Chapter 2-Process file on the CD-ROM to help choose a professional learning design.) DETERMINING OVERALL DESIGN One factor in selecting a design is considering how it may fit with other processes. Some designs are container designs that can include multiple strategies, and others can fit anywhere they are needed. Container processes Some powerful professional learning processes can be considered container processes they provide an overall framework that can include other designs. The study groups process that Carlene Murphy and Mike Murphy describe in Chapter 22 is a good example of a container process because this design might include accessing student voices, case discussions, data analysis, journaling whatever is necessary or helpful as part of the study group process. Critical www.nsdc.org Powerful Designs for Professional Learning n 25

Chapter 2 n Process Friends Groups is another container design. Participants in these groups might engage in dialogue, shadowing, tuning protocols, or video. Mentoring, differentiated coaching, training the trainer, and school coaching also can be considered container designs because participants might engage in other designs while using these strategies, such as tuning protocols or visual dialogue. Stand-alone processes Some strategies are independent of other designs. These may take a year of focused work to affect professionals learning. Lesson study, for example, is described in cycles of learning and focused on looking at lessons. Immersing teachers in practice is at least a yearlong project and focused on improving teachers understanding of a traditional content area, such as writing, mathematics, or science. Standards in Practice similarly is at least a yearlong effort focused on looking at assignments. Assessment as professional learning and curriculum design are likely to be multi-year professional learning efforts, focused on crafting curriculum and assessments. While participants in curriculum design, lesson study, Standards in Practice, and assessment as professional learning might engage learners in other processes, such as using tuning protocols to look at student work, the focus of the professional learning remains on lessons, assignments, and assessments. Variable processes Many designs described in this book are variable they can be used alone, within a container design, or with other designs. Faculties can decide, for example, to access student voices anytime during a school year, or as part of what they do as a study group. They can engage in action research anytime, just as they can do a dialogue whenever they deem it helpful. Case discussions, classroom walk-throughs, data analysis, journaling, portfolios for educators, shadowing, tuning protocols, video, and visual dialogue these are very versatile designs, useful alone or as part of another design. A developmental point of view Designs can also be considered from a developmental point of view. Some designs might be somewhat formidable in a school that has not worked toward becoming a professional learning community. For example, teachers who are not accustomed to being in each others classrooms or sharing student work might find tuning protocols a bit threatening. They might also have concerns about lesson study or Standards in Practice. Perhaps novice professional learning communities can start with a design that is somewhat outside their own work. Perhaps they can begin with dialogue, for example. Or, they can interview students or hold focus groups. They can begin, as Victoria L. Bernhardt suggests, with another school s data (provided on the CD-ROM file for Chapter 11). At some point, however, novice learning communities need to venture into the more personal of the designs. Perhaps more experienced staff members or facilitators can introduce the design using their own work as an example sharing a lesson, providing student work or an example of professional practice, submitting an assignment for review. Then, when others see that the process is safe, they can be encouraged to share their own work. By no means, however, should novice schools wait until they have reached some designated level of becoming a professional learning community to use the designs in this book. Engaging in the designs will help a faculty move closer to becoming a learning community. Continuous processes In a professional learning community, the designs can follow one another easily. For example, a dialogue group might decide that the next step to take is examining student work using tuning protocols. Then the teachers might want to look at curriculum design. Using the video design might lead them to use data analysis plus assessment as professional learning. Visual dialogue might make apparent to a faculty that they need to use accessing student voices. Action research might lead to lesson study or looking at assignments through the Standards in Practice design. SELECTING THE RIGHT PEOPLE Choosing who is involved in professional learning at a school is simple everyone (including paraprofessionals, office staff, custodians, lunchroom workers, bus drivers, etc.) should be involved in some kind of professional learning on a regular basis. Specifically, the people to involve in any experience should be those who are likely to be affected by the results of professional learning, as well as those who have 26 n Powerful Designs for Professional Learning National Staff Development Council

Chapter 2 n Process something to contribute. All of the professional learning designs in this book work well with classroom teachers. Many also work well with administrators at the building and district levels and, indeed, administrators should be at least supportive of any professional learning activity, even when their involvement is not required. For example, Critical Friends Groups, differentiated coaching, lesson study, and training the trainer do not require participation of administrators but still need their support. Some designs that might involve university or college staff include: action research, assessment as professional learning, curriculum design, data analysis, lesson study, school coaching, Standards in Practice, study groups, training the trainer, and tuning protocols. University and college faculty can contribute to school professional learning experiences, and they also can learn from them, especially as they prepare future teachers or administrators for work in schools. Involve more people in selecting a design The most critical aspect of choosing processes or designs is involving those who will be engaged in the designs and who will be affected by the outcomes. Those involved need to know about the various designs available to them such as the ideas within this book so they can choose a strategy. They need information. A few points to emphasize: As much as possible, involve administrators and not just for support. Changes that schools and districts need to make may become apparent when administrators participate fully in faculty learning opportunities. Administrators can directly support staff changes if they know what faculty have experienced. They can lead school staff to resources. As much as possible, involve students in a design. Students voices are the least heard in reform that affects them. Regardless of who is involved in professional learning, always ask, Who else needs to be here? Designs that might involve community, parents, policy makers, or students are: accessing student voices, curriculum design, data analysis, school coaching, shadowing, Standards in Practice, and study groups. As with the other types of participants, these populations are likely to have much to contribute; what they learn can make a difference in passing a bond or drafting favorable policy. Students often are left out of the professional learning the adults in their schools experience. Of all stakeholders, however, they have the most to gain in school improvement. Not only do their voices need to be heard, but their ideas need to be seriously considered. And, they will benefit in terms of their participation in a civic process. CONNECTING PURPOSES FOR PROFESSIONAL LEARNING WITH SPECIFIC DESIGNS The reasons for engaging in professional learning are included in the introduction to this book. At school and district levels, educators need to ask: Is what we are accomplishing good enough? Do we like the results we are getting? Could we get better results? Do we want better results? How can we get better results? What do we need to do? Gather data, study, do action research, something else? Specific purposes can be promoted through certain designs. These more specific purposes take the form of questions. 1. Which designs are most useful for gathering and using information from within the school or district about learning? See these chapters: Accessing Student Voices, Action Research, Classroom Walk-Throughs, Data Analysis, Lesson Study, Portfolios for Educators, Shadowing, Standards in Practice, Video, and Visual Dialogue. 2. Which designs are most likely to use outside resources to inform the work? See these chapters: Action Research, Case Discussions, Differentiated Coaching (an outside coach), Lesson Study, School Coaching (an outside coach), Shadowing, Study Groups, Training the Trainer, and Visual Dialogue. 3. Which designs are especially useful in creating a learning community? Although all of the designs essentially help a group become a learning community, these chapters are especially focused on that end: Action Research, Assess- www.nsdc.org Powerful Designs for Professional Learning n 27

Chapter 2 n Process ment as Professional Learning, Classroom Walk-Throughs, Critical Friends Groups, Dialogue, Lesson Study, Mentoring, Standards in Practice, Study Groups, Tuning Protocols, Video, and Visual Dialogue. 4. Which designs focus most on standards, curriculum, and assessment? See these chapters: Assessment as Professional Learning, Case Discussions, Classroom Walk- Throughs, Critical Friends Groups, Curriculum Design, Dialogue, Immersing Teachers in Practice, Lesson Study, Standards in Practice, Study Groups, Training the Trainer, Video, and Visual Dialogue. 5. Which designs focus most on practice or pedagogy? See these chapters: Action Research,, Case Discussions, Classroom Walk-Throughs, Critical Friends Groups, Dialogue, Differentiated Coaching, Immersing Teachers in Practice, Journaling, Lesson Study, Mentoring, Portfolios for Educators, Standards in Practice, Training the Trainer, Tuning Protocols, and Video. 6. Which designs are most useful for looking at classrooms? See these chapters: Action Research, Classroom Walk-Throughs, Critical Friends Groups, Lesson Study, Mentoring, Portfolios for Educators, Shadowing, Tuning Protocols, and Video. 7. Which designs focus on the whole school and/ or beyond? See these chapters: Accessing Student Voices, Curriculum Design, Data Analysis, Dialogue, Immersing Teachers in Practice, School Coaching, Standards in Practice, Study Groups, Video, Visual Dialogue. 8. Which designs are particularly reflective? See these chapters: Action Research, Assessment as Professional Learning, Classroom Walk-Throughs, Critical Friends Groups, Dialogue, Journaling, Lesson Study, Mentoring, Portfolios for Educators, Standards in Practice, and Video. 9. Which designs look at student work or involve students in some way? See these chapters: Accessing Student Voices, Action Research, Assessment as Professional Learning, Case Discussions, Critical Friends Groups, Lesson Study, Mentoring, Portfolios for Educators, Shadowing, Standards in Practice, Tuning Protocols, and Video. 10. Which designs are best for bringing others (other than teachers or administrators) into the school improvement effort? See these chapters: Accessing Student Voices, Action Research, Critical Friends Groups, Dialogue, School Coaching, Shadowing (other schools), Study Groups, Video, and Visual Dialogue. 11. Which designs can be used to address specific problems and seek solutions? See these chapters: Accessing Student Voices, Action Research, Case Discussions, Critical Friends Groups, Data Analysis, Dialogue, Mentoring, Portfolios for Educators, School Coaching, Study Groups, Video, and Visual Dialogue. 12. Which designs result in a concrete product? See these chapters: Assessment as Professional Learning, Curriculum Design, Lesson Study, Portfolios for Educators, Standards in Practice, Training the Trainer, and Video. 13. Which designs are the most experiential? See these chapters: Action Research, Dialogue, Immersing Teachers in Practice, Journaling, Lesson Study, Mentoring, Shadowing, Video, and Visual Dialogue. 14. Which designs might involve modeling? See these chapters: Differentiated Coaching, Immersing Teachers in Practice, Lesson Study, Mentoring, Training the Trainer, and Video. CONSIDERING TIME REQUIREMENTS No design should be implemented only once a year. These designs are meant to be continuous over a period of time and include an assumption that teachers will commit no less than a year s effort. With the group designing the professional learning (and, therefore, likely to be affected by it), select a promising design based on the factors above and look at how frequently participants in that professional learning strategy need to engage in the design and the expected length of each session. Consider the real time required for the design and how much time is currently available. If the design s time requirements do not match reality, seek creative ways to expand time to fit the design. The best way of providing that time is building it into the school day in the form of embedded professional learning. The next best is providing stipends for work outside the school day. After that is providing substitutes to release educators for professional learning during the day. Few teachers like having substitutes because they would rather be in their own classes and because of the amount of preparation time (and sometimes follow-up time) that having a substitute requires. Some fear the loss of learning that might occur when the teacher is not working with the students. The chief way 28 n Powerful Designs for Professional Learning National Staff Development Council

Chapter 2 n Process a district or school shows support for professional learning is by providing and protecting time to learn. Frequency Some designs can be implemented in three to six sessions a year. See these chapters: Accessing Student Voices, Assessment as Professional Learning (perhaps a multiyear project), Curriculum Design, Data Analysis, Dialogue, Lesson Study (consisting of two cycles a year, each 10 hours or more), Shadowing, Study Groups, Training the Trainer, and Visual Dialogue. Chapters detailing strategies that require at least monthly meetings are: Action Research (group sharing), Case Discussions, Critical Friends Groups, Differentiated Coaching, Immersing Teachers in Practice, School Coaching, Tuning Protocols, and Video. These chapters have designs that include at least weekly collaboration: Classroom Walk-Throughs, Mentoring, Portfolios for Educators, and Standards in Practice. Journaling should happen daily. Duration Some strategies that require groups to meet less than once a month may take three hours or more for each session. See these chapters: Accessing Student Voices, Assessment as Professional Learning, Critical Friends Groups (may be two to three hours each time), Curriculum Design, Data Analysis, Shadowing, Study Groups, Training the Trainer, and Visual Dialogue. Most monthly and some weekly sessions require one to two hours per session. See these chapters: Case Discussions, Critical Friends Groups (two to three hours usually), Dialogue, Differentiated Coaching, Immersing Teachers in Practice, Lesson Study, School Coaching, and Tuning Protocols. Individual work (that may result in group sharing) might require an hour or less. See these chapters: Action Research, Classroom Walk-Throughs, Journaling, Mentoring, Portfolios for Educators, Standards in Practice, and Video. HOW DESIGNS ARE IMPLEMENTED With the group, consider these questions. 1. Does the design connect with other designs? All On the CD-ROM The handout for this chapter is available on the CD-ROM that accompanies this book. 1. Choosing the best professional learning design designs in this book can be used with other designs to explore the same content, with the exception of differentiated coaching and training the trainer. As the vignette at the beginning of this chapter illustrates, using a variety of adult learning strategies oriented toward the same content need can enrich the results considerably. 2. Does the design accommodate individual learners, learners in small, concurrent groups, or learners in one large group? A few designs can be accomplished individually at first and then in groups. See these chapters: Accessing Student Voices, Classroom Walk-Throughs, Differentiated Coaching, Journaling, Portfolios for Educators, Shadowing, and Training the Trainer. The chapters on each of these designs will clarify the process from individual to group participation. Chapters that outline designs useful in working in pairs are: Classroom Walk-Throughs and Mentoring. All other designs can be done in large groups or concurrent small groups. 3. Does the design require a facilitator? A facilitator is needed in all large group designs, if only to keep time and keep the process on track. Facilitators can be external or people within a school or district who know the design well (such as readers of this book). However, some designs do not need a facilitator. See these chapters: Classroom Walk-Throughs, Differentiated Coaching (the coach is the facilitator), Journaling, Lesson Study, Portfolios for Educators, and Training the Trainer. Some designs need a facilitator at first (after some experience with the design, one of the group can serve that function). See these chapters: Critical Friends Groups, Dialogue, Mentoring, Standards in Practice, Study Groups, and Tuning Protocols. Some groups need a facilitator (external or internal) throughout the process. See these chapters: Accessing www.nsdc.org Powerful Designs for Professional Learning n 29

Chapter 2 n Process Student Voices, Action Research, Assessment as Professional Learning, Case Discussions, Curriculum Design, Data Analysis, Immersing Teachers in Practice, School Coaching (usually the coach herself), Shadowing, Video, and Visual Dialogue. 4. Which designs require administrators to be involved? Most designs require at least some degree of administrator support that includes sponsoring or approving the design and allocating time, money, and resources. See these chapters: Accessing Student Voices, Action Research, Case Discussions, Critical Friends Groups, Curriculum Design, Data Analysis, Dialogue, Differentiated Coaching, Immersing Teachers in Practice, Journaling, Lesson Study, Mentoring, Portfolios for Educators, School Coaching, Shadowing, Study Groups, Training the Trainer, Tuning Protocols, and Visual Dialogue. Some designs require some kind of participation from administrators (indicating a level of support). Participation is essential for the designs in these chapters: Assessment as Professional Learning, Classroom Walk-Throughs, Curriculum Design, Data Analysis, Journaling, Portfolios for Educators, School Coaching, Shadowing, Standards in Practice, Study Groups, Video, and Visual Dialogue. Other designs do not require administrator participation, but administrator participation is helpful (and indicates support). See these chapters: Accessing Student Voices, Case Discussions, Dialogue, Immersing Teachers in Practice, Mentoring, and Tuning Protocols. 5. Which designs work best when school is in session? The designs in these chapters work best when students are present: Accessing Student Voices, Action Research, Assessment as Professional Learning, Classroom Walk-Throughs, Critical Friends Groups, Dialogue, Differentiated Coaching, Immersing Teachers in Practice, Journaling, Lesson Study, Mentoring, Portfolios for Educators, School Coaching, Shadowing, Standards in Practice, Study Groups, Tuning Protocols, Video, and Visual Dialogue. Some designs are best implemented with some sustained time time that usually is more available during the summer when students are not in school (although they also can be implemented during school). See these chapters: Action Research, Assessment as Professional Learning, Case Discussions, Curriculum Design, Data Analysis, Immersing Teachers in Practice, and Training the Trainer. 6. Which designs cost the most? Some designs require few resources. Journaling, for example, requires little time or money. Others require outside experts, such as an individual or school coach. All the designs cost, especially in terms of time the time that educators put into planning, participating in the design, and implementing changes in practice. Time requires spending money for substitute teachers or stipends. A cost-benefit analysis quickly shows, however, that these designs although they may cost as much as or more than hiring external speakers or paying tuition for university classes result in a huge benefit: application of learning in classrooms and schools. The focus on improving practice, curriculum, assessment, and school culture ultimately results in increased student achievement (Richardson, 2003; Darling-Hammond, Ancess, & Ort, 2002; Barnes, Miller, & Dennis, 2001; Clark, 2001; French, 2001; Garet, et al., 2001; Ladson-Billings & Gomez, 2001; Lieberman & Miller, 2001; Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy, 2000; Langer, 2000; Wenglinsky, 2000; Killion, 1999; Richardson, 1998; Richardson, 1997). These factors affect cost: Number of educators involved (stipends/substitutes); Degree to which an activity is embedded in the school day (journaling or portfolios for educators, for example) or outside the day requiring stipends to support the extra work; Time required (frequency and duration); Degree to which an activity involves individuals or a group; Need for travel (shadowing, for example); Production costs (such as those required for publishing a curriculum or assessments); and Need for an external facilitator or outside expertise. These chapters offer professional learning designs that are less costly than others: Accessing Student Voices, Classroom Walk-Throughs, Critical Friends Groups, Dialogue, Journaling, Lesson Study, Portfolios for Educators, Standards in Practice, and Training the Trainer. Others are somewhat more costly because they require some time for groups outside of class (and some cost in other areas, such as an honorarium for a coach outside the school or district). See these chapters: Action Research, Assessment as Professional Learning, Case Discussions, Data Analysis, Differentiated Coaching, Mentoring, Shadowing, Study Groups, 30 n Powerful Designs for Professional Learning National Staff Development Council

Chapter 2 n Process Tuning Protocols, and Video. Some have higher costs, particularly due to significant time outside class, or need an outside expert. See these chapters: Curriculum Design, Immersing Teachers in Practice, School Coaching, and Visual Dialogue. (See Handout 1 in the Chapter 2-Process file on the CD-ROM to determine what professional learning processes are needed.) POWERFUL DESIGNS LEAD TO STUDENT SUCCESS Educators must believe that their own learning is important enough to the success of students to engage in something more than sit-and-get professional development. Professional learning takes a commitment to the risky business of learning. Professional learning almost always leads to change, and change for most people is a somewhat scary process. To be able to embark on such a change process and to help students achieve more, educators must believe that what they do makes a difference. Students will succeed when educators create and continue to improve the context for professional learning, deliberately focus content of professional learning on student improvement needs, and choose processes that help teachers address those needs. While some designs might seem more formidable to a staff of teachers who have not worked toward becoming a learning community, other strategies included in this book can help even the novice begin the adventure of engaging in more powerful professional learning. None of us can afford to wait to engage in the designs presented here. The effect of our professional learning will go far beyond any one educator. It is our work that we are working on, and the outcome will be improved learning for all of us and our students. References Barnes, F., Miller, M., & Dennis, R. (2001, Fall). Face to face. Journal of Staff Development, 22(4), 42-43, 47. Clark, C.M. (Ed). (2001). Talking shop: Authentic conversation and teacher learning. New York: Teachers College Press. Darling-Hammond, L., Ancess, J., & Ort, S.W. (2002, Fall). Reinventing high school: Outcomes of the Coalition Campus Schools project. American Educational Research Journal, 39(3), 639-673. French, R. (2001, Fall). Great job, now do it better. Journal of Staff Development, 22(4), 27-28. Garet, M.S., Porter, A.C., Desimone, L., Birman, B.F., & Yoon, K.S. (2001, Winter). What makes professional development effective? Results from a national sample of teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 915-946. Goddard, R.D., Hoy, W.K., & Hoy, A.W. (2000, Summer). Collective teacher efficacy: Its meaning, measure, and impact on student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 37(2), 479-507. Hord, S.M., Rutherford, W.L., Huling-Austin, L., & Hall, G. (1987). Taking charge of change. Alexandria: VA: ASCD. Killion, J. (1999). What works in the middle: Resultsbased staff development for the middle grades. Oxford, OH: NSDC. Ladson-Billings, G. & Gomez, M.L. (2001, May). Just showing up: Supporting early literacy through teachers professional communities. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(9), 675-680. Langer, J.A. (2000, Summer). Excellence in English in middle and high school: How teachers professional lives support student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 37(2), 397-439. Lieberman, A. & Miller, L. (Eds.). (2001). Teachers caught in action: Professional development that matters. New York: Teachers College Press. National Staff Development Council. (2001). NSDC s standards for staff development. Oxford: OH: Author. Richardson, J. (2003, February). The secrets of cando schools: Louisiana team uncovers traits of high poverty, high-performing schools. Results, 1, 6. Richardson, J. (1998, April). California study links student learning to teacher learning. Results, 1, 6. Richardson, J. (1997, September). Focus on data leads to improvements in Oak Park. Results, 1, 6. Wagner, C. & Masden-Copas, P. (2002, Summer). An audit of the culture starts with two handy tools. Journal of Staff Development, 23(3), 42-53. Wenglinsky, H. (2000). How teaching matters: Bringing the classroom back into discussions of teacher quality. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service. www.nsdc.org Powerful Designs for Professional Learning n 31

Chapter 2 n Process Chart 1 POWERFUL DESIGN Classroom teachers WHO SHOULD BE INVOLVED? Administrators University or college staff Community, parents, policy makers, students Individuals or groups? Individuals at first, then groups Pairs Large groups/ concurrent small groups Accessing Student Voices X X X X Action Research X X X X Assessment as Professional X X X X Learning Case Discussions X X X Classroom Walk-Throughs X X X X Critical Friends Groups X X Curriculum Design X X X X Data Analysis X X X X X Dialogue X X X Differentiated Coaching X X Immersing Teachers in Practice X X X Journaling X X X Lesson Study X X X Mentoring X X X X Portfolios for Educators X X X School Coaching X X X X X Shadowing X X X X Standards in Practice X X X X X Study Groups X X X X X Training the Trainer X X X Tuning Protocols X X X X Video X X X Visual Dialogue X X X 32 n Powerful Designs for Professional Learning National Staff Development Council

Chapter 2 n Process Chart 2 POWERFUL DESIGN 3 6 times a year At least monthly WHEN? (Assumes no less than 1-year commitment) FREQUENCY At least weekly Daily Each session is 3 hours or more DURATION Each session is 1 to 2 hours Each session is an hour or less Accessing Student Voices X X Action Research X X Assessment as Professional Learning X 1 X Case Discussions X X Classroom Walk-Throughs X X Critical Friends Groups X X 2 X 3 Curriculum Design X 4 X Data Analysis X X Dialogue X X Differentiated Coaching X X Immersing Teachers in Practice X X Journaling X X Lesson Study X 5 X Mentoring X X Portfolios for Educators X X School Coaching X X Shadowing X X Standards in Practice X X Study Groups X X Training the Trainer X X Tuning Protocols X X Video X X Visual Dialogue X X 1 - Likely to be multi-year. 2 - Two to three hours. 3 - Two to three hours. 4 - Likely to be multi-year. 5 - Usually two cycles per year, each cycle 10 hours long, weekly sessions. www.nsdc.org Powerful Designs for Professional Learning n 33

Chapter 2 n Process Chart 3 POWERFUL DESIGN Useful for gathering data in a school Involves gathering information from external sources Particularly helpful in creating a learning community WHAT AND WHY? Looks at standards, curriculum, assessment Focuses on pedagogy and teaching Involves looking at classrooms Involves looking at whole school/ beyond Accessing Student Voices X X Action Research X X X X X Assessment as Professional Learning X X Case Discussions X X X Classroom Walk-Throughs X X X X X Critical Friends Groups X X X X Curriculum Design X X X Data Analysis X X Dialogue X X X X Differentiated Coaching X X Immersing Teachers in Practice X X X Journaling X Lesson Study X X X X X X Mentoring X X X Portfolios for Educators X X X School Coaching X X Shadowing X X X Standards in Practice X X X X X Study Groups X X X X Training the Trainer X X X Tuning Protocols X X X Video X X X X X X Visual Dialogue X X X X X 34 n Powerful Designs for Professional Learning National Staff Development Council

Chapter 2 n Process Chart 3 (cont.) POWERFUL DESIGN Is particularly reflective Involves looking at student work or students Good for involving others WHAT AND WHY? Good for problem solving Results in a concrete product Is experiential Involves modeling Accessing Student Voices X X X Action Research X X X X X Assessment as Professional Learning X X X Case Discussions X X Classroom Walk-Throughs X Critical Friends Groups X X X X Curriculum Design X Data Analysis X Dialogue X X X X Differentiated Coaching X Immersing Teachers in Practice X X Journaling X X Lesson Study X X X X X Mentoring X X X X X Portfolios for Educators X X X X School Coaching X X Shadowing X X X Standards in Practice X X X Study Groups X X Training the Trainer X X Tuning Protocols X Video X X X X X X X Visual Dialogue X X X www.nsdc.org Powerful Designs for Professional Learning n 35

Chapter 2 n Process Chart 4 POWERFUL DESIGN Connect with other designs? Yes No Individuals first, then groups HOW? Individuals or groups? Facilitator needed? Administrator involvement? Pairs Large groups/ Concurrent small groups No At first Yes Support Participation Assessing Student Voices X X X X X Action Research X X X X Assessment as Professional Learning X X X X Case Discussions X X X X X Classroom Walk-Throughs X X X X X Critical Friends Groups X X X X Curriculum Design X X X X Data Analysis X X X X X Dialogue X X X X X Differentiated Coaching X X X X Immersing Teachers in Practice X X X X X Journaling X X X X X Lesson Study X X X X Mentoring X X X X X X Portfolios for Educators X X X X X School Coaching X X X X X Shadowing X X X X X Standards in Practice X X X X Study Groups X X X X X Training the Trainer X X X X Tuning Protocols X X X X X Video X X X X Visual Dialogue X X X X X Essential Helpful 36 n Powerful Designs for Professional Learning National Staff Development Council

Chapter 2 n Process Chart 4 (cont.) POWERFUL DESIGN School in/out? HOW? Cost? In Out Low Medium High Accessing Student Voices X X Action Research X X X Assessment as Professional X X X Learning Case Discussions X X Classroom Walk-Throughs X X Critical Friends Groups X X Curriculum Design X X Data Analysis X X Dialogue X X Differentiated Coaching X X Immersing Teachers in Practice X X X Journaling X X Lesson Study X X Mentoring X X Portfolios for Educators X X School Coaching X X Shadowing X X Standards in Practice X X Study Groups X X Training the Trainer X X X* Tuning Protocols X X Video X X Visual Dialogue X X * if the trainer is in-house www.nsdc.org Powerful Designs for Professional Learning n 37

theme STANDARDS FOR PROFESSIONAL LEARNING LEARNING DESIGNS Study, learn, design; repeat as necessary By Bruce R. Joyce and Emily F. Calhoun Designers reside mostly in school districts and schools and can have primary assignments of all sorts. In many districts, central office personnel are most visible on design committees, but teachers, principals, and superintendents are included. Members of professional learning communities can design their own processes, and individual teachers can, too. States do also. National organizations and commercial companies are increasingly designing distance courses (Ross, 2011). Learning Forward asked us to write about design referring to the new Standards for Professional Learning and drawing on research. We needed to synthesize a considerable quantity of research, opinion, and experience into a few principles of design that will have practical applications. We organized this essay around a scenario that begins when a group of promising professional development providers from several school districts in a small state organize themselves to study design. They want to learn to build and implement programs for the districts that employ them. Let s call them the professional development design team. Such groups have existed. Just in our own work with our primary colleagues, we organize teams whose members study design and make decisions and implement them, becoming providers in the process. Those teams are made up of teachers, principals, central office personnel, and superintendents and their deputies. Some groups have been intact for many years, helping each other to study and improve design (Joyce & Calhoun, 2010, pp.84-94). The scenario moves through phases as our design team members experience the professional development that enables them to learn how to build effective and positive components of staff development. The program for the de- 46 JSD www.learningforward.org August 2011 Vol. 32 No. 4

Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students integrates theories, research, and models of human learning to achieve its intended outcomes. sign team is built from an inquiry perspective. Members are asked to test ideas, including standards. For example, if a standard recommends a given procedure, the design team will examine the literature behind it. The scenario works its way through three overlapping phases. PHASE ONE: Study the learning capacity of people, educators, and students. The first element of design is a stance toward learning capacity. How educators think about learning capacity will hugely influence the kinds of learning experiences they are likely to design. Our design team looks at research on the general human capacity to learn and on conceptual flexibility (Joyce & Calhoun, 2010, in press). They will discover that the research on human learning leads to a positive view of the rich panoply of human abilities and the heroic efforts that have provided the knowledge that the present generations build on. Our team members will discover that people have considerable capacity to learn a vast variety of things. Humans have adapted and invented. They have mastered ideas and created new ones and have done so in all cultures. Several recent neuroscientific studies have been wonderfully affirming. They will find that, in our culture, there are differences in integrative complexity (Hunt & Sullivan, 1974). That is, some folks hold on to ideas grimly while others welcome and integrate new information. As they think of the children being born today, they will note that virtually all these children can learn the culture and how to function in it, and all will find a place if loved and educated. The average bear is a smart bear. The design team will test our belief that teachers are wonderful learners. Nearly all can master just about any model of teaching that has been invented by other teachers and researchers, and do so to the extent that they can teach their students how to learn from those models and achieve their objectives. If educators believe this thesis, they approach design from the perspective that teachers are intelligent, capable beings. If not, they can find themselves designing training for persons they consider second-class learners. A second belief is that professional teachers have the capacity to adapt to and change circumstances, making things work for them. Our design team needs to study this question carefully, for there are educators who see teachers as rigid and resistant. Finally, our team will examine a major hypothesis about student learning capacity. A decent place to begin is the reader-friendly but broad and well-grounded How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). We believe that all students have considerable learning capacity. Our team will learn that to design effective curriculums, educators have to give up the belief that students socioeconomic backgrounds are the determining factor in achievement and embrace the belief that curriculum and instruction are the major factors in school learning. People who think that kids are impaired create curriculums for the impaired with predictable consequences they im- August 2011 Vol. 32 No. 4 www.learningforward.org JSD 47

theme STANDARDS FOR PROFESSIONAL LEARNING Schoolwide focus needs all, including parents By Shirnetha Stinson As told to Valerie von Frank As instructional facilitator and assistant principal, I worked with my principal to develop a vision of sustained, ongoing professional development. We had to change from a sprayand-pray model spray it out there and pray the teachers go back in the classroom and implement it to professional development on campus involving everyone in our school. Now, we purposefully plan and execute professional development. We have eliminated faculty meetings. If we meet, we meet for a learning purpose. We have a school leadership team that includes representatives from each grade level, the special Clinton Elementary School education department, and Lancaster, S.C. the special areas, as well Grades: Pre-K-5 Enrollment: 400 as the assistant principal, Staff: 44 and principal. The team Racial/ethnic mix: meets six times throughout White: 4% the year, beginning with a Black: 95% leadership planning meeting Hispanic: 1% in the summer. We look at Asian/Pacific Islander: 0% Native American: 0% performance expectations Other: 0% using state standards, federal Limited English proficient: 0% Adequate Yearly Progress goals, Free/reduced lunch: 99.5% and at our trends across the Contact: Shirnetha Stinson, school to decide which areas to assistant principal Email: sstinson@lcsd.k12.sc.us focus on. From there, we select professional development needs that align with our school improvement goals. We also get teacher input through a survey as an additional data point. We have shifted our professional development to work more with one another. We have book studies based around student needs and teacher interests. I facilitate study groups in which we analyze the data and research instructional strategies. I work with teachers to develop their abilities to lead these groups. We hire substitutes to allow us to do peer observations, co-teach, or observe model lessons, and then we have dialogue about what we observe and have consultants or coaches work with us to follow up. The district also offers daylong or half-day sessions that grade-level Stinson teams use in their studies. We periodically evaluate ourselves as a form of reflection, either individually or as a learning team. These are not performance evaluations. We use Innovation Configuration maps for teachers to decide at what level they are performing and to set goals for themselves. We have a schoolwide focus. Everyone in the school, from paraprofessionals to office secretary to principal, takes part in professional learning around the topic. We also involve parents. For example, we discovered students were struggling with figurative language and not understanding metaphors, similes, and idioms. Parents use idioms a lot in everyday language. So teachers would point out whenever a child used an idiom; we asked parents to explain the meaning of the idioms they used; and even the bus driver had students on the bus sharing idioms with him to see whether he knew what they meant. Sometimes it s not all looking at data, but having everybody aware of the strategies that are in place. Our teachers are really teaching as one unit, teaching our children what they need to know according to the standards and the learning goals we have. Shirnetha Stinson (sstinson@lcsd.k12.sc.us) is assistant principal of Clinton Elementary School in Lancaster, S.C. Valerie von Frank (valerievonfrank@ aol.com) is an education writer and editor of Learning Forward s books. 48 JSD www.learningforward.org August 2011 Vol. 32 No. 4

Learning Designs pair them. As our team studies this issue, they will find many cases where schools generated outstanding achievement for students because the faculties believed their students were capable; whereas other faculties others regarded their students as hard to teach. Reality gradually matched the beliefs schools where beliefs were positive generated high achievement, and low achievement occurred in schools with low expectations. A study by Harkreader and Weathersby (1998) that used data from all Georgia schools to build a sample found that some schools in the low socioeconomic bracket outranked many of those in the high socioeconomic bracket. Our team will examine the Iowa Association of School Boards (2007) study indicating that a positive ethos in both districts and schools was associated with the exceptional performance of schools in the low socioeconomic bracket. As Ron Edmonds said, How many effective schools would you have to see, referring to schools that refused to be defeated by the negative rhetoric about socioeconomic status (Edmonds, 1979, p. 22). A part of giving up the student background thesis is recognizing that in schools populated by middle and high socioeconomic status students, an average of 20% of the students fail to learn to read and write adequately. Essentially, favorable socioeconomic status does not override poor curriculum. Let s summarize what our design team has learned in Phase One of its study: Teachers have fine learning capacity. Teachers have considerable flexibility enough to understand their own individuality and modify professional development participation to help themselves have success. All students can learn, and the negative socioeconomic hypotheses are now passé. Socioeconomic status does not predict achievement curriculum does. These three affirmative theses are the foundations of design for professional development. Under the negative alternatives, teachers can be treated as mediocre and inflexible learners. Just as bad, the content of professional development will be muted if designers treat student learning as environmentally determined rather than as an outcome of professional function. PHASE TWO: How teachers learn new repertoire when they need to do so. Our design team now proceeds to study how teachers learn. They will find that the concept of repertoire is very important to how educators learn. Most teachers have good control over some teaching strategies and less control over others. For professional development design, the important consideration is how close the new content is to the developed repertoire of the teachers who are involved. Is it very close, a bit farther away, The content of professional development will be muted if designers treat student learning as environmentally determined rather than as an outcome of professional function. or in new territory? Here are some items the design team will find on its journey. A BIT OF NEW REPERTOIRE CLOSE TO THE RANGE OF DEVELOPED SKILLS Let s imagine that a school faculty learns that having working in-class libraries gives students greater access and proximity to books, and that access has a positive effect on students learning to read (McGill-Franzen, Allington, Yokoi, & Brooks, 1999). So the faculty decides to obtain the resources to ensure that their classroom collections contain 400 to 600 books, and they do so without depleting their school library. Then, another facet of the McGill-Franzen et al. studies kicks in. Without some professional development, many teachers have difficulty getting new books into students hands on a regular basis. Some new repertoire is apparently required. However, only about 10 hours of professional development (say, five two-hour sessions) were needed to help teachers learn to use the collections productively. For this initiative that increases student learning in reading and writing, some training is needed, but only a little. Our design team decides that it needs to learn whether initiatives by school faculties, professional learning communities, and districts ask for additions in repertoire that are just out of the range of the educators who are trying to learn to use them and therefore require a only a modest amount of professional development to achieve implementation. A LARGER NEED Another faculty decides to study student learning in reading using performance-based measures. They discover the Gray Oral Reading Test and the Gunning procedure for assessing levels of competence when students are beginning to learn to read: It is very useful up to about a high end of grade 2 level. They obtain the manuals for the Gray Oral Reading Test and begin by administering it to a few students. They find that assigning the levels in it is not easy and that miscue analysis is a lot more complicated than they thought. The Gunning procedures require finding books that require a range of competencies from students. This is not as easy as expected. They end up finding an experienced consultant from their intermediate service agency and spend about two hours per week with her for about 10 weeks, practicing all the while. Part of their time is face-to-face, and part is on Skype. They also make and share videos of assessments, both for discussion and learning for themselves and for potential resources for teaching others. The movement toward performance measurement was just a little too far out of their repertoire and needed more help than faculty had anticipated. August 2011 Vol. 32 No. 4 www.learningforward.org JSD 49

theme STANDARDS FOR PROFESSIONAL LEARNING Again, our design team has discovered that they need to learn how to help clients (schools, professional learning communities, districts, individuals) assess whether an initiative requires knowledge and skills that are significantly outside the current repertoire of the majority of the staff. NEW COMPONENT A new component of professional learning is being generated by the need to integrate information and communication technologies into core curriculum areas of the school. While many teachers are reaching out to the web and using the library resources being developed, the core curriculum areas need to be redeveloped into what my colleagues and I call hybrid courses (the term blending is often used), where the familiar campus course is augmented by technology resources. Components of distance courses can also be integrated into campus courses and curriculum areas from kindergarten through grade 12. The teachers who take this on will need support through serious professional development. Professional development to help them to learn to generate online components for their courses is currently available, often online itself. We should soon enter a new era of research on how to design the online and offline professional development on integrating this technology into core areas. NEW REPERTOIRE Now our design team approaches initiatives where most participants need to learn ways of teaching that are really new to them. When that happens, what kind of design do participants need? Our designers turn to an example of a learning community that realizes that its students are not receiving a top level of instruction in writing. Members of the community find they have much to learn, including: How to assess competence in writing much more precisely than in the past; How to understand the nature of writing and how it develops; How to demonstrate writing showing students aspects of composition; How to develop stimuli to elicit writing from students; and How to help students assess and improve their writing. Learning to demonstrate writing is a key here, and is seriously new repertoire for most teachers (Joyce, Calhoun, Newlove, & Jutras, 2006). As the design team looks at the literature, they will find that really new repertoire needs the following: The in-depth study of rationale of what is to be added to the repertoire. Demonstrations: They need to see many demonstrations. Practice: As they study rationale and observe demonstrations, they need to build lessons together and practice them, alternating demonstrations and practice. Study of student response and learning: As the teachers practice, they learn to examine student behavior what they understand and what they produce by studying student writing samples. The formative study of student learning is extremely important when new practices are implemented. While teaching, teachers observe evidence of learning and then decide if instruction needs to change. Our design team begins to realize that it cannot offer professional development without mastering the content of the innovation. In this case, the team cannot teach others methods for teaching writing without mastering them first. Let s summarize what our team learned during Phase Two of its exploration: The design changes depending on whether the objective is close to familiar repertoire, is somewhat different repertoire, or is significantly new repertoire. For new repertoire, there may be other approaches that will work, but we know that teachers learn through studying rationale, analyzing demonstrations, practicing, and studying student response (Joyce & Calhoun, 2010). The study of student response is immediate and focuses on performance. The design team now knows something about how teachers learn new repertoire. They can judge whether the goal of the professional development involves learning things that fit more or less easily into the current developed repertoire and can adjust the complexity of the professional development process accordingly. A related bit of learning: Our design team learns that the first year of an initiative in professional development is critical. During that first year, if there is a decent level of implementation but minimal effects on teacher repertoire, a decision needs to be made about whether to continue the initiative. The content or design may be weak. Energy for implementation may be weak. In most cases, it should be discontinued, because initiatives that have little effect in the first year usually have no better effects in subsequent years unless the content of the professional development is improved, the design is improved, or the energy for implementation increases. The hopeful belief that it takes several years to see if something works has not proven out in practice. The practical rule is if educators have good content and a good design that will get them good implementation, they will see the effects in year one. If not, they need to go back to the drawing boards and redesign content, process, or the organizational approach to implementation. PHASE THREE: Design in field contexts. Our team needs to work with projects in schools and districts as tem members continue their studies. Sometimes they will be asked to design projects and sometimes asked to see if they can improve existing ones. 50 JSD www.learningforward.org August 2011 Vol. 32 No. 4

Learning Designs AN ENTRY-LEVEL PROJECT One district asks the design team to initiate a better program for assessing competence in reading. The team needs to learn what the district has been using, who administers the tests, who analyzes the results, and what are the findings. The team finds that the district has been trying to use norm-referenced tests to measure growth and that its analysis is very hard to follow. The team recommends that the district learn to use tests of performance and to interpret the results. The design team needs to organize a district assessment team, prepare the assessment team to use the Grey and Gunning procedures as mentioned above (or similar performancemeasuring tools), and shepherd the assessment team through the process of testing, analyzing, and interpreting. The district is then positioned to make an initiative. Note that the design team prepares a cadre. The design team or other consultants can provide professional development to the cadre, but without in-district providers, the district would be dependent on external help. A MORE COMPLEX PROJECT Another district asks the design team to assess its K-2 literacy coach program and see if the design team can improve it. Generally, the K-2 achievement in literacy is modest. As in every case, the design team needs to get a picture of the program design, its administration, professional development that has been provided, and degrees of implementation. The design team needs to obtain opinions by personnel in all roles about the program s impact and success and estimates of the skills possessed by the current coaches (e.g their repertoire). They also need to assess the literacy-teaching repertoire of a sample of the K-2 teachers. The design team soon learns why it was asked in. The team finds that coaches were selected from volunteers whose competence was attested to by the opinion of their principals. These volunteers were then relieved from classroom duties and assigned as coaches in schools other than their own. They were asked to introduce themselves to the principal and the faculty and to begin a process of finding teachers who might want their services. Few did, and the coaches occupied themselves with those friendly faces. The study of repertoire proved to be most telling. Our design team concluded that the coaches and grade 1-2 teachers generally teach reading and writing very similarly. Thus, the coaching program would generally duplicate the teaching processes in schools where many students are not learning to read and write capably. None of the coaches were kindergarten teachers, and they had to study the kindergarten classes to get some idea about what was going on while knowing that they were probably not going to be in a position to help. Our design team decided not to address problems stemming from poor administrative processes, but to recommend to the district that it consider developing a renovated K-2 curriculum, one with a good chance of improving student learning, and then determining the degree that it would require serious new learning by the staff, followed up by designing the professional development to achieve it. Essentially, coaches from failing schools had been sent to other failing schools with a terrible administrative interface but with little to teach. However, experiencing a new and successful curriculum will probably result in a new generation of coaches with much to teach. A YET MORE COMPLEX PROJECT The regional Title I organizers ask our design team to see if the team can improve the Title I reading program. The organizers want the team to concentrate on several schools where they believe student learning is unusually low. Our design team begins by studying student achievement and current instructional practice in the schools starting with 1st grade. They will interview the teachers and principals to try to get their perspective on the school, parents, and the picture of achievement. Because Title I schools have such heavy supplementary funding about $1,100 per qualifying student they need to learn how that money is used. Judging from district tests, the average achievement in one of the schools is awful at the end of the year, 1st-grade scores approximate those normally achieved after three months of school. The design team s second school is similar to the first. It has six 1st-grade classrooms, three with virtually no achievement, three with respectable achievement, a faculty divided between those who think that low socioeconomic status is the major cause of low achievement and those who think that curriculum plays the major role. After just their 1st-grade experience, our design team knows that designing professional development at this stage is not a The practical rule is if educators have good content and a good design that will get them good implementation, they will see the effects in year one. If not, they need to go back to the drawing boards and redesign content, process, or the organizational approach to implementation. worthwhile activity. The Title I organizers need to develop a team of their own to focus on general school improvement. The school cultures have to be changed, learning communities organized, and leadership needs to be renovated seriously. When the district has made progress on these fronts, it can turn to the design team again, if it chooses. This is an optimal time to redo the budget, including providing laptops for all students, interactive boards for all classrooms, and professional development for all teachers. Let s summarize what our team members are learning from their Phase Three field experiences: Continued on p. 69 August 2011 Vol. 32 No. 4 www.learningforward.org JSD 51

Learning Designs Continued from p. 51 In a given setting, planning a new professional development program or revising an ongoing program involves the study of the organization, the states of learning of students, the curriculum and instruction used by the instructors, and the professional social climate of a sample of the schools. A local design team needs to be organized and legitimized by the district officials and needs to include a healthy sample of teachers, principals, and district organizers. DESIGN AND ALTERNATIVE MODELS OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Here we draw directly from our formulation of five models of professional development and underline how our design team might relate to them. Each model can be the design core of a professional development component (Joyce & Calhoun, 2010). Support for individuals: The most common form is stipends and brief leaves for individual teachers. The objective is to enable individuals to create their own learning opportunity. Their judgment determines goals, and their energy and good scouting ability generate the processes. Can our design team organize school district personnel, including policymakers, to build a component around this model? Yes, it can. Personal and professional service models, such as coaching and mentoring programs, have been written about by so many others that we will simply urge our design team to look into them carefully. Collegial study models (usually in the form of professional learning communities) also have a huge literature for our design team to explore. Curriculum implementation models are important because curriculum improvement depends on professional development. Our design team finds that the concept of repertoire and the knowledge about how people learn new repertoire are at the core of those models. DESIGN REQUIRES LEARNING We will not try to summarize this short piece here, but rather to commend the organization for attempting to build standards to guide its constituency. We have read the Hall & Hord (2011) article in this issue on implementation (p. 52), and one of the authors most important points is that implementation requires new learning. That is true of design as well. This may be the most important message from the latest version of the standards. Ron Edmonds fine statement makes the issue clear: We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need to do that. Whether or not we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven t so far (1979). REFERENCES Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Edmonds, R. (1979, October). Effective schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership, 37(1), 15-24. Hall, G. & Hord, S. (2011, August). Learning builds the bridge between research and practice. JSD, 32(4). Harkreader, S. & Weathersby, J. (1998). Staff development and student achievement: Making the connection in Georgia s schools. Atlanta, GA: Council for School Performance, Georgia State University. Hunt, D. & Sullivan, E. (1974). Between psychology and education. Hinsdale, IL: Dryden. Iowa Association of School Boards. (2007). Leadership for student learning. Des Moines, IA: Author. Joyce, B. & Calhoun, E. (2010). Models of professional development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Joyce, B. & Calhoun, E. (in press). Realizing the promise of 21st century education: An owners manual. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Joyce, B., Calhoun, E., Newlove, K., & Jutras, J. (2006, November). Scaling up: The results of a literacy program Curriculum implementation models are important because curriculum improvement depends on professional development. implemented in an entire education authority. A paper delivered to the Asian Pacific Educational Research Association, Hong Kong. McGill-Franzen, A., Allington, R., Yokoi, L., & Brooks, G. (1999, November-December). Putting books in the classroom seems necessary but not sufficient. Journal of Educational Research, 93(2), 67-74. Ross, J. (2011). Online professional development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Bruce R. Joyce (brucejoyce40@gmail.com) taught in the schools of Delaware and was a professor at the University of Delaware, University of Chicago, and Teachers College, Columbia University. His work focuses on models of teaching and professional development. Emily F. Calhoun (efcphoenix@aol.com) focuses on school improvement and professional development in her research, writing, and consulting. Her recent books cover action research, models of teaching, and assessing reading programs. Together they have written Models of Professional Development (2010) and Realizing the Promise of 21st-Century Education (in press). They reside in St. Simons Island, Ga. August 2011 Vol. 32 No. 4 www.learningforward.org JSD 69

NSDC TOOL WHAT A SCHOOL LEADER NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT... E-x-p-a-n-d-i-n-g your vision of B Y J O A N R I C H A R D S O N Learn more about effective staff development designs. Order NSDC s book, Powerful Designs for Professional Learning, edited by Lois Brown Easton. Available at http:// store.nsdc.org If the school board in your district suddenly announced that it would no longer fund half-day inservices in which teachers sat and listened to motivational speakers, what would you do? Leaping for joy might be one response. Suddenly, you could turn your back on staff development that produces no changes in student learning and focus on strategies that would benefit both teachers and students. As you try to move your staff out of its inservice rut and into a mode of powerful professional learning, ask teachers to consider these eight ideas for not-a-workshop professional development: 1. Form action research teams. Madison, Wisc. staff developer Cathy Caro-Bruce begins her action research work with teachers by asking them, What keeps you awake at night? What are you curious about? What question would you like to have answered about your students? In action research, teachers select questions whose answers matter to them and then collect data to uncover an answer. 2. Enlist teachers to shadow students in their school in order to gain perspective on how school looks from the student s vantage point. Lois Brown Easton editor of Powerful Designs for Professional Learning (NSDC, 2004),calls shadowing an eye-opening experience that enables adults to better understand what it is like to be a student in a particular school. Shadowing students often can result in changed plans because the experience injects reality into the proceedings of a committee or a task force, she says. 3. Do regular classroom walk-throughs. These four- to five-minute regular visits to classrooms provide principals with snapshots of classroom environments, learning experiences, and student perspectives, says consultant and author Margery Ginsberg. When several observers do walk-throughs, the principal can quickly gain an overview of what is occurring on a given day. That, in turn, can suggest areas worth celebrating and those that need more attention. 4. Buy journals for each teacher and invite them to begin keeping a journal about their daily work. As Joellen Killion puts it, journaling is the process of thinking in writing. It is a way to construct meaning visibly and to reflect on experiences. If you have requirements for the length and frequency of journaling, make sure teachers know about them in advance. 5. Construct a curriculum map. Ask a team of teachers to create a chart showing how the lessons they teach address each of the curriculum standards and benchmarks for one of their subject areas. Is their instruction logically organized? Are they teaching to the standards identified by your state and your district? Are they teaching lessons that have little to no relationship to the intended goals for that class or course? Curriculum design helps teachers see the connections, find resources, and make multidisciplinary curricula happen in their own classroom, says Linda Fitzharris who has worked extensively with curriculum design teams in the Carolinas. 6. Ask teachers to assemble professional portfolios of examples of work they and their students have produced. Portfolio consultant Mary Dietz says a portfolio can be a notebook with structured journal responses or any container that includes artifacts, work samples, videotapes of a class and any other items that 4 National Staff Development Council I (800) 727-7288 I www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2005 I The Learning Principal

NSDC TOOL professional development illustrate and demonstrate the teacher s learning. She believes discussions that teachers have with their peers about their portfolios help focus and create powerful collegial discussions. 7. Examine student work using a tuning protocol. Teachers voluntarily present products that students have created as the result of assignments and ask their colleagues to follow a structured plan for critiquing the student work as a way of understanding how to improve instruction. 8. Explore the Japanese concept of lesson study in which teachers design, observe, and revise research lessons. In lesson study, teachers work together to form goals for student learning, collaboratively plan a lesson, teach and observe the lesson, discuss evidence collected during the observation and then revise the lesson as needed to make it more effective. Lesson study advocate Catherine Lewis believes lesson study is a way to slow down the act of teaching in order to learn more about students, subject matter and their own teaching. Every one of these strategies could be introduced into any school. Each of them has the power to shift a school s culture so teachers are more involved in their own learning and so their professional learning will benefit student achievement. NSDC members have permission to reproduce this list of options in school or district newsletters or on web sites if they use the following source line: Source: National Staff Development Council, www.nsdc.org. All rights reserved. I F N O T A W O R K S H O P, T H E N W H A T? 1. Conducting action research projects 2. Analyzing teaching cases 3. Attending awareness-level seminars 4. Joining a cadre of inhouse trainers 5. Planning lessons with a teaching colleague 6. Consulting an expert 7. Examining student data 8. Being coached by a peer or an expert 9. Leading a book study 10. Making a field trip to another school or district 11. Writing assessments with a colleague 12. Participating in a study or support group 13. Doing a classroom walk-through 14. Giving presentations at conferences 15. Researching on the Internet 16. Leading a schoolwide committee or project 17. Developing displays, bulletin boards 18.Shadowing students 19. Coaching a colleague 20. Being a mentor being mentored 21. Joining a professional network 22. Using a tuning protocol to examine student work 23. Attending an indepth institute in a content area 24. Writing an article about your work 25. Observing model lessons 26. Reading journals, educational magazines, books 27. Participating in a critical friends group 28. Doing a selfassessment 29. Shadowing another teacher or professional in the field 30. Keeping a reflective log or journal 31. Analyzing the expectations of your statewide assessments 32. Enrolling in a university course 33. Viewing educational videos 34. Maintaining a professional portfolio 35. Studying content standards for your state 36. Observing other teachers teach 37. Listening to video/ audio recordings 38. Participating in a videoconference or conference calls with experts 39. Visiting model schools/programs 40.Developing curriculum 41. Doing school improvement planning 42. Examining new technological resources to supplement lessons 43. Being observed and receiving feedback from another teacher or principal 44. Engaging in lesson study 45. Working on a strategic planning team SEPTEMBER 2005 I The Learning Principal National Staff Development Council I (800) 727-7288 I www.nsdc.org 5

tteachers 3 TEACHING TEACHERS Vol. 4, No. 1 September 2008 F O R A D Y N A M I C C O M M U N I T Y O F T E A C H E R L E A D E R S Tap the power of peers What s inside Lessons from a coach Work on language, assume positive intentions when coaching, says Amber Jones. Page 5 Voice of a teacher leader Bill Ferriter believes that compassionate colleagues can solve the retention problem. Page 6 B y L o i s B r o w n E a s t o n First-year teacher Francine Gillespie waited in the 3rdgrade office for her colleagues. She had brought student work to share a science report she d chosen randomly from her students reports on the galaxy. She couldn t wait for her colleagues feedback and suggestions on the quality of the work and their ideas for her to improve her teaching of this unit. Two miles away, four teachers stood in Bud Collier s room, jotting notes on clipboards as Bud taught a mathematics lesson they had created together. One watched a particular student; another scanned the room every 60 seconds; a third noted the work of a pair of Peer-to-peer professional learning takes a variety of powerful forms students in the back of the room. Later, they would meet for a colloquium. Bud would describe how he had felt teaching the group-created lesson; the others would chime in with the data they had collected. In the high school across from Bud Collier s middle school, Enrique Chama summarized his research for the social studies staff. He described why he chose to research the effect of higher-level questioning. He had documented that students resist venturing outside their comfort zone with analysis and synthesis questions and shared what he had done to make higher- Focus on NSDC s standards To be useful, data need a strenuous workout. Page 7 Research brief Direct instruction in writing helps students learn. Page 9 NSDC tool Assess how your group is implementing NSDC s Context standards. Page 11 ns dc National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org NSDC s purpose: Every educator engages in effective professional learning every day so every student achieves.

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 2 TAP THE POWER OF PEERS CHARACTERISTICS OF POWERFUL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING Powerful professional learning: Begins with what will really help young people learn. It results in application in the classroom. Requires collecting, analyzing, and presenting real data. Because it is about what happens in the classroom, it is content-rich. It may never formally end; as classroom situations change, new questions arise leading to new answers and more new questions. Honors the staff s professionalism, expertise, experiences, and skills. Although they may work alone on some aspects of professional learning, such as Chama s action research project, powerful professional learning is collaborative or has collaborative aspects to it. Faculty are more likely to buy in to professional learning because they understand the need and respond to it by learning and helping each other implement changes. Establishes a culture of quality. The conversation in the hallways, faculty lounge, and meetings changes. Slows the pace of schooling. Each professional learning activity requires reflection, as well as sharing thoughts and ideas. Many educators organize themselves into professional learning communities to ensure that they have regularly scheduled time to continue their own learning, help others learn, and make sense of what s going on in school. order questions a regular feature of class discussions. His data, collected over four months, were impressive, and his colleagues agreed to try variations of his processes in their own classes if he would coach them. These teachers (their names have been changed) were engaged in peer-to-peer professional learning. Gillespie had brought student work to be examined using a tuning protocol at a grade-level meeting. Her colleagues had taken care of other business online beforehand so they could devote this meeting to professional learning. Anyone from Collier s vertical learning community could have taught the lesson he taught; the team had worked on it as part of lesson study which brought together district mathematics teachers from 6th through 10th grades. Chama was sharing the results of an action research project with his professional learning community. Professional learning is the learning that teachers do themselves and with each other. Professional development, although valuable, usually involves outsiders who develop and train people. Professional development is sometimes the best way a faculty can learn something new, and most of us would prefer to be trained in something like lifesaving. The problem is that professional development often is a one-shot situation, and after the speaker or trainer departs or the university course ends, although teachers have the best intentions, they are unable to implement what they learned. They may have no support so that when there are problems, they have no one to turn to. They may find it easier to keep doing what is familiar, despite initial excitement about change. Other professional learning activities In addition to the professional learning activities Gillespie, Collier, and Chama engaged in, consider these: Building assessments or rubrics together; Analyzing and revising curriculum; Conducting focus groups with students to get student voices; Analyzing videotapes of teaching; Participating in a book or article study; Using any of the protocols described by the National School Reform Faculty; A simple three-part definition of professional learning communities is: A group of educators who meet regularly to engage in professional learning... To enhance their own practice as educators... In order to help all students succeed as learners. GET THE POWER Read about 23 successful professional learning strategies in Powerful Designs for Professional Learning. The expanded second edition introduces new chapters on classroom walkthroughs, differentiated coaching, dialogue, and video. Available through store.nsdc.org. National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2008

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 3 TAP THE POWER OF PEERS Developing and analyzing case studies, or using those available online; Analyzing assignments (Standards in Practice); Developing portfolios to share; Keeping journals and discussing key experiences with each other; or Shadowing students (or adults) in one s own or another school. These and other strategies are fully described in Powerful Designs for Professional Learning (NSDC, 2008). How to get started Professional learning starts in many schools by forming professional learning communities. However, unless teachers engage in professional learning, professional learning communities risk becoming just business as usual, rather than a time for professional learning. Beware the statement, Oh, we do professional learning communities in a school that may merely have renamed faculty, grade-level, or department meetings. A simple three-part definition of professional learning communities is: A group of educators who meet regularly to engage in professional learning... To enhance their own practice as educators... In order to help all students succeed as learners. To be a true professional learning community, all three parts must be in place. Professional learning is not a business-as-usual agenda full of items to be decided or announcements to be made. Some characteristics of professional learning communities are variable, however, such as: WHAT THE GROUP CALLS ITSELF The earliest form of a professional learning community was probably a Critical Friends Group. A group can call itself a professional learning community if it is really engaged in all three parts of the definition. THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN THE GROUP Sometimes two or three close colleagues form a professional learning community. Sometimes a whole faculty participates in a single professional learning community. There s no perfect number, except as participants consider air time. In a group of 10 or more, meeting for an hour or so, participants may become frustrated because they do not have time to talk. At the other end of the range, a group of three to four may lack diversity. Go for eight to 10 members and adjust as necessary by adding more groups. HOW LONG THE GROUP MEETS Some professional learning strategies can be accomplished in 30 minutes; some take a few hours or more. Some require weekly meetings; some require monthly meetings. Some are better done when school is in session; others are better done after school or during breaks (with the teachers receiving compensation). The meeting time can vary according to what members want; however, professional learning communities should be scheduled ahead of time so that they have a regular place on the calendar. The best way to get started is to start. Find someone who would also like to engage in professional learning. Decide when and where to meet. Informally share what you re learning. ( Joe and I looked at student portfolios the other day. ) Be sure to share information with the school administrator and ask for time to share formally during a faculty meeting. Gradually invite other teachers to join you or start their own groups. The impetus to start professional learning communities and engage in professional learning can come from teachers themselves or be launched by administrators, preferably with the help of a design team composed of those teachers most interested in participating. Professional learning communities, like most collaborative efforts, are unlikely to survive an executive mandate: You, you, and you be a professional learning community. It s OK to start small with two or three people sharing their professional practice, their students work, and the questions, dilemmas, and problems that inevitably arise. Professional learning can be contagious. When teachers talk about what they are learning, they infect others around them, who (because learning is natural) may then spread learning to their colleagues. START WITH YOURSELF Ask colleagues to help you examine a piece of student work or an aspect of your professional practice; have a peer serve as facilitator and timer for the process. Take an article to a faculty meeting and ask if other faculty members want to form an ad hoc discussion group. Ask colleagues for help writing an assignment. Develop a case study about a student who is bewildering you and ask others to study it with you. National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2008

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 4 Don t let excuses delay professional learning. If you wait until the school culture is perfect and collegial trust is rampant, you will never begin. Professional learning activities themselves often foster trust, and team-building exercises don t mean much unless they happen when people work on real problems using a professional learning strategy such as a tuning protocol. Start with yourself. Ask colleagues to help you examine a piece of student work or an aspect of your professional practice; have a peer serve as facilitator and timer for the process. Or bring an article to a faculty meeting and ask if other faculty members want to form an ad hoc discussion group. Ask colleagues for help writing an assignment. Develop a case study about a student who is bewildering you and ask others to study it with you. Conclusion What Gillespie, Collier, and Chama do in the classroom is better because they have peer support their students reap the benefits of their teachers professional learning. Gillespie, Collier, and Chama also affect the work of colleagues who hear about what they are doing and want to know more. As their colleagues begin their own journeys into professional learning, they begin to affect the learning of their students. Soon the school as a whole is improving. As more schools sponsor professional learning and the mechanism by which teachers learn (the professional learning community or whatever the learning group may call itself), they turn to the districts for support. Districts become professional learning communities, too. Peer-to-peer professional learning, then, is a powerful way to make change in a system that otherwise seems to resist change. References Easton, L.B. (Ed.). (2008). Powerful designs for professional learning, 2nd Ed. Oxford, OH: NSDC. Ginsberg, M. (2004). Context, in Easton, L.B., (Ed.), Powerful Designs for Professional Learning. Oxford, OH: NSDC. TAP THE POWER OF PEERS Don t let excuses delay professional learning. If you wait until the school culture is perfect and collegial trust is rampant, you will never begin. National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2008

Tool 3.5 Chapter 3: Planning School-Based Professional Learning Best practices for professional learning Purpose: To strengthen understanding of best practices for professional learning in order to improve learning plan designs. Time: 30 to 45 minutes. Materials: A copy of handout for each participant. Directions 1. Ask team members to review each of the guiding principles and compare the principals to current school practice. 2. Ask team members to decide whether to work on the chart item-by-item as a team or to work individually and then discuss. 3. Have each participant check the column he or she thinks best matches the school s need. 4. Aggregate and discuss the outcomes. 5. Alternatively, fill in the chart together, discussing during the process. 6. Determine how to adapt items the team decided needed adapting. 7. For each item the team checked as wanting to adopt, work together to write a short statement describing that action in practice. Decide on next steps for moving that item to the in practice column. For example, a team might identify Reflect best available research and practice in teaching, learning, and leadership as an item to adopt. The statement might read, At least once a month, each team member will bring a professional reading to the group for discussion. The reading will focus on current research or best practice in the area of. 8. Periodically repeat the exercise to identify progress. Change, lead, succeed: Building Capacity With School Leadership Teams national Staff Development Council l www.nsdc.org

Tool 3.5 Chapter 3: Planning School-Based Professional Learning Best practices for Professional learning PRINCIPLE Professional learning opportunities: IN PRACTICE ADOPT ADAPT 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Focus on teachers as central to student learning, yet include all other members of the school community. Focus on individual, collegial, and organizational improvement. Respect and nurture the intellectual and leadership capacity of teachers, principals, and others in the school community. Reflect best available research and practice in teaching, learning, and leadership. Enable teachers to develop further experience in subject content, teaching strategies, use of technologies, and other essential elements in teaching to high standards. Promote continuous inquiry and improvement embedded in the school s daily life. Are planned collaboratively by those who will participate in and facilitate that development. Require substantial time and other resources. Are driven by a coherent long-term plan. Are evaluated based on impact on teacher effectiveness and student learning; and this assessment guides subsequent professional development efforts. Source: Adapted from www.nwrel.org/request/june98/articles5.html. Change, lead, succeed: Building Capacity With School Leadership Teams national Staff Development Council l www.nsdc.org

forum/ PARKER McMULLEN Stop hanging fans do the laundry! As a mostly retired educator with a wife who is working harder than ever, it became incumbent upon me to run the household by taking over the normal chores. So one of my new guises became Mr. Laundry. (Superhero titles help maintain my self-image.) For the first year or so, I found this particular activity maddening in its continuous nature. I finally reconciled myself to the concept that laundry isn t something that you get done, but rather is ongoing. The ongoing nature of the laundry process is in direct opposition to many of the activities I had been accustomed to doing around the house in my past life as active breadwinner. For example, now that we live in Arizona, I am quite expert at hanging ceiling fans. I regard this as a very satisfying activity. The parts come out of the carton, and, depending on the complexity of the fan, within minutes or maybe hours, you have a functioning fan and the job is complete. If it is a quality fan and a good installation, this job may never have to be revisited unlike the dreaded laundry and sundry other household activities such as dusting, vacuuming, dishwashing, window cleaning, etc. As a matter of fact, if you step back and look, most of the homemaker s hard work falls into the ongoing, never finished category. This may contribute Parker McMullen to the lack of respect that homemakers have had to endure over the years. They work and work and work, and yet nothing is ever finished. At a recent coaching session involving my work with a local charter school, we began discussing the emerging image of professional development as an ongoing, sustained, job-embedded process. Immediately in my mind s eye, I saw the connection. I blurted out, We ve got to stop hanging fans and start doing laundry. Naturally, everyone looked at me as if I had once again lost my mind. This is not an infrequent occurrence, as anyone who works with me for any length of time knows. My wife says PARKER McMULLEN is a retired educator and consultant. You can contact him at 2723 S. Rincon Drive, Chandler, AZ 85249, (480) 699-0755 (phone and fax), e-mail: pmcmullen1@cox.net. it stems from my unfortunate habit of having the first part of a conversation in my head with myself and then suddenly including everyone else in the middle as if they had been participating all along. The transition the educational community is making in professional development is as simple as the difference between hanging fans and doing the laundry. And the implications of this transition are complex and far-reaching. If one examines the historical model of professional development in education, the one-shot workshop disconnected from all other contexts dominates the scene. Unfortunately, even today in the age of the No Child Left Behind Act, the one-time workshop still may be the prevalent approach to trying to assist teachers, administrators, and other educators in their work to improve student achievement. The analogy to hanging a fan is readily apparent. In fact, many workshop presentations even come in a virtual box. All of us have attended some workshop or another presented by a consultant who has a packaged delivery that plays the same in Des Moines as it does in Berkeley. You just pick up the presenter at the airport and put her or him in front of the recipients. And the underlying assumption of the organizers of these events is that if the presenter does a good install, the job won t have to be revisited for years. We will be done. The recently revised NSDC Standards for Staff Development present a very different view of the complexity and necessity of changing our approach to improving educator practice so that we raise the level of student achievement. And the standards resemble to a great degree the mindset and the process required for doing laundry. Effective professional development is ongoing. Given the rapidly changing nature of our culture, professional development must be never-ending to be truly effective. You know well that as soon as that laundry basket is finally empty, someone is going to throw a pair of jeans and a T-shirt in there. So it is with data-driven, researchbased professional development. As soon as you get a firm handle on things, you ll find something new to consider. Effective professional development is jobembedded. Now I know that students of overdrawn analogies immediately are going to say, What about laundromats? They re not in the house. They re not job-embedded. Neither is graduate school. But, like the homemaker Continued on p. 72 80 JSD WINTER 2006 VOL. 27, NO. 1 WWW.NSDC.ORG NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

forum / PARKER McMULLEN Continued from p. 80 (or Mr. Laundry), doing the laundry is part of the work that goes on in the context of the house, along with paying bills, washing dishes, cleaning, hanging fans, and so on. Effective professional development is sustained over time. It is not done in one-shot workshops, and it is not done using the same method every time. Just like youknow-what. Different temperatures, load sizes, additives. It changes each time. You know the old saw, Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Unfortunately, that has been our approach to changing teaching practices for most of recent history. It s embarrassing that we hadn t noticed its ineffectiveness long ago. Actually, a few people did. It s just taken about 30 years for enough of us to notice the research and do something about it. So those of you engaged in trying to change practice to improve the achievement of students should take note of NSDC s Standards for Staff Development, study the research on personal and organizational change, stop planning one-shot workshops decontextualized from the needs of your students and teachers, and stop pulling folks away from their other work. Stop hanging fans, and start doing the laundry! taking measure / ROBBY CHAMPION Continued from p. 70 Cawelti, G. (2001, Fall). Six districts, one goal of excellence. JSD, 22(4), 31-35. Champion. R. (2000, Summer). Got a minute. Journal of Staff Development 21(3), 57-60. Champion, R. (2002, Winter). Sampling can produce solid findings. Journal of Staff Development, 23(1), 62-63. Deojay, T.R. & Novak, D.S. (2004, Winter). Blended data. JSD, 25(1), 32-36. French, R. (2001, Fall). Great job, do it better. JSD, 22(4), 26-29. Heller, J.I., Daehler, K.R., & Shinohara, M. (2003, Fall). Connecting all the pieces. JSD, 24(4), 36-41. Nevills, P. (2003, Winter). Cruising the cerebral superhighway. JSD, 24(1), 20-23. Norton, J. (2001, Fall). A storybook breakthrough. JSD, 22(4), 22-25. Pardini, P. (2004, Winter). Valley cultivates comprehensive process. JSD, 25(1), 42-45. Reddell, P. (2004, Spring). Coaching can benefit children who have a higher hill to climb. JSD, 25(2), 20-26. Schmoker, M. (2002, Spring). Up and away. JSD, 23(2), 10-13. Sparks, D. (2003, Winter). Change agent. JSD, 24(1), 55-58. STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION (Required by 39 USC 3685) 1. Publication title: JSD 2. Publication number: ISSN 0276-928X 3. Filing date: Nov. 1, 2005 4. Issue frequency: Quarterly 5. Number of issues published annually: Four (4) 6. Annual subscription price: $69.00 7. Complete mailing address of known office of publication: 7 Josephine Drive, Wheelersburg, OH 45694. Contact person: Leslie Miller. Telephone: (513) 523-6029 8. Complete mailing address of headquarters or general business office: 5995 Fairfield Road, #4, Oxford, OH 45056 9. Full name or complete mailing address of publisher, editor, and managing editor: Publisher: National Staff Development Council, 5995 Fairfield Road, #4, Oxford, OH 45056 Editor: Joan Richardson, 1128 Nottingham Road, Grosse Pointe Park, MI 48230 Managing editor: Valerie von Frank, 1995 Cimarron Drive, Okemos, MI 48864 10. Owner: National Staff Development Council, 5995 Fairfield Road, #4, Oxford, OH 45056 11. Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning 1 percent of more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities: None. 12. Tax status: Has not changed during preceding 12 months. 13. Publication title: JSD 14. Issue date for circulation data below: Fall 2005 (Vol. 26, No. 4) 15. Extent and nature of circulation Average number Actual number of of copies each issue copies of single issue during prededing published nearest 12 months to filing date a. Total number of copies 13,000 12,000 b. Paid and/or requested circulation 1. Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors, and counter sales (not mailed) None None 2. Paid or requested mail subscriptions (include advertisers proof copies and exchange copies) 9,200 9,275 c. Total paid and/or requested circulation 9,200 9,275 d. Free distribution by mail 850 700 e. Free distribution outside the mail None None f. Total free distribution 850 700 g. Total distribution 10,050 9,975 h. Copies not distributed 1. Office use, leftovers, spoiled 2,950 2,025 2. Returns from news agents None None i. Total 13,000 12,000 Percent paid and or requested circulation 71% 77% 16. Publication of statement of ownership will be printed in the Winter 2006 issue of this publication. 17. Signature and title of editor, publisher, business manager, or owner. I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on this form may be subject to criminal sanctions (including fines and imprisonment) and/or civil sanctions (including multiple damages and civil penalties). 72 JSD WINTER 2006 VOL. 27, NO. 1 WWW.NSDC.ORG NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

Module 4 WHAT WILL WE DO IN OUR COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS? This resource guide started with the idea that effective professional learning results in changes in teacher practice and improved student learning. One of the clear goals of collaborative learning is building educator knowledge and skills while expecting and supporting classroom implementation of new practices. Collaboration is a crucial component of this learning. Collaborative professional learning can be rewarding and productive as well as informative and enriching. What collaborative professional learning looks like will differ among schools. Size, length of tenure of a staff, culture, leadership, and experience with collaboration are some factors influencing variations. Schools of different sizes will have different opportunities for collaboration. In larger schools, grade-level, department, or course teams may be possible. In smaller schools, cross-grade-level or department teams may make more sense. Size and experience with collaboration will influence the role of the principal and teacher leaders. If staff members have limited experience working collaboratively, the principal may take a more prominent role in structuring teams and building a culture of collaboration. When there are more teams at a school, coordination and communication among teams, often led by the principal, will be more important. The school s goals and student achievement needs, as well as its size, may affect how teams are configured. Teachers may serve on one or more teams: grade-level, content-specific, course-specific, or topic-focused teams. Some teams may be crosslevel or interdisciplinary teams. A 5th-grade teacher may be a member of his grade-level team and the school s literacy vertical team. An algebra teacher at the high school may be a member of the math department team and an algebra team. Both teachers may also serve on their school s team focused on increasing student engagement in the classroom. How teams are formed, how many teams a teacher serves on, and the focus of the teams grows out of the needs of each school and its goals for improving student learning and building strong collaborative culture among professionals. Tool 4.1 is an article that describes collaboration as a critical component of professional learning and illustrates a variety of forms that collaboration can take. 4-4 Rochester City School District MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS

WHAT WILL WE DO IN OUR COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS? Module 4 Collaborative learning and collegial work, whether in small or large schools, can be messy and challenging, yet professionally rewarding and personally satisfying. Team-based learning requires team members to make joint decisions about their common student and professional learning goals, create strategies for working together, and plan how to use their collaborative time. Collaborative time will be used effectively when team members understand that there is a wide range of learning designs they can use to accomplish their goals. The purpose of Module 4 is to provide information about a variety of designs and purposes for collaborative learning. LEARNING TEAM DECISIONS: CYCLE OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT The cycle of continuous improvement describes the numerous decisions required to implement effective collaborative learning (see Figure 4.1). Once the team has been formed, members analyze student learning, teacher, and school data to determine students learning needs. The team develops its professional learning goal, which aligns with student needs and uses the components of a SMART goal: It is specific, measurable, attainable, results-based, and time-bound. A professional learning goal will involve building knowledge, developing skills, examining assumptions and beliefs, putting new skills into practice, and reflecting on results. Next, team members decide how they will learn and work together to attain their goal. Professional development designs are identified. These designs are selected purposefully to help the team accomplish its learning goals. A school might set a goal of increasing student achievement by implementing differentiated instruction to meet the needs of all students. Grade-level or content-based teams might break the goal into four components: 1) learning about the purpose of and strategies for differentiating instruction; 2) developing skills such as diagnosing student needs or design- FIGURE 4.1: CYCLE OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT Analyzing student, teacher, and school data to identify educator learning needs; Identifying specific educator learning goals based on the analysis of data; Improving educator effectiveness by implementing sustained, evidence-based learning strategies; Transferring new instructional strategies into the classroom by engaging in job-embedded coaching and classroom assistance; Assessing professional learning continuously to determine the effectiveness of activities and strategies in achieving identified learning goals; Adjusting teachers efforts and practices based on continuous assessment of student and teacher learning; and Involving external assistance when appropriate to help teachers accomplish their goals. Source: Hirsh, 2009. MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS Rochester City School District 4-5

Module 4 WHAT WILL WE DO IN OUR COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS? ing differentiated lessons for students; 3) implementing those strategies consistently during instruction; and 4) evaluating the effects of their efforts. Each of these elements will most likely require different learning designs. Book study or a distance-learning course might be used to build knowledge, developing lesson plans could be accomplished through lesson study or co-planning lessons with grade-level teams or by participating in a coaching session, and implementation can be supported through co-teaching, coaching, or peer observation. One of the team s decisions is to identify which professional learning design will help all members reach their common goal. Tool 4.2 provides a list of possible professional learning designs that could be used to support a variety of learning goals. In addition, an article is included that provides a rationale for why different designs are needed to accomplish different kinds of professional learning goals. TEAM DECISION: DESIGN Teams should carefully consider when to use various learning designs to ensure that members feel comfortable in the collaborative process and that the learning outcomes are achieved efficiently and effectively. When the staff is new to collaborative professional learning, designs that have greater structure, explicit expectations, and processes for team members offer more personal and professional safety because they are likely to be less intrusive into teachers practice. When a school s culture supports collaboration and teachers are more familiar with collaborative learning processes, they might select designs that require more disclosure, less structure, and a greater focus on classroom practices. In addition to members level of comfort with collaboration, a team s stage of development matters. If a team is in the forming stage, it is better to use more structured designs for professional learning that offer members a greater sense of safety. When a team progresses to the performing stage, members are more likely to choose designs that challenge their beliefs and routine practices. Table 4.1 summarizes the stages of team development and the safety and structure levels recommended for each stage. Safety refers to the level of risk that members might feel. A high level of safety means a need for low levels of risk. Tool 4.3 provides additional information about the stages of group development. It also includes a quick assessment to determine a team s current stage of development. Table 4.2 summarizes the safety and structure levels of the learning designs and protocols included in Module 4. This summary can help teams decide which professional development designs to use to TABLE 4.1: STAGES OF TEAM DEVELOPMENT BY SAFETY AND STRUCTURE LEVEL Stage of development Recommended safety level Recommended structure level Forming High High Storming/Norming High Mid Performing Low Low Source: Killion & Roy, 2009, p. 122. 4-6 Rochester City School District MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS

WHAT WILL WE DO IN OUR COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS? Module 4 TABLE 4.2: PROFESSIONAL LEARNING DESIGNS BY SAFETY AND STRUCTURE LEVEL Designs for professional learning Safety level Structure level Wagon wheel High High 3 levels of text High High Say something protocol High High Author assumptions Mid Mid Tuning protocol Mid High Collaborative assessment conference Mid High Standards in Practice Low Mid Descriptive review Mid Mid Success analysis Low High Peel a standard High Mid Planning Mid Mid Co-teaching Low Low Peer observation Low Low Lesson study Low Mid Action research Low Mid Source: Adapted from Killion & Roy, 2009, p. 123. accomplish their learning goals. Whether or not a team is new to collaborative learning and work, teachers have the majority voice in designing their own learning process. Coaches and principals may offer advice or guidance. Teachers, though, are ultimately responsible for their learning and have the final decision. This also means that each team might create a different goal and use different designs to accomplish its goal. Tables 4.3a and 4.3b describe characteristics of the designs from the module, which can help the learning team make decisions about which designs to use to support their learning. BUILDING COMMUNICATION, CONSISTENCY, COLLABORATION, AND COACHING Because faculty members have worked alongside each other for years and have developed congenial relationships, they may believe team work will be easy. But collaborative professional learning requires a different set of communication and decisionmaking processes. Teams need to identify a common goal and then identify learning designs that will help them attain those goals. The first set of collaborative learning designs included in this tool kit focuses on high-structure, high-safety processes. Tool 4.4 MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS Rochester City School District 4-7

Module 4 WHAT WILL WE DO IN OUR COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS? TABLE 4.3A: PURPOSE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DESIGNS Designs for professional learning Safety level Purpose and characteristics of professional development designs Structure level Builds knowledge Develops skills Supports implementation Particularly helpful in creating a learning community Looks at standards, curriculum, assessments Wagon wheel High High X X 3 levels of text High High X X Say something protocol Author assumptions High High X X Mid Mid X X Tuning protocol Mid High X X Collaborative assessment conference Standards in Practice Mid High X X Low Mid X X X Descriptive review Mid Mid X X Success analysis Low High X Peel a standard High Mid X X X Planning instruction Mid Mid X X X X Co-teaching Low Low X X X X Peer observation Low Low X X X X Lesson study Low Mid X X X X X Action research Low Mid X X X X Coaching Low Low X X Mentoring Low Low X X X Source: Easton, 2008. 4-8 Rochester City School District MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS

WHAT WILL WE DO IN OUR COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS? Module 4 TABLE 4.3B: PURPOSE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DESIGNS Designs for professional learning Focuses on pedagogy and teaching Purpose and characteristics of professional development designs Is particularly reflective Involves looking at student work or students Helpful in problem solving Results in a concrete product Is experiential Involves modeling Wagon wheel 3 levels of text X Say something protocol Author assumptions Tuning protocol X X X Collaborative assessment conference X X Standards in Practice X X X X Descriptive review X X Success analysis X X Peel a standard X X Planning instruction X X Co-teaching X X X X X X Peer observation X X X X X Lesson study X X X X X X Action research X X X X X Coaching X X X X X X Mentoring X X X X X Source: Easton, 2008. MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS Rochester City School District 4-9

Module 4 WHAT WILL WE DO IN OUR COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS? provides an overview of protocols, an agreed-upon set of guidelines for conversations about teaching and learning. Most protocols ensure that everyone has an opportunity to talk and to listen. When teams follow protocol structures, off-task or one-memberdominated For more protocols on conversations are a variety of purposes, less likely to occur. These highly see the National School Reform website: structured conversations are the www.nsrfharmony.org. building blocks for collaborative work and begin processes and routines that help build trust, safety, and risk taking. Tools 4.5 and 4.6 are additional protocols that engage team members in deepening their understanding of text. EXAMINING STUDENT WORK Examining student work helps teachers better understand what individual or groups of students have learned. It can also be used to help a team of teachers calibrate its expectations for student learning for greater consistency classroom to classroom. Teachers can learn a tremendous amount by looking at a teacher s assignment and the student work that resulted from the assignment. Tool 4.7 is a brief article that overviews the process of looking at student work. The process typically involves teachers bringing one or more samples of student work and creating a focus question about that work for the group to discuss. These protocols help teachers make the connection between their instruction, assignments, and student learning results. Tool 4.8 is a success analysis protocol, which helps a team identify successful classroom practices that contribute to student learning. These processes are a starting point for teams with little or no experience working together; they also help build a collaborative culture. Team members can add more complex protocols that call for critical feedback after they are comfortable with one another and with publicly sharing their own and their students work. PLANNING INSTRUCTION One of the primary functions of a learning team is to determine what students are expected to learn at each grade level or within each content area. Many districts and states have developed content standards or have adopted the common core standards to help teachers and curriculum developers understand expected student learning outcomes. Team members review, study, and analyze these content standards along with the district curriculum to identify essential student learning. Tool 4.9 outlines a process for determining the specific content and skills embedded within the standards. With this information and an assessment of students current understanding, teachers can decide what to teach, in what sequence, and to what depth and scope. CO-TEACHING Learning from the experiences within special education, co-teaching has become a new collaborative partnership between general education teachers and specialists from literacy, English language learners, math, and gifted/talented areas, as well as among peers. Co-teachers can provide short minilessons for small groups of students or can serve as instructional 4-10 Rochester City School District MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS

WHAT WILL WE DO IN OUR COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS? Module 4 partners during whole-class instruction. Co-teachers can also modify or adapt lesson materials, scaffold assignments, develop alternative assessments, and support and remediate student learning by differentiating instruction for students with varied learning needs. Co-teachers provide side-by-side coaching, tap into individual expertise to benefit all students, and work in partnership with the classroom teacher. Tool 4.10 describes co-teaching strategies with English language learner specialists. It identifies five co-teaching models that can be adapted to create a collaborative partnership between classroom teachers and specialists. PEER OBSERVATION Many teachers feel that one of the disadvantages of more traditional professional development is that it focuses primarily on building knowledge of new practices. What many teachers want is to see what new instructional strategies actually look like in operation with students. They want to see how the strategies are set up, how other teachers integrate new practices, and how to prevent some of the potential pitfalls. Peer or collegial observation is a collaborative professional learning design that helps colleagues understand how to translate knowledge into practice. Peer observation is not for remediation but rather for practical experience. It is focused on specific aspects of instruction. It is confidential, it includes an agreement to be observed, and it involves reflection. When done effectively, it can be a powerful collaborative strategy among team members, between grade-level or content-area teachers, or within a whole school. Tool 4.11 is an article that describes the components of peer observation and includes a tool for planning the focus of an observation. Tool 4.12 provides a sample invitation, a preliminary plan, debriefing questions, and potential focus areas for peer visits. Tool 4.13 describes peer learning labs, another way to incorporate peer observation and assistance into a school s professional learning. LESSON STUDY Lesson study is another powerful design for collaborative learning. In lesson study, teachers collaboratively design a lesson, observe one team member teaching that lesson, debrief, revise the lesson based on their observations, and repeat the cycle. Lesson study makes public the work teachers do each day in isolation. Through the lesson-study process, teachers develop a deeper understanding of content and pedagogy. They gain new understanding about how students learn and about how their instructional decisions influence student success. Lesson study helps teachers learn not only what to improve but how to improve. Tool 4.14 provides a useful resource to help teachers conduct lesson study. During the observed teaching and revising phases of lesson study, members of a lesson-study team depend on a high level of safety among team members to work openly with a focus on student learning. Through the process, they develop a new appreciation for the complex decisions involved in lesson planning and instruction. ACTION RESEARCH Learning from the results of actual classroom practice is the goal of action research. Action research involves teachers designing and conducting a systematic research study of their work in their own classrooms and schools. Action research can be car- MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS Rochester City School District 4-11

Module 4 WHAT WILL WE DO IN OUR COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS? ried out by individuals but is an especially powerful strategy for a collaborative team. The process begins with identifying a research question that interests or perplexes a team. A team of teachers might want to know if its differentiated instruction is actually resulting in higher levels of student learning or whether a positive classroom relationship with the teacher results in higher levels of learning for underperforming students. Then the group decides what classroom data to collect, analyzes the data, and makes decisions about the implication of the results for members practice. Teachers who have participated in action research report how the process has energized their work and built positive professional relationships with other teachers. Tool 4.15 outlines the action research process and provides tools for conducting action research in the classroom. SUPPORTING IMPLEMENTATION Supporting implementation of new practices is an essential component of effective professional learning. We cannot merely expect staff to use new practices once they have learned about them. There must be active and intentional support for teachers as they learn to use new practices in the classroom. One of the most powerful strategies for supporting implementation is to provide classroom coaching. Research has shown that when teachers work in collaborative teams, they are just as effective as external experts in supporting each other s implementation. Follow-up to professional learning is another kind of support. Follow-up can take many forms and includes conversations that help bridge the knowingdoing gap. Tool 4.16 describes the importance of follow-up, as well as some tools that can provide assistance to teachers as they transfer knowledge into classroom practice. Tool 4.17 provides a rationale for follow-up and provides ideas for a variety of follow-up strategies. Teachers who have committed to work in communities of learners report that getting started requires an investment of time and effort, but the rewards are significant. They say that their work is more satisfying, that they save time because they are sharing responsibilities with peers, that their work is more focused, and that they would not return to the way they previously worked on their own. Schools in which teachers work in collaborative teams make steady progress toward improvement goals, have clear focus, share goals, and produce results for their students in new ways. This approach to professional learning and working is worthy of their time and effort. REFERENCES Easton, L. (2008). Powerful designs for professional learning (2nd ed.). Oxford, OH: NSDC. Hirsh, S. (2009). Ensuring great teaching for every student. Policy Points, 1(2), 1-4. Killion, J. & Roy, P. (2009). Becoming a learning school. Oxford, OH: NSDC. 4-12 Rochester City School District MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS

WHAT WILL WE DO IN OUR COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS? Module 4 Reflections 1. What assumptions do school administrators and teachers have about teachers ability to choose their own designs for professional learning? 2. Of the designs described in this chapter, which are the most appropriate for accomplishing our team s learning goals? Which are inappropriate? Explain why. 3. What are our predictions about how staff members will respond to the expectation for and support of the implementation of new professional practices? What conditions, policies, or practices already exist that will support implementation? What conditions, policies, or practices exist that will make support for implementation difficult? 4. What are our biggest hopes and primary fears concerning implementing collaborative professional learning at our school? 5. Of the designs described in this chapter, which are the most appropriate for accomplishing our team s learning goals? Which are inappropriate? Which might we not be ready to use yet? Explain why. MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS Rochester City School District 4-13

Tools FOR SCHOOLS Vol. 12, No. 3 February/March 2009 FOR A DYNAMIC COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS AND LEADERS Protocols: A facilitator s best friend WHAT S INSIDE Wagon Wheel Examine a text with different partners to generate ideas for your next steps. Page 4 Three Levels of Text Go deeper into your understanding by homing in on key sentences, phrases, and words. Page 5 By Lois Brown Easton Protocol. Hearing the word makes some people think of formal dinners or White House etiquette. Others might think of the Kyoto Protocol and treaties among countries. For scientists, the term describes an exact procedure, for physicians, a practice they follow. In the field of education, protocols are simply an agreed upon set of guidelines for conversation. They are a code of behavior, a modus operandi, for groups to use when exploring ideas. Educating students for a complex world requires powerful professional learning, such as action research, lesson study, and tuning protocols (Easton, 2008), that helps educators reach the next level of excellence in their practice. Used within collaborative groups, protocols can help educators change the culture of school so that all adults and students improve their learning. Challenging conversations The National School Reform Faculty (NSRF), whose members developed, refined, and share many of the protocols in use today, says that the structure of a protocol permits a certain kind of conversation... which people are not in the habit of having (www.nsrfharmony.org). By following accepted parameters for conversation, group members can have very focused conversations. Protocols help educators look at student work, artifacts of educator practice, texts relating to education, or problems and issues that surface during educators day-to-day lives. The result of using protocols to structure the dialogue within these parameters is an increased and shared understanding among group members that can lead to deeper understanding and action. Protocols also may push people into places they Continued on p. 2 Success Analysis Protocol Develop and share your ideas for highly effective professional learning that is based on research. Pages 6-7 National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org NSDC s purpose: Every educator engages in effective professional learning every day so every student achieves.

COVER STORY Protocols: A facilitator s best friend For a complete copy of the report Professional Learning in the Learning Profession: A Status Report on Teacher Development in the U.S. and Abroad, see www.nsdc.org/ stateproflearning. cfm. Continued from p. 1 have avoided: real issues that, resolved, can make the difference between a school that succeeds and a school that fails the students it serves. The newly released Professional Learning in the Learning Profession: A Status Report on Teacher Professional Development in the U.S. and Abroad, by Linda Darling-Hammond and a team of researchers at Stanford University s Educational Leadership Institute, says that teachers need in-depth, sustained, coherent, high-quality professional development to be able to address the daily challenges of teaching and improve student learning. The study points out that teachers in nations whose students consistently outperform the U.S. on international standardized exams routinely engage in professional learning that requires them to collaborate to create and review lessons together, observe one another teaching, offer each other feedback, and assist in selecting and developing curriculum and assessments. The study from the Stanford team is the first phase of NSDC s Multiyear Study of the State of Professional Learning in the U.S., supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the MetLife Foundation, and The Wallace Foundation. The study s purpose is to challenge educators to find ways to improve their professional learning. Protocols can be tools that allow educators to do just that. Out of the cave Protocols can help bring teachers out of isolation. Accustomed to their side-by-side caves, many fear exposing to peers their classroom practices by sharing strategies and student work. Protocols help such educators feel enlightened by providing the structures and support for difficult conversations. Most protocols are facilitated in some way, either by an outsider or a group member. Group members also may share facilitator responsibilities. The facilitator often structures the conversation so that discussion deepens as participants take turns listening and speaking. Effective protocols call upon participants NSDC s Belief Sustainable learning cultures require skillful leadership. to agree to a set of common assumptions. For example, some groups might agree that: We all want to get better in the work we do as educators. We all want to be kind and courteous, and to accomplish this, we also need to be thoughtful, insightful, and provocative. We need to remember that we are in this together. Although we may be focusing on one teacher s work, what we are doing will reach far beyond that one classroom and the work that teacher is sharing. We are exploring our work as educators, and the outcome will be improved learning for all of us and our students. These assumptions lead to specific behaviors participants agree on so that members do not feel attacked and the conversation is substantive and provocative without being hurtful to any individual. Protocols allow groups to have a professional conversation, one that might go awry if allowed to proceed either through inconsequential meanderings (Aunt Felicity used to do that very thing when she was a teacher was that in Ohio or Iowa? What a character she was!) or unfocused battles where one person s comment is met by another s objection. What ensues is a verbal pro and con, attack and counterattack, argument and counterargument. No one else can get a word in nor, after awhile, do they want to. The conversation literally derails, with wreckage everywhere, particularly the ideas of those who never got to speak. Deep understanding seldom occurs when a conversation turns into a wreck. Some educators may prefer professional development in the form of show n tell sharing, make n takes for their next class activity, or speakers with thrilling ideas that may not ever make it to practice. Protocols are effective tools for deepening the conversation so more meaningful professional learning can occur, resulting in changes in practice so that all students learn. As the study by the Stanford team tells us, meaningful collaboration among teachers is the key to higher student achievement. Protocols give form to educator collaboration. n 2 National Staff Development Council l 800-727-7288 l www.nsdc.org February/march 2009 l Tools For Schools

COVER STORY Learn more about NSDC s purpose at www.nsdc. org/connect/ NSDCpurpose. cfm and NSDC s Standards for Staff Some basics of protocols Development at www.nsdc.org/ standards/index. Who: Job-alike groups (grade levels, for example) or mixed-job groups (cross-disciplinary groups) can engage in protocols, as can administrators when on equal footing with other participants. Groups can meet regularly, such as in professional learning communities, or form just for a protocol. Groups need a facilitator in early stages; mature groups can facilitate themselves. What: The protocols in this issue help groups look at a text, such as Professional Learning in the Learning Profession: A Status Report on Teacher Development in the U.S. and Abroad. They also may be used to examine student work and educators practices or to understand problems or issues. When and where: Most protocols require about an hour. Protocols, like other forms of powerful professional learning, are best when school-based, but can also bring together teachers from throughout a district or across districts. Why: Protocols can help individuals calibrate notions of quality, learn new strategies for teaching, become better learners themselves, and plan and revise the work they do. Protocols can help schools focus on excellence, address issues and problems, and improve both the daily work of learning and long-term work related to vision and mission. How: Consider time already set aside for professional learning or meetings, such as faculty, grade-level, or department meetings. Use other means to convey information about traditional business items. Use protocols for learning during district-allotted professional development days, or shorten or extend the school day for professional development time. The study revealed that teachers in high-performing countries have regular time each day for such collaboration. To begin: As with most innovations, start small. Start with people who are early adopters, the ones who are like scouts for a wagon train, forging new trails. Invite them to read the study, for example, and to react to it using one of the protocols in this newsletter. Provide or ask someone to provide refreshments. Let others know what you are doing, and ask for time to share what your group is learning. cfm. Use NSDC tools to help you advance the quality of professional development in your school. NSDC s web site (www.nsdc.org) provides additional information and resources for highquality professional development. february/march 2009 l Tools For Schools National Staff Development Council l 800-727-7288 l www.nsdc.org 3

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2001 INSIDE Tools For SchoolsTM A bi-monthly publication supporting student and staff learning through school improvement NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL www.nsdc.org 3 Tuning Protocol 4 Collaborative Assessment Conference 5 Standards in Practice 6 Descriptive Review 7 Resources 8 Ask Dr. Developer Select a strategy for examining student work. As various organizations have become interested in the strategy of examining student work, different protocols have been developed to guide that work. A protocol is simply a structure and guide for a group s conversation regarding a piece of student work. The protocols are designed to provide a safe place for teachers to share their students work while also encouraging an honest exchange among participants. Every protocol has been designed to emphasize a different aspect of evaluation. Some, like the Collaborative Assessment Conference, emphasize describing the student work. Others, like the Coalition of Essential Schools Tuning Protocol, em- Examining student work has always been part of a teacher s job. But, in recent years, that practice has moved from being a solitary activity to being a more collaborative effort in which teachers learn about their practice by sharing with and listening to colleagues. In the hierarchy of professional development practices, examining student work would rank near the top because of the way that teachers work together to sharpen their practice to improve student learning. Group Wise Strategies for examining student work together By Joan Richardson phasize evaluative feedback from participants. Selecting a design that fits the culture of a school is a crucial factor in successfully using that design. The tools on Pages 3, 4, 5, and 6 provide various options for examining student work. School teams may want to practice several options before identifying one that best fits their school. Schools may also discover that one strategy works best for one team while another team prefers a different strategy. To learn more about practical options, visit the Learning About Student Work web site maintained by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform (www.lasw.org). That web site includes a synopsis of about a dozen strategies for examining stu- Continued on Page 2

Tools For Schools NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL Strategies for examining student work together Continued from Page One dent work and links to learn more about each of them. Opt for anonymity. To introduce the process and to help teachers become comfortable with the concept, consider doing one or two practice sessions. Bring in student work that does not belong to any of the participants. Visit the Learning about Student Work web site (www.lasw.org) and look for samples of student work that could be used for this practice session. Or, tap colleagues at another school for samples of student work. Teachers are often quite shy about bringing their own student work to the table. They feel very apologetic. They feel that others might castigate them for the errors, for work that s not perfectly done, said Lois Easton, director of professional development at the Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center in Estes Park, Colo. Easton does extensive work with tuning protocols developed by the Coalition of Essential schools. Practicing on student work in which they have no investment can help teachers feel more comfortable about the conversations they might hear regarding the work of their students. Select a project, task, or assessment that addresses one of the schoolwide goals for student performance. The task should require that students produce something that demonstrates what they have learned. This could be a longterm project or a short-term task. Whatever the final result, the student product or performance should be something significant, not a worksheet, quiz, or test. Geneva City Schools in Geneva, N.Y., wanted students to do more writing in math as a way to improve their ability to explain how they solved math problems. So teachers assembled by grade February/March 2001 level to study students math journals, said Jody Hoch, now director of mathematics for the Rush-Henrietta Central School District in upstate New York. Collect documents that will help the study group participants understand the project or task. These might include the initial assignment, scoring/grading criteria (or rubrics), objectives of the assignments, exemplars, models, timelines, checklists, etc. Think about other key information participants will need to understand the project or task and that can be shared succinctly. The presenting teacher should be prepared to briefly describe the context of the student work. The documents listed above would be used to illustrate his or her points during that presentation. Select samples of student work that demonstrate authentic student responses to the project or task. Choose two or three samples to provide contrast. Teachers often find that a sample of work that shows promise but is not a stellar response to the assignment provides the best basis for feedback. Work selected may include final products, drafts, reflections, etc. The Annenberg Institute for School Reform suggests a variety of ways to select student work samples: n Written work (or artwork) from several students in response to the same assignment. n Several pieces of work from one student in response to different assignments. n One piece of work from a student who completed the assignment successfully and one piece from a student who was not able to complete the assignment successfully (same assignment for both). n Work done by students working in groups (include work of at least two groups that were given the same assignment). n Videotape, audio tape, and/or photographs of students working, performing, or presenting their work. This might be PAGE 2 particularly useful for very young children who haven t yet acquired adequate written communication skills. Watch the details. If possible, remove student names from the samples. Make enough copies of the student work so that each participant has his or her own copy. Ensure that the facilitator knows in advance about any unique types of student work, such as sculpture or an entire portfolio of work, that are not easily duplicated. That will enable the facilitator to adapt the format accordingly. If the student work is a video, a fiveminute clip is usually sufficient to demonstrate the work. Prepare a focusing question. The presenting teacher should prepare a focusing question about the work that addresses a real interest or concern. Questions typically focus on either inputs (the assignment, teacher s support of student performance) or outputs (quality of student work, teacher s assessment of the work). A broader question may elicit a wide range of feedback and this may be desirable. For example: How can I support higher quality presentations? (input) What are the strengths and weaknesses you see in the student presentations? (output) A narrower question might provide the kinds of feedback the teacher finds most useful. For example: How can my prompt bring out more creativity in the students work? (input) What evidence is there in the student work of mathematical problem solving? (output) Remember, even with a narrower focus question, participants will offer a range of feedback on and off the question. See the February 2001 issue of Results to read about the use of tuning protocols, one strategy for examining student work.

NSDC TOOL Success Analysis Protocol Purpose: To examine professional practice to gain an understanding of the reasons behind successes related to professional learning and then to examine these successes with the research report, Professional Learning in the Learning Profession: A Status Report on Teacher Development in the U.S. and Abroad to improve and apply strategies to future work. Time: 2 hours to 4 hours, depending on number of participants. Materials: Chart paper; markers; tape; notepads; pens or pencils; the study, available at www.nsdc.org/ stateproflearning.cfm. Preparation (15 minutes) Share with participants a definition of success: a process that was highly effective in achieving its intended outcome. Ask each participant to prepare a case by reflecting on something he or she has done right. The case should specify the facts of what the participant did as well as reflection about what might have contributed to the success. Directions 1. Divide into groups (about 5 minutes) Divide into equal groups of three to four (or more in each group if there is time, as each person will present in the group). Groups can be self-selected, randomly assigned through numbering, job-alike, or purposefully diverse. 2. Sharing (about 5 minutes) One participant in each group agrees to go first, sharing his or her case orally as well as in writing (if available). Other participants are silent and take notes. 3. Clarifying questions (about 5 minutes) Others in the small group ask clarifying questions to understand the case being presented. Clarifying questions are those that can be answered by facts. 4. Analysis and discussion (about 10 minutes) The presenter of the case listens and takes notes as the others discuss the case, surfacing their insights about why the practice was successful. Participants discuss what the presenter did to make the situation successful, as well as other contributing factors. They may want to describe how what was done is different from typical practice. 5. Reflection (about 10 minutes) The presenter reflects aloud on what colleagues said to pinpoint reasons the practice was successful. Other group members silently take notes. Before going on to the next case, participants should take a moment to appreciate the success of the presenter. Continued on p. 7 6 National Staff Development Council l 800-727-7288 l www.nsdc.org February/march 2009 l Tools For Schools

NSDC TOOL Success Analysis Protocol, continued from p. 6 6. Continued rounds (each round is about 30 minutes) In each group, the next participant shares a case. The group follows the above sequence of steps and continues until each group member has presented a case. 7. Compilation (about 5 minutes) Each group writes the factors that contributed to success on a piece of chart paper. Small groups do a gallery tour of the pieces of chart paper, noticing what s similar and what s distinctive about each small group s list of factors in success. 8. Discussion (about 10 minutes) The large group discusses common factors and unusual factors in the success cases. They also may discuss aspects of the cases that surprised them. They might discuss elements that undergird the factors of success, such as the school culture, an administrator s philosophy, or a teacher s leadership. 9. Review (30 minutes) Read the shorter version of the report and consider which successful traits are supported by the research. 10. Response (15 minutes) Consider: ᎲᎲ How were our successes like the findings in the study? ᎲᎲ How were they different? ᎲᎲ What did we learn from the study about the kind of professional learning we experience in relationship to what others experience in the U.S and beyond? 11. Debriefing (about 5 minutes) The facilitator invites participants to reflect on the utility of the process and continue their discussion of the content. Source: Adapted from Daniel Baron of the National School Reform Faculty, with credit to Vivian Johnson.

TOOL 4.9 Module 4 WHAT WILL WE DO IN OUR COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS? peeling a standard Peeling a Standard helps teachers better understand how the core curriculum content standards and the cumulative progress indicators are used to make instructional and assessment decisions. Teachers can identify essential learnings (content and skills) for their own level by examining the strands within the core curriculum content standards and the cumulative progress indicators for each strand for the grade levels below and above their current grade level. When teachers know what students are expected to know and be able to do in order to demonstrate cumulative progress indicators, they can focus instruction and assessment on essential learnings. For example, in this example, a team of 3rd-grade teachers addressing Standard 6.6 studies the 2ndand the 4th-grade cumulative progress indicators for that standard to identify prior and future student learning. With this knowledge, they can identify key learnings to include in their 3rd-grade curriculum to ensure that students are able to demonstrate the 4th-grade cumulative progress indicators by the end of 4th grade. Grade level: 3rd Content: GeoGrAPhY STAnDArD 6.6 (Geography) all students will apply knowledge of spatial relationships and other geographic skills to understand human behavior in relation to the physical and cultural environment. Descriptive statement: The study of geography is based on the principle that thinking in and understanding spatial terms will enable students to understand the many relationships of place, people, and environments. By taking an active, questioning approach to the world around them, students learn to devise their own mental world-view. As students engage in critical thinking to interpret patterns in the evolution of significant historic events and the movement of human populations on the Earth s surface, their understanding of geography, history, economics, and civics deepens. Furthermore, the use of geographic tools and technology assists students in understanding the reasons for, and the economic, political, and social consequences of, human impact on the environment in different areas of the world. Source: Collaborative professional learning in school and beyond: A tool kit for New Jersey educators, by Joellen Killion. oxford, oh: new Jersey Department of education and nsdc, 2006. MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS Rochester City School District

TOOL 4.9 Module 4 WHAT WILL WE DO IN OUR COLLABORATIVE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS? Strands A World in spatial terms B places and regions C physical systems D human systems E environment and society 2nd grade cumulative progress indicators 1. explain the spatial concepts of location, distance, and direction, including: The location of school, home, neighborhood, community, state, and country; The relative location of the community and places within it; The location of continents and oceans; 2. explain that the globe is a model of the earth and maps are representations of local and distant places; 3. Demonstrate basic globe and map skills. 1. Describe the physical features of places and regions on a simple scale. 2. Describe the physical and human characteristics of places. 1. recognize that the relationship of the earth to the sun affects weather conditions, climate, and seasons. 1. identify the types of transportation used to move goods and people. 2. identify the modes of communication used to transmit ideas. 1. Describe the role of resources such as air, land, water, and plants in everyday life. 2. Describe the impact of weather on everyday life. 3. Act on small-scale, personalized environmental issues such as littering and recycling, and explain why such actions are important. 4th grade cumulative progress indicators 1. Use physical and political maps to identify locations and spatial relationships of places within local and nearby communities. 2. Describe and demonstrate different ways to measure distance (e.g. miles, kilometers, time). 3. estimate distances between two places on a map using a scale of miles. 4. identify the major cities of the state, the United States, and the world. 5. identify the major countries, continents, bodies of water, and mountain ranges of the world. 6. Locate time zones, latitude, longitude, and the global grid. 1. identify the physical and human characteristics of places and regions in the state and the United States (e.g. landforms, climate, vegetation, housing). 2. explain changes in places and regions over time and the consequences of those changes. 3. Describe the geography of the state. 4. Discuss factors involved in the development of cities (e.g. transportation, food, marketplace, religion, military protection). 1. Describe the basic components of the earth s physical systems, including landforms, water, erosion, weather, and climate and discuss their impact on human development. 1. Describe the development of transportation and communication networks in the state and the United States. 2. identify the distribution and characteristics of populations for different regions of the state and the United States. 1. Differentiate between living and nonliving natural resources. 2. explain the nature, characteristics, and distribution of renewable and nonrenewable resources. Source: Collaborative professional learning in school and beyond: A tool kit for New Jersey educators, by Joellen Killion. oxford, oh: new Jersey Department of education and nsdc, 2006. 3rd grade essential learnings (content and skills) MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS Rochester City School District

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 6 FOCUS ON NSDC S STANDARDS Keep an eye on the finish line Professional learning has as its major focus improving teaching and student learning. To ensure that learning for adults translates into learning for students, learning facilitators think about how the learning processes teachers experience mirror the learning processes these same teachers want for students. Researchers have noted that teachers tend to teach as they were taught, and recognizing this, those responsible for professional learning think not only about what they want teachers to know, but also about what they want teachers to do with what they learn. Simply put, modeling strong learning processes in professional development increases the likelihood that teachers will use what they learn in their own classrooms. Employing the best design strategy for professional development means that learning facilitators think about the outcomes of the learning experience and match the strategy to the outcome. The outcomes of learning fall into five categories (KASAB). See box at right. Each type of outcome requires a different way of learning. Learning about something doesn t automatically translate into knowing how to use the knowledge. It is possible to know about something, believe in its value, know how to use it, and not have the desire to use it, and consequently choose not to use it. Depending on the type of outcome, the learning facilitator selects the best strategy for achieving that outcome. Unfortunately, many learning experiences for adults are designed for knowledge and skill when the intended outcome is really behavior. DESIGN Staff development that improves the learning of all students uses learning strategies appropriate to the intended goal. This mismatch often means that learners will not use what they learned, and professional development will be unsuccessful. The last two decades of federally funded math and science initiatives have modeled the design standard. To deepen teacher content knowledge in math and science and expand their pedagogical skills, universities and school systems have partnered, supported by federal grants, to provide professional development for teachers. In these learning experiences, teachers first are students of mathematics or science, experiencing carefully planned and executed professional learning experiences that not only help teachers learn what they don t know about math and science, but also modeling the same kind of instructional strategies that the professional development providers hope teachers will use once they return to their classrooms. These learn- Learning outcomes KNOWLEDGE ing experiences are built on the premise ATTITUDE that once they experience it, teachers are SKILL more likely to understand the learning ASPIRATION BEHAVIOR process, feel comfortable with it, and be ready to implement it in their own classrooms. The design standard, too, serves as the foundation for this prac- Description Joellen Killion is deputy executive director of National Staff Development Council. Factual information, principles, concepts Belief in the value of something Ability to do something; know how to do it Desire or willingness; motivation Using the learning regularly in practice Killion, J. (2002). Assessing Impact: Evaluating Staff Development. Oxford, OH: National Staff Development Council. National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org OCTOBER 2007

tteachers 3 TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 7 FOCUS ON NSDC S STANDARDS SCENARIO A Teachers arrive at a designated location where all teachers from one grade level are scheduled to meet for the day. They have been promised continental breakfast and box lunches and six hours of professional development credit for the day. The outcome of the day is to familiarize teachers with the curriculum, help them know how to use it, and to teach the new inquiry-based instructional methodology the curriculum is based on. The science coordinators spend most of the six hours lecturing about how the curriculum was developed and explaining that it is based on both state and national science standards, show scope and sequence charts of the key strands in the curriculum, explain the pacing guides, and share common benchmark assessments that teachers will use to assess students in science. They learn how the benchmark assessment will be given on a set schedule, how the score will be turned into the principal at each school, and how those scores will be sent to the district office for analysis of how well each school is implementing the curriculum. The coordinators talk about the difference between inquiry and direct instruction and cite the benefits and challenges of both approaches. They show a videotape of an inquiry-based science lesson based on the curriculum and ask teachers if they have questions. Teachers make several comments about the added work and the challenge of each approach. At the end of the day, teachers receive their curriculum guides and are told to call the science coordinators assigned to their school if they have additional questions. tice. Essentially it says that how professional learning occurs impacts both the perceived value and implementation of the learning. Two examples (see boxes on this page) will help clarify this point. In each scenario, the district is implementing a new science curriculum. In the fall orientation period before school starts, all teachers attend SCENARIO B Teachers meet regionally in classrooms. As they arrive, they receive their curriculum guides, learn where and what typical science classroom equipment is in their learning room, and are grouped into grade-level teams of four. Each team is instructed to learn how the curriculum guide is organized using a set of questions appropriate to each team. After 20 minutes of exploration, the science coordinator highlights a few key points about the guide and answers questions. In their grade-level teams of four, teachers next task is to prepare a 25-minute lesson using the curriculum guide. They are asked to make sure their lesson incorporates a few key principles high student engagement, hands-on, and discovery vs. telling. Teams are encouraged to spend a few minutes clarifying what these terms mean to them and are pointed to several resources in the curriculum guide that might be helpful. They learn that they will present their lesson to another team. The teams have 75 minutes for preparation. After a short break, each team is paired with another team to observe each other s lesson. As one team becomes the students, and a member of the other team teaches the lesson, the three remaining members take notes on how students respond in the lesson. The process is repeated when the other team steps into the teacher and observer role. Teams share feedback with each other using the rubric for an age-appropriate inquiry lesson included in the curriculum guide. Next, teachers in their teams map out the first month of science lessons, what resources and questions they have, how to use the curriculum guide, and what equipment, materials, or other resources they are likely to need. They wrap up the day talking about how this approach to teaching science is both the same and different than what they did before, what they anticipate the benefits will be for students, and what they want students to gain from their learning. For more information about NSDC s Standards for Staff Development, see www.nsdc.org/ standards/ index.cfm National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org OCTOBER 2007

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 8 a one-day workshop provided by the district s science curriculum team. The outcome of the day is to familiarize teachers with the curriculum, help them know how to use it, and to foster teachers use of the new inquiry-based instructional methodology on which the curriculum is based. The approaches to professional learning differ. How the learning is structured and what learning strategies for adults are integrated into their learning experiences is likely to impact both teachers depth of understanding of the new science curriculum, how to use it, and their willingness to use it. However, the learning does not stop after this day. Savvy learning facilitators meet frequently with teachers in teams to talk about challenges, problems, successes, and to look at student work resulting from the lessons. Facilitators may offer to co-teach or conduct demonstration lessons for teachers. They may help teachers find the equipment they need for a particular inquiry lesson. They are likely to help teachers analyze the results of common assessments to determine how to address those students who missed key concepts or skills. Lois Easton, editor of Powerful Designs for Professional Learning (NSDC, 2004) recognizes that aligning the appropriate learning strategy for adults with the intended outcomes is essential to maximize the potential of professional learning. She provides a rich resource for learning facilitators in Powerful Designs. In it, she describes how to choose learning designs and gathers together chapters from experts in the field who share detailed information on how to use 21 different learning designs. This is an essential resource for those who facilitate learning for adults in schools or districts. When learning facilitators know clearly their intended goals and use learning strategies that align with those goals, both adults and students benefit. See pp. 11-17 to learn more about the designs featured in Powerful Designs for Professional Learning. Teachers Teaching Teachers (T3) is published eight times a year by the National Staff Development Council, 5995 Fairfield Road, #4, Oxford, OH 45056. Copyright, NSDC, 2007. All rights reserved. MAIN BUSINESS OFFICE 5995 Fairfield Road, #4 Oxford OH 45056 513-523-6029 800-727-7288 Fax: 513-523-0638 (fax) NSDCoffice@nsdc.org www.nsdc.org Editor: Joan Richardson Designer: Kitty Black NSDC STAFF Executive director Stephanie Hirsh stephanie.hirsh@nsdc.org Deputy executive director Joellen Killion joellen.killion@nsdc.org Director of business services Leslie Miller leslie.miller@nsdc.org Director of communications Joan Richardson joan.richardson@nsdc.org Director of learning Cathy Owens cathy.owens@nsdc.org Distinguished senior fellow Hayes Mizell hmizell@gmail.com Emeritus executive director Dennis Sparks dennis.sparks@comcast.net BOARD OF TRUSTEES Sue McAdamis (2008) President mcadamissue@rockwood.k12.mo.us Sydnee Dickson (2008) sydnee.dickson@schools.utah.gov Karen Dyer (2009) President-elect dyerk@leaders.ccl.org Maria Goodloe-Johnson (2009) maria.goodloejohnson@seattleschools.org Charles Mason (2010) masonc@mtnbrook.k12.al.us James Roussin (2009) jim.roussin@gmail.com Sue Showers (2008) cinsue@fuse.net William Sommers (2007) Past president wsommers@sedl.org COPYING/REPRINT POLICY All content in Teachers Teaching Teachers (T3) is copyright protected by the National Staff Development Council and may not be copied or reprinted without permission. Please see www.nsdc.org/library/ publications/ permpolicy.cfm for details as well as a form for submitting a request. CONTACT Complete contact information for all staff and board members is available on the web site at www.nsdc.org/ connect/about/index.cfm. National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org OCTOBER 2007

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 7 FOCUS ON NSDC S STANDARDS Apply knowledge of learning NSDC s learning standard reminds us to apply our knowledge of human learning and change when we plan or facilitate professional learning. This standard encourages teacher leaders or coaches to know about and apply their knowledge of how adults learn and how change impacts them. What is learning? Learning is a process of change. Learning can be accidental, unanticipated, and unplanned. Another term used to describe this kind of learning is informal learning. For example, I had an unexpected learning moment after a rather casual conversation over lunch where my guest expressed a point of view very different from my own. I listened carefully, probed her thinking, and shared my own views. I left the conversation with a different perspective. Sometimes learning is planned and purposeful. This occurs when the learner intentionally engages in an experience in which some change is the expected outcome. That outcome is frequently a change in a KASAB. A term used to describe this form of learning is formal learning. For example, I clearly recall the series of workshops I attended to learn coaching skills. How we define learning depends on the outcome of the learning process. The KASAB model provides a useful framework for thinking about different kinds of learning. This model identifies five different kinds of changes that occur as a result of learning or some intervention. (See chart on p. 8.) Sadly, much of the professional development teachers have experienced focuses on transferring knowledge and developing skills. Informational or demonstrative learning focuses on the facts, principles, or concepts. It is what a learner knows about. Operational or procedural learning focuses on the learner s know-how, the capacity to do. However, deep learning, often called transformational learning, occurs at the level of beliefs, values, and motivation rather than only at the level of knowledge and skills. Transformational learning is long-term and results in behavioral changes. Transformational learning is deep change that occurs at the core of the learner. Learning at this level promotes a change in practice. How we learn Cognitive psychologists for decades have been exploring how learning occurs. From the work of Vygotsky, Piaget, Kolb, Luria, LEARNING Staff development that improves the learning of all students applies knowledge about human learning and change. Freire, Knowles, Kegan, and others, we have learned that there are processes that support learning, yet not all adults or students learn in the same way. Some are whole-to-part learners and others are part-to-whole learners. Some learn best by jumping in and experimenting through a hands-on approach; others learn best by hearing about or observing. Some want theory and research; others want practical. Some want time to think about, process, draw pictures of, or reconstruct what they learn; others seem to just get it. Multiple factors affect how we learn as adults. Our need to learn is one. When adults express a desire or understand the reason for learning, they are more open to learning. Sometimes when learners perceive that they have little choice in learning or when the learning doesn t appear relevant to their particular situa- Joellen Killion is deputy executive director of National Staff Development Council. For more information about NSDC s Standards for Staff Development, see www.nsdc.org/ standards/ index.cfm National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org OCTOBER 2008

tteachers 3 TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 8 FOCUS ON NSDC S STANDARDS tion, they seem less willing to engage in the learning process. Another factor that affects how we learn is our sense of efficacy. Efficacy is our confidence that we know how to teach and that we make a difference. A high level of efficacy often means that learners are more confident that what they are learning will strengthen their practice and give them more options. A low level of efficacy often means that a learner is less confident and less willing to examine his or her practice and Development Laboratory studied how teachers experienced the implementation of new science curriculum. Led by Bill Rutherford, Gene Hall, Shirley Hord, and Susan Loucks-Horsley, the development of the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) (see Hall & Hord, 2000) provided educational leaders with a practical theory to guide the implementation of change efforts in education. The research has four key components. The first is Stages of Concern. (See chart on p. 9.) K A S A B M O D E L TYPE OF CHANGE DEFINITION TEACHER EXAMPLE Knowledge Attitude Skill Conceptual understanding of information, theories, principles, and research. Beliefs about the value of particular information or strategies. The ability to use strategies and processes to apply knowledge. Teachers understand mathematical concepts they teach. Teachers believe students competence in mathematics is important to their success, both within and beyond school. Teachers know how to employ a variety of instructional strategies to help students visualize mathematical concepts. Aspiration Behavior Desires, or internal motivation, to engage in a particular practice. Consistent application of knowledge and skills. Teachers want their students to understand and perform well in mathematics. Teachers consistently employ inquiry-based instructional practices in mathematics to help students acquire a deep understanding of math concepts. Source: adapted from Assessing Impact: Evaluating Staff Development, by Joellen Killion. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2008. consider alternative approaches. A learner with low efficacy often looks outside of himself or herself for the reason for problems rather than considering what he or she can do to address the problem. Certainly other factors affect how people learn. Time, resources, expectations, and the culture in which the learning occurs influence learning. One other important consideration is how learners experience learning. How do learners experience learning? Learning is a process of change. When individuals engage in either informal or formal learning, they respond in different ways. In landmark research in the 1970s and 80s, a team of researchers at the Southwest Educational Other key components include Levels of Use, Innovation Configuration Maps, and change facilitators. Of particular interest to coaches is Stages of Concern. Stages of Concern identifies seven stages of responses learners have in a change initiative. Knowing a learner s stage of concern helps the change facilitator identify the most appropriate intervention or action to support the learner. For example, if a learner expresses a management concern, indicating that he or she doesn t know how to find the necessary resources to implement the new instructional processes, a coach can zero in on this need and address the concern with the hope of removing barriers to implementation. Change challenges everyone. Any form of professional development requires change. National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org OCTOBER 2008

tteachers 3 TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 9 FOCUS ON NSDC S STANDARDS S TA G E S O F C O N C E R N STAGES OF CONCERN TYPICAL EXPRESSIONS OF CONCERN Transformational learning, change that occurs at the level of beliefs, aspirations, and behaviors, reconfigures how learners think and act. When teacher leaders and coaches clarify the types of change they expect and teachers want as a result of professional learning, use their knowledge of how various factors influence learning, and are skillful in responding to learners as they experience change, they will be more prepared to lead learning within their schools and districts. Reference Hall, G. & Hord, S. (2000). Implementing Change: Patterns, Principles, and Potholes. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. TYPICAL COACH RESPONSE/INTERVENTION 6. Refocusing Perhaps if we thought about integrating this with our social studies program, we could accomplish more. 5. Collaboration How can I learn about what others are doing? 4. Consequence How will this affect my classroom practice and my students? As we think about how to adapt what we are learning, how do we ensure that we incorporate the essential features of these instructional strategies and not lose the essence? Let s take some time to plan how we might do that. In our next team meeting, let s take some time to hear how others are doing with implementing these strategies and how their students are doing. I will be happy to take your class while you observe your colleagues to see how it is going in their classes. If you implement these new strategies, how do you anticipate your students will respond? I am willing, if it is helpful, to observe several students in your class when you teach these strategies to watch how they respond. This might help you understand more thoroughly how these strategies support student learning. 3. Management Where will I find the time to do this? 2. Personal Wait! How can I possibly think about something new? 1. Information I d like to know more about what that is. I am glad to help you make sense of this. When can we meet to discuss your questions? I wonder if we could discuss this with other teachers who are asking the same questions you are? Here are some strategies others have used. I understand your concern about how this will affect you. I wonder if you want to know what others have said about how it has impacted them. Tell me how you think this will impact you. What are you anticipating? What relationship do you see between this and your professional goals? What do you want to know? How can I help you with this? Here are some resources to give you more information. Please check the web site. 0. Awareness I heard about that. What have you heard? What are you interested in knowing? I can provide more information if you d like or share some resources that would help you know more. National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org OCTOBER 2008

STANDARDS ASSESSMENT INVENTORY Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard Tools to support STRENGTHENING strategies

chapter 9 PlaNNiNg effective professional learning Where are We now? We identify the focus of our professional development by analyzing a variety of student achievement data. STRoNgly agree agree No opinion DiSagRee STRoNgly DiSagRee the focus of our professional development aligns with our school improvement goals. STRoNgly agree agree No opinion DiSagRee STRoNgly DiSagRee our professional development goals are written in a smart goal format and stipulate what improvements we want in teachers knowledge, skills, and practices. STRoNgly agree agree No opinion DiSagRee STRoNgly DiSagRee We selected new instructional strategies based on evidence of improved student learning. STRoNgly agree agree No opinion DiSagRee STRoNgly DiSagRee our professional development plan includes long-term support strategies that help teachers implement new classroom practices. STRoNgly agree agree No opinion DiSagRee STRoNgly DiSagRee BeComiNg a learning SChool National Staff Development Council www.nsdc.org 97

chapter 9 PlaNNiNg effective PRoFeSSioNal learning To paraphrase American psychologist Abraham Maslow, if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. In the field of education, workshops remain the hammer in the professional development tool kit. Despite 25 years of research that has identified the limitations of this training model, most schools answer every adult learning need by finding a presenter and planning a workshop. School Creating and sustaining effective improvement classroom practices that improve student learning require a different set plans and professional of tools. However, merely replacing development workshops with another form of professional development, such as learn- should complement and ing teams or action research, is not be aligned with enough. Change the hammer and each other. change the nail take time to determine student learning needs and what educators need to know and be able to do before planning professional development. Analyzing and diagnosing student and adult learning needs will lead to very different forms of professional learning. For example, if teachers analyze student learning data and find students are not performing well in reading comprehension of expository text, they next need to determine whether expository reading material is available in classrooms and what teaching strategies best help students comprehend this kind of text. A workshop might be appropriate if teachers do not know how to help students develop strategies to comprehend expository text. If teachers have already been exposed to appropriate instructional strategies but are not implementing them, then professional learning could take place in grade-level learning teams that support teachers in developing common lesson plans, reviewing student work, and observing each other s classroom instruction. The Backmapping Model for Planning Results- Based Professional Learning in figure 9.1 describes a seven-step process for planning professional learning (Killion, 1999). Districts, schools, departments, or grade-level teams can use this process, but adult learning is likely to more closely align with student needs when school or department or grade-level staff are responsible for ana- 98 National Staff Development Council www.nsdc.org BeComiNg a learning SChool

PlaNNiNg effective PRoFeSSioNal learning chapter 9 figure 9.1 BaCKmaPPiNg model FoR PlaNNiNg ReSUlTS-BaSeD PRoFeSSioNal learning Step 7 Implement, sustain, and evaluate the professional development intervention. Step 1 Analyze student learning needs. Step 2 Identify characteristics of community, district, school, department, and staff. Step 6 Plan intervention, implementation, and evaluation. Step 5 Study the research for specific professional learning programs, strategies, or interventions. Improved student learning Step 4 Identify educator learning needs. Step 3 Develop improvement goals and specific student outcomes. lyzing the data and planning professional learning. Some of these steps may seem familiar. They are, in fact, similar to most school improvement planning models. School improvement plans and professional learning should complement and be aligned with each other. School improvement plans identify student learning goals, while professional learning helps educators acquire the knowledge and skills to help students meet those goals. Depending on the district or school s current improvement process, this planning model may provide a few steps to add to established processes. The backmapping model guides educators in planning results-based professional learning that improves student learning and achievement. In Step 1, educators identify student learning needs. Step 2 involves analyzing the department, school, and district context. In Step 3, planners develop an improvement goal that specifies improved student achievement as the end result and educator learning as a step in accomplishing the goals. Step 4 has educators identify adult learning needs and replaces the traditional needs assessment survey process. Step 5 involves reviewing research about possible strategies to ensure any program planned has evidence of its impact on student learning. In Step 6, the planning group selects the intervention and plans for its BeComiNg a learning SChool National Staff Development Council www.nsdc.org 99

chapter 9 PlaNNiNg effective PRoFeSSioNal learning implementation and evaluation. Step 7 involves implementing, sustaining, and evaluating the professional development intervention. step 1: analyze STUDeNT learning NeeDS. To produce results, professional learning must be directly tied to student learning needs. Before selecting or designing professional development, carefully and thoroughly analyze student achievement data to identify specific areas of student achievement and areas of need. This analysis will help guide decisions about the format of professional learning. Key questions to answer during this step include: What assessment data are available? What is being measured in each assessment? What areas of student performance are meeting or exceeding expectations? What areas of student performance are below expectations? What patterns exist within the data? How are the data similar or different in various grade levels, content areas, and individual classes? How did various groups of students perform? (Consider gender, race, special needs, English language learners, socioeconomic status.) What do other data reveal about student performance? What surprises us? What confirms what we already know? The data analysis process results in staff knowing or identifying: 1. Specific areas of student need; 2. Specific knowledge and skills that students need in order to improve achievement; and 3. Specific students or groups of students for whom the need is most prevalent or pronounced. For example, a school s scores on a state assessment are below the expected or desired level in mathematics. These scores by themselves are insufficient to use for planning professional learning. Suppose the mathematics department faculty next analyze subtest and student group scores. They find a particular group of students is performing poorly in the area of probability and statistics. They then may review the curriculum to determine which standards or learning objectives are most essential for students to achieve and what fundamental knowledge and skills students may be lacking that serve as the prerequisites to these standards. Faculty then use this information to establish schoolwide and/or department improvement goals, identify specific actions necessary to achieve those goals, and guide the selection and/or design of a professional development intervention to address the need to increase the probability and statistics skills of the identified group of students. In this example, simply identifying mathematics as a focus doesn t provide enough information for staff to design professional learning to address the problem. The more detailed skills and identified student groups provide actionable information that is specific enough for planners to identify what teachers need to know and be able to do in order to improve student performance in probability and statistics. While state assessment data is important, any analysis should include other data. Consider district or school interim assessments, grades, attendance, discipline issues, graduation rates, demographics, and other student data. School and district staff also need strategies for analyzing student achievement data, identifying student learning needs, and translating student data into improvement goals. step 2: identify ChaRaCTeRiSTiCS of CommUNiTy, DiSTRiCT, SChool, DePaRTmeNT, and STaFF. School leaders and teachers use what they know about students characteristics to decide what instruction and programs are appropriate for them. The same 100 National Staff Development Council www.nsdc.org BeComiNg a learning SChool

PlaNNiNg effective PRoFeSSioNal learning chapter 9 is true for professional development leaders. Knowing the characteristics of the adults who will participate in professional learning influences the design of the learning experience and the nature of the follow-up support. For example, professional learning for experienced teachers may be different than professional learning for novices. A program for teachers working to meet the needs of urban, disadvantaged students may be different than one for teachers in rural schools. A program in a district or school with limited resources and/or time for professional learning will be different than in settings where time and resources are available. Detailing the context helps professional development leaders make informed decisions about appropriate professional learning. Develop a profile of the school environment and conditions by considering these questions: What are the characteristics of the students? Ethnicity/race Gender Socioeconomic status Mobility Family support Motivation Attitude toward school Experience in school Academic performance Retention rates Parents education level Sibling data What are the characteristics of the staff? Years of experience Years at grade level Years in the school Past experience with professional development Motivation Performance/ability Attitude Sense of efficacy Response to change Collegiality Extent to which teachers preparation aligns with teaching assignments Level of education What are some characteristics of formal and informal leadership for both teachers and administrators? Leadership style Roles of formal and informal leaders Level of participation in leadership activities Opportunities to be involved in leadership roles/activities Trust in leadership Support by leadership Support for leadership Level of communication What are some characteristics of the community? Support for education Support for the school Involvement in school activities Support for students Support for professional development What resources are available to support professional development? Budget Time Support personnel in the building Support personnel outside the building Union contract Incentives Once the analysis is complete, use this information BeComiNg a learning SChool National Staff Development Council www.nsdc.org 101

chapter 9 PlaNNiNg effective PRoFeSSioNal learning to consider which interventions are most appropriate for the school or team. step 3: DeVeloP improvement goals and SPeCiFiC STUDeNT outcomes. Educators need to be clear about what students and teachers are to accomplish as a result of teachers professional learning. Missing the mark is easy without a goal and specific target. Key questions about outcomes include: What results do we seek for students? What new practices do we expect from staff? The intended results of the professional learning should be stated in terms of student achievement. Teachers and principals actions or Educators need to changes are the means to achieve the be clear about goal of increasing student achievement. For example, 100% of the what students and teachers are staff will participate in training in to accomplish as a brain-based learning is not a goal result of teachers because it does not describe the professional training s impact on student learning. Professional development goals learning. too often state the activities that will be conducted rather than results to be accomplished. A preferable goal or objective would be: In three years, 90% of students will read on grade level as result of teachers learning and implementing new brain-based instructional strategies. This statement focuses on the end result of professional learning rather than on what occurs in the process. These objectives might state that a majority of teachers will use new practices routinely and with high quality or high fidelity. Student learning will only be affected when teachers implement new strategies well not just know them. Write clear and specific goals and objectives using the components of a SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, time-bound) goal format. (See tool 9.3 on the CD.) step 4: identify educator (TeaCheR and administrator) learning NeeDS. Professional learning frequently begins with a needs assessment survey that asks adult learners to identify what they want to learn. This common practice often leaves a gap between what educators want to learn and what they may need to learn to address the identified student learning goals. tool 9.5 on the CD provides a rationale for eliminating the traditional needs assessment survey in favor of analyzing student learning needs. For example, teachers are often eager to learn about educational innovations, and principals may want to learn how to shortcut nagging managerial tasks. However, if the goal is to increase student reading performance, and students greatest deficits are comprehending and interpreting informational text, teachers and principals need to develop their skills and knowledge about how to help students read nonfiction text. Professional learning on other topics takes time and resources away from the established school improvement and team learning goals. Classroom walk-throughs are useful in determining what teachers need to learn. Walk-throughs help administrators and teams of teachers gather information about instructional strengths and needs and provide a framework for using that information to discuss instruction, monitor how professional development is implemented, and measure professional development s effect on classroom practices. Classroom walk-throughs can give administrators clear information about teachers current practices and help leaders identify trends and patterns of practice within a school or district. Administration and faculty can use the information to discuss effective classroom practices and determine what learning is needed to ac- 102 National Staff Development Council www.nsdc.org BeComiNg a learning SChool

PlaNNiNg effective PRoFeSSioNal learning chapter 9 complish their student learning and professional learning goals. After identifying educators learning needs, consider what actions to take to meet these needs. The scope and content of the professional learning required will be clearer when student learning needs, the school or district s context and characteristics, the specific goal, and educator learning needs all are clear. step 5: STUDy The ReSeaRCh FoR SPeCiFiC PRoFeSSioNal learning PRogRamS, STRaTegieS, or interventions. After establishing educator learning goals, examine the research for specific professional development practices that are supported by evidence of their impact on student learning. In their urgency and enthusiasm to improve student performance, school staff may pass over this critical step and select or adapt unfamiliar programs. They often fail to critically review available programs and practices to determine whether the new practices have proven successful. Sometimes, teachers within a school have conducted action research studies that can provide findings to consider when selecting interventions. Their findings can be reviewed at this step along with other research-based options. Even well-designed, formal professional development initiatives need to be reviewed for their effect on student learning. NSDC has published a series of What Works books (Killion, 1999; Killion, 2002a; Killion, 2002b) that reviewed professional development programs in various content areas for elementary, middle, and high school levels. These books provide each program s evidence of impact on student learning. For other programs, the professional development program review form (tool 9.7 on the CD) identifies essential questions important in collecting researchbased evidence of results. Once research-based options have been identified, consider these questions to narrow the choices: Which professional learning addresses the skills and knowledge we have identified as educator learning needs? What professional development are schools with similar student demographics using? If our school s characteristics do not match the schools in which the professional learning was successful, what are the key differences? How likely are those differences to interfere with the program s success? What changes might increase the likelihood of success? What aspects of the professional learning (if any) might need to be modified to accommodate the unique features of our school or students? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the professional learning? What school, district, and community support was required to make the professional learning successful? Next, consider the school s context by asking: What are the characteristics of the culture and climate? What do teachers already know and what do they need to know next? What practices are teachers currently using in the classroom? How different are current practices from desired practices? Does the school culture embrace new practices or resist changes? What are teachers current levels of understanding of content related to state standards? What support do teachers need in order to implement new strategies? After examining research-based evidence and weighing the options, the context factors identified in Step 2 become criteria for selecting an intervention appropriate for the school, the staff, and the student pop- BeComiNg a learning SChool National Staff Development Council www.nsdc.org 103

chapter 9 PlaNNiNg effective PRoFeSSioNal learning ulation. Members decide to adopt or adapt an existing professional development program or to create one to align with their unique school characteristics, their goals, and current research. This is a significant decision that needs to be made with careful thought and thorough discussion. When making this decision, members are determining where they will place their energy and resources for the long run. step 6: PlaN intervention, implementation, and evaluation. Initiating new professional learning takes time and energy. To implement new professional development strategies requires that leaders or faculty plan follow-up or long-term support beyond the immediate school year. A professional development intervention needs to be carefully selected to match teacher learning needs. Many questions need to be answered to get the best fit between educator needs and appropriate professional development design. Many of the job-embedded professional development strategies can be used in combination to help educators learn about new practices, begin implementing new practices, and consistently use new practices. Each of these three aspects of learning new classroom strategies requires different kinds of professional learning. The ultimate goal is to enhance the instructional practices used in the classroom so that student learning is improved. Powerful Designs for Professional Learning (Easton, 2008) includes 21 job-embedded professional development practices. Each strategy has information to help administrators and teachers decide when and why to use these strategies. This information helps school faculty determine which strategies might work best, fit a particular context, and lead to teachers learning specific content. For example, some professional development strategies are most useful for: Gathering and using information from within the school or district about learning: Accessing Student Voices, Action Research, Classroom Walk- Throughs, Data Analysis, Portfolios for Educators, Shadowing Students, and Visual Dialogue. Creating professional learning communities: Critical Friends Groups, Mentoring, Peer Coaching, Tuning Protocols, and Visual Dialogue. Focusing on standards, curriculum, and assessment: Action Research, Assessment as Professional Learning, Case Discussions, Curriculum Design, Immersing Teachers in Practice, Lesson Study, Standards in Practice, Study Groups, and Visual Dialogue. Focusing on instructional practices or pedagogy: Action Research, Case Discussions, Critical Friends Groups, Immersing Teachers in Practice, Journaling, Lesson Study, Mentoring, Peer Coaching, Portfolios, and Tuning Protocols. More detailed information about how to select appropriate professional learning designs to match the learning needs of teachers and administrators can be found in Chapter 11. Chapter 11 describes a variety of job-embedded professional learning strategies to use to develop awareness of new instructional strategies or programs, build knowledge, translate new knowledge into practice, practice using new strategies, and reflect on new practice. After selecting, adapting, or designing a professional development program/intervention and before implementation, consider: What kind of support does the program need to be successful? How will we support the individuals involved? What are we equipped to do to support and implement the professional learning, and what external resources will we need? 104 National Staff Development Council www.nsdc.org BeComiNg a learning SChool

PlaNNiNg effective PRoFeSSioNal learning chapter 9 reflections 1. Consider the components of the backmapping model. Which of these steps are you currently using? How can you refine these activities to bring them into line with the model? 2. Where can you find research to support the adoption of new professional learning? 3. Who plans or designs professional learning for the district or school? How well-prepared are they to plan professional learning as described in this chapter? If they do not feel ready, who can help increase their capacity? 4. How many sources of student data do you have available for analysis? How comfortable are staff in conducting their own analysis of student data? What could be done to help them become more comfortable? 5. Step 6 of the backmapping process requires thoughtful planning and is typically the school s or district s first step. What are the advantages of completing Steps 1-5 before Step 6? What resources are we dedicating to the professional learning? What is our timeline for full implementation by all faculty members? What benchmarks along the way will help us know if we are successful? Are we willing to commit time, energy, and financial resources to this effort for the long term? How will we align this new initiative with existing efforts? What might we need to eliminate to make resources available for this program? How closely do the goals of the professional learning align with our school s improvement goals and the district s strategic goals? How will we assess how the program is initiated, implemented, and sustained? Planning evaluation at the same time as planning implementation of the professional learning leads to a higher-quality evaluation. Considering both the program and evaluation at the same time allows planners to identify what important baseline data to collect, data which may be necessary for demonstrating the professional learning s impact. When planning to evaluate a professional development program, leaders: 1. Assess the design to determine if the staff development program is thorough, well-conceived, and able to be implemented; 2. Identify key questions they hope to answer; and 3. Design the evaluation framework the plan for conducting the evaluation. An evaluation framework includes identifying what data will be collected, sources of that data, who will conduct the evaluation, and a timeline (Killion, 2007). Plans should include both formative and summative evaluations. A formative assessment allows professional development leaders to know how well the program is being implemented, provides opportunities to take corrective actions, and answers questions including: BeComiNg a learning SChool National Staff Development Council www.nsdc.org 105

chapter 9 PlaNNiNg effective PRoFeSSioNal learning Are the program activities being implemented as planned? Are resources adequate to implement the program as planned? To what degree are differences occurring in implementation that may influence the program s results? A summative evaluation allows professional development leaders to know what impact the program has had and answers questions including: Has the learning achieved the intended results? What changes for teachers have resulted from the professional learning? What changes for students have resulted from the professional learning? What changes in the organization have resulted from the professional learning? Planning the program and evaluation simultaneously gives professional development leaders and the evaluator greater clarity about how the professional learning is intended to work, increasing the likelihood that professional learning will be implemented as designed and that the intended results will be realized. step 7: implement, SUSTaiN, and evaluate The PRoFeSSioNal DeVeloPmeNT intervention. Any new professional development intervention requires constant nurturing and support for it to be implemented at a high level. Staff development leaders, including the principal and teacher leaders, are primarily responsible for monitoring and making adjustments to ensure the initiative s success. Those responsible for implementation first need a clear understanding of what high-quality performance means and looks like. One tool for reaching agreement on an acceptable level of implementation is an Innovation Configuration (IC) map. IC maps describe and define the essential features of new practice (Hall & Hord, 2001). tool 9.8 on the CD describes the components of an Innovation Configuration map as well as strategies for designing your own. Setting expectations and standards for acceptable implementation will make a significant difference in the quality of implementation. Then use both formative and summative evaluation processes to provide the best data to continually improve professional learning and increase the likelihood that it will achieve the results it was designed to achieve. Formative assessments provide data that can be used to continually adjust and refine the program to strengthen results. Summative evaluation provides information about the impact of professional learning and offers valuable data to improve its results. More information about evaluating professional learning is provided in Chapter 14. references Easton, L.B. (Ed.) (2008). Powerful designs for professional learning (2nd ed.). Oxford, OH: NSDC. Hall, G. & Hord, S. (2001). Implementing change: Patterns, principles, and potholes. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Killion, J. (1999). What works in the middle: Results-based staff development. Oxford, OH: NSDC. Killion, J. (2002a). What works in the elementary school: Results-based staff development. Oxford, OH: NSDC & NEA. Killion, J. (2002b). What works in the high school: Results-based staff development. Oxford, OH: NSDC & NEA. Killion, J. (2007). Assessing impact: Evaluating staff development. Oxford, OH: NSDC. 106 National Staff Development Council www.nsdc.org BeComiNg a learning SChool

Module 2 HOW DO WE PLAN FOR SCHOOLWIDE AND TEAM-BASED COLLABORATIVE LEARNING? SELF-ASSESSMENT OF CURRENT PLANNING FOR PROFESSIONAL LEARNING 1. Our school utilizes both team-based and schoolwide collaborative learning to improve our professional knowledge and skills. Strongly agree Agree No opinion Disagree Strongly disagree 2. Teachers identify their professional development focus based on the needs of their students. Strongly agree Agree No opinion Disagree Strongly disagree 3. Teachers learn within teams several times a week. Strongly agree Agree No opinion Disagree Strongly disagree 4. One component of our professional learning plan includes team support for implementing new instructional strategies. Strongly agree Agree No opinion Disagree Strongly disagree 5. One way we evaluate the results of our professional learning is by examining student work. Strongly agree Agree No opinion Disagree Strongly disagree 2-2 Rochester City School District MINDS IN MOTION: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 10 NSDC TOOLS POWERFUL DESIGNS: Who and when Page 13 What and why Pages 14-15 How Page 16 RIPE FOR THE PICKING: Collection of 21 strategies satisfies a taste for context and content BY LOIS BROWN EASTON Imagine a school that has an environment of staff growth and learning. The climate that makes learning possible for adults in this school can always improve, but the school can legitimately call itself a professional learning community. This school has the context for adult learning. Imagine that this school has collected and analyzed data from a variety of sources. Staff members know what they need to learn to do better so students can learn better. Teachers know the content they must study. What they need to know is how: How will they learn what they need? What strategies will help them learn and help them make changes that affect student achievement? What processes will they initiate? As a school-based staff developer, you are required to make frequent decisions about the right process (or strategy or design) to use for professional learning that will make a difference. Process is so important that the National Staff Development Council made it one of three aspects designers of professional development must consider, along with context and content (NSDC, 2001). Imagine that our imaginary school has determined that students need to improve their reading skills in the content areas. The staff wants to learn how to help students understand materials they read in social studies and science, for example. You consult a resource that describes powerful strategies for professional development such as NSDC s book, Powerful Designs for Professional Learning (NSDC, 2004) and select a variety of processes that could be used. Some of these designs work individually. In some, staff work individually and then get together in groups. Six months into their focus on reading in the content areas, teachers come together, bringing a variety of viewpoints after experiencing a variety of professional development activities though all focused on reading. Their professional development continues with National Staff Development Council (800) 727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2005

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 11 other processes as they implement the changes they have identified. Let s be more specific. In the first six months, one teacher decides to access student voices by having students talk about reading in focus groups. Other teachers begin action research projects, mostly working alone but getting together every other week to share their results. A few individuals keep journals about reading in their own classrooms. Some of these individuals create portfolios to share with others. Another group conducts case discussions on reading, and another looks at curriculum as curriculum designers. The principal and associate principals do classroom walk-throughs that focus on reading. Another group analyzes the data that initiated this professional learning cycle; this group wants to know the details behind the scores that alarmed the staff about reading in the content areas. The last group examines classroom and district assessments for levels of questioning about text. At the end of the first six months, these individuals and groups learn from each through visual dialogue, and the staff as a whole creates a plan for action. The action research individuals and groups continue their work, as do the journal writers and portfolio makers. The curriculum designers and the assessment group expand their work, and other groups begin to form. Some staff members begin to meet in critical friends groups and do tuning protocols around student understanding of text. A small group decides to shadow students in another school, known for its focus on critical reading skills. Later, as implementation continues (and gets tougher), a group forms to do lesson study related to reading in science classes. Another group looks at assignments through the standards in practice process. Finally, the staff decides to have a school coach help them focus on literacy across the curriculum. This article and the tools on pp. 13-16 will guide you in choosing the designs that will work for your school. Who? All of the 21 professional development designs included in Powerful Designs for Professional Learning (listed at right) work well with classroom teachers as well as administrators at the building and district levels. The p. 13 tool identifies designs that will benefit by including college or university staff or community members, parents, and policy makers as partners. Regardless of who is involved in professional development, always ask, Who else needs to be here? 1. Who should be involved? 2. Will people work as individuals or in groups? What and why? Each of the 21 designs has roots in what happens in classrooms, focuses on learners and learning, and is collaborative in some way. All designs honor professionals. All lead to application. All promote inquiry and reflection. Beyond these standards for powerful professional development, however, are other more specific purposes that can be promoted through certain designs. These more specific purposes take the form of questions listed below. Designs that are especially oriented to these specialized purposes are listed in the tool on pp. 14-15. 1. Which designs are most useful for gathering and using information from within the school or district about learning? 2. Which designs are most likely to require outside resources to inform the work? 3. Which designs are especially useful in creating a learning community? 4. Which designs focus most on standards, curriculum, and assessment? 5. Which designs focus most on practice or pedagogy? 6. Which designs are most useful for looking at classrooms? 7. Which designs focus on the whole school and/or beyond? 8. Which designs are particularly reflective? 9. Which designs look at student work or involve students in some way? 10. Which designs are best for bringing others (other than teachers or administrators) into the school improvement effort? 11. Which designs can be used to address specific problems and seek solutions? 21 strategies The strategies included in Powerful Designs for Professional Learning: Accessing student voices Action research Assessment as professional development Case discussions Classroom walkthroughs Critical friends groups Curriculum design Data analysis Immersing teachers in practice Journaling Lesson study Mentoring Peer coaching Portfolios for educators School coaching Shadowing students Standards in practice Study groups Training the trainer Tuning protocols Visual dialogue National Staff Development Council (800) 727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2005

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 12 12. Which designs result in a concrete product? Which designs are the most experiential? 13. Which designs may involve modeling? When? To be effective, schools should plan to commit to a design for at least a year. No design should be implemented only once a year. They are meant to be continuous over a period of time. See the tool on p. 13 for guidance in designs that will work well in three to six sessions a year, those that require at least monthly meetings, those that should occur at least weekly, and those that should happen daily. In addition, the duration of any professional development activity or session can vary enormously. Some strategies that may require less frequent meetings may need three hours or more for each session. Some strategies may require educators to meet together more often but for shorter amounts of time. Individual work that results in later group sharing might require an hour or less. How? All 21 designs identified in this article can be used with other designs to explore the same content. In fact, using a variety of adult learning strategies oriented towards the same need can enrich the results considerably. The tool on p. 16 will help you identify strategies by answering the following questions: 1. Which designs require a facilitator? 2. Which designs require administrators to be involved? 3. Which designs work best when school is in session? Which designs work best when school is not in session? 4. Which designs cost the most? Students will succeed when educators choose the best possible context for professional development, deliberately focus content on student improvement needs, and choose processes that help teachers learn to best address those needs. Each of the 21 designs: Has roots in what happens in classrooms. Focuses on learners and learning. Is collaborative. Honors professionals. Leads to application. Promotes inquiry and reflection. See tools on pp. 13-16 Teachers Teaching Teachers (T3) is published eight times a year by the National Staff Development Council, 5995 Fairfield Road, #4, Oxford, OH 45056. Copyright, NSDC, 2005. All rights reserved. MAIN BUSINESS OFFICE 5995 Fairfield Road, #4 Oxford OH 45056 (513) 523-6029 (800) 727-7288 (513) 523-0638 (fax) E-mail: nsdcoffice@nsdc.org Web site: www.nsdc.org Editor: Joan Richardson Designer: Kitty Black NSDC STAFF Executive director Dennis Sparks dennis.sparks@nsdc.org Deputy executive director Stephanie Hirsh stephanie.hirsh@nsdc.org Director of publications Joan Richardson joan.richardson@nsdc.org Director of special projects Joellen Killion joellen.killion@nsdc.org Web editor Tracy Crow tracy.crow@nsdc.org Distinguished senior fellow Hayes Mizell hayes.mizell@nsdc.org BOARD OF TRUSTEES Deborah Childs-Bowen, president (2006) Karen Dyer (2007) Cindy Harrison, past president (2005) Gale Hulme (2005) Sharon Jackson (2006) Charles Mason (2007) Sue McAdamis (2006) Bill Sommers, president-elect (2007) COPYING/REPRINT POLICY All content in Teachers Teaching Teachers (T3) is copyright protected by the National Staff Development Council and may not be copied or reprinted without permission. Please see www.nsdc.org/library/ publications/permpolicy.cfm for details as well as a form for submitting a request. CONTACT Complete contact information for all staff and board members is available on the web site at www.nsdc.org/ connect/about/index.cfm. Business manager Leslie Miller leslie.miller@nsdc.org National Staff Development Council (800) 727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2005

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 13 POWERFUL DESIGNS: WHO AND WHEN NSDC TOOL Who? In addition to classroom teachers and administrators, who should be involved? When? (Assumes no less than 1-year commitment) Frequency Duration POWERFUL DESIGN University or college staff Community, parents, policy makers Individuals at first, then groups Pairs Large groups/ Concurrent small groups 3 to 6 times year At least monthly At least weekly Daily Each session is 3 hours or more Each session is 1 to 2 hours Each session is an hour or less Accessing Student Voices x x x Action Research x x x* x** x* x** Assessment as Professional Development x x x Case Discussions x x x Classroom Walk-Throughs x x x Critical Friends Groups x x x x Curriculum Designers x x x x Data Analysis x x x x x Immersing Teachers in Practice x x x Journaling x x x Lesson Study x x x Mentoring x x x x Peer Coaching x x x x Portfolios for Educators x x x School Coaching x x x x x Shadowing Students x x x x Standards in Practice x x x Study Groups x x x x x Training the Trainer x x x Tuning Protocols x x x x Visual Dialogue x x x * = group sharing **= individual work SOURCE: Powerful Designs for Professional Learning, by Lois Brown Easton, Oxford, OH: National Staff Development Council, 2004. All rights reserved. Order through NSDC s Online Bookstore, store.nsdc.org. National Staff Development Council (800) 727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2005

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 14 POWERFUL DESIGNS: WHAT AND WHY NSDC TOOL POWERFUL DESIGN Accessing Student Voices Useful for gathering data in a school x Involves gathering information from external sources Particularly helpful in creating a learning community Looks at standards, curriculum, assessment Focuses on pedagogy and teaching Involves looking at classrooms Involves looking at whole school/ behond x Action Research Assessment as Professional Development Case Discussions x x x x x x x x x x x Classroom Walk-Throughs x x Critical Friends Groups x x Curriculum Designers x x x Data Analysis x Immersing Teachers in Practice x x x Journaling Lesson Study Mentoring Peer Coaching Portfolios for Educators x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x School Coaching Shadowing Students Standards in Practice x x x x x x x Study Groups x x x Training the Trainer x Tuning Protocols Visual Dialogue x x x x x x x x SOURCE: Powerful Designs for Professional Learning, by Lois Brown Easton, Oxford, OH: National Staff Development Council, 2004. All rights reserved. Order through NSDC s Online Bookstore, store.nsdc.org. National Staff Development Council (800) 727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2005

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 15 POWERFUL DESIGNS: WHAT AND WHY (continued) POWERFUL DESIGN Is particularly reflective Involves looking at student work or students Good for involving others Good for problem solving Results in a concrete product Is experiential Involves modeling Accessing Student Voices x x x Action Research x x Assessment as Professional Development Case Discussions x Classroom Walk-Throughs x x Critical Friends Groups x x Curriculum Designers x Data Analysis x Immersing Teachers in Practice x x Journaling x x Lesson Study x x x x Mentoring x x x x x x Peer Coaching Portfolios for Educators x x x x x x x x x School Coaching x x Shadowing Students Standards in Practice Study Groups Training the Trainer Tuning Protocols Visual Dialogue x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x SOURCE: Powerful Designs for Professional Learning, by Lois Brown Easton, Oxford, OH: National Staff Development Council, 2004. All rights reserved. Order through NSDC s Online Bookstore, store.nsdc.org. National Staff Development Council (800) 727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2005

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 16 POWERFUL DESIGNS: HOW NSDC TOOL POWERFUL DESIGN FACILITATOR NEEDED ADMINISTRATOR INVOLVEMENT SCHOOL IN/OUT COST No At first Yes Support Participation essential Participation helpful In Out Accessing Student Voices x x x x $ Action Research x x x x $$ Assessment as Professional Development x x x x x $$$ Case Discussions x x x x $$ Classroom Walk-Throughs x x x x $ Critical Friends Groups x x x x $$ Curriculum Designers x x x x $$$ Data Analysis x x x x $$$ Immersing Teachers in Practice x x x x x $$$ Journaling x x x x $ Lesson Study x x x x x $$ Mentoring x x x x $$ Peer Coaching x x x x $$ Portfolios for Educators x x x x $ School Coaching x x x x $$$ Shadowing Students x x x x $$ Standards in Practice x x x x $$ Study Groups x x x x $$ Training the Trainer x x x x x $$$ Tuning Protocols x x x x x $$ Visual Dialogue x x x x $$$ SOURCE: Powerful Designs for Professional Learning, by Lois Brown Easton, Oxford, OH: National Staff Development Council, 2004. All rights reserved. Order through NSDC s Online Bookstore, store.nsdc.org. National Staff Development Council (800) 727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2005

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2001 INSIDE Tools For SchoolsTM A bi-monthly publication supporting student and staff learning through school improvement By Joan Richardson A NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL www.nsdc.org Learning Teams When teachers work together, knowledge and rapport grow fter a three-year leave of absence, Anne Jolly returned to her Alabama classroom with more enthusiasm and anticipation than I felt in my first position. The former Alabama Teacher of the Year was armed with an arsenal of new ideas and deeper understanding about the profession. She was confident she could transform her practice to better serve a population of students who were increasingly diverse and needy. But, after just a month, far from revolutionizing my classroom practices, I was falling back into many of my same old teaching patterns. I found it increasingly hard to put a new way of teaching into operation, she said. The isolated classroom just wasn t working for me anymore. Because of her experience, Jolly has become an advocate for learning teams as a way to improve student learning. A learning team is, quite simply, a small, collaborative group of teachers who work together in a very disciplined way to focus on a central issue all year long. Unlike school teams that are organized for other purposes, learning teams focus on teacher learning as a way to address student needs and improve student learning, she said. (In some schools, 3 Learning Plan 4 Learning Team Journal 5 Learning Team Survey 7 Resources 8 Dr. Developer these teams are known as study groups, impact groups, or collaborative teacher groups. ) Learning teams enable teachers to keep up with the knowledge they need to do their jobs well. They also help teachers support each other as they change their practices. Learning teams are the most effective, cost-efficient way for teachers to learn what changes are needed in their practice and then to make those changes. They also have the added benefit of building rapport, trust, and support, said Jolly, now an education program specialist for SERVE, the regional educational laboratory serving the southeastern states, and author of an upcoming NSDC book on learning teams in middle schools. MAKING A CASE FOR LEARNING TEAMS Generally, the principal is the instigator for creating learning teams. But, if such teams are going to be effective, Jolly said, teachers must be involved in the final decision. If teachers don t support the concept, learning teams will not be successful, Jolly said. Unsatisfactory test scores can often be used as a prompt for creating the learning teams. But, even when that s the case, the principal or an outside facilitator who specializes in such work will still need Learning Teams Continued on Page 2

Tools For Schools August/September 2001 Learning teams build rapport and knowledge Continued from Page One to present teachers with substantial information about the value of teachers learning and collaborating. (See Resources on Page 7 for more background information.) Teachers also need to understand that learning teams have a disciplined focus. They are focused around teacher learning, not school management. This is not a staff meeting. This is about student needs, Jolly said. GETTING STARTED After the principal has significant staff buy-in to the idea, the next issue is membership of the learning team. Jolly recommends including no more than six persons on a team. Typically, a team would include members of a single department or a grade level. But teachers could self-select according to interest in a particular topic, Jolly said. Taking advantage of an existing organizational structure often helps because teachers already know each other. Building on a team that already works with one group of students, as in a middle school, is also very beneficial. A learning team needs to meet for at least an hour at a regular time once a week. Ideally, teams should meet during the school day and plan to meet together for the entire school year. PAGE 2 FIRST, THE DATA To establish its focus for the year, the learning team should assemble and examine student data: standardized test results, district assessment results, examples of teacher assignments and the resulting student work, climate survey results, demographics, and information regarding discipline, attendance, and parental involvement. By closely examining the data themselves, teachers will be able to identify clear priorities for students. Data also can create a sense of urgency that s needed to drive change, Jolly said. Jolly cautions that teachers must also look below the surface of the numbers and probe for deeper explanations. For example, if students are doing poorly on a statewide writing test, teachers will want to ensure that they know what s being evaluated. Students may be quite successful grammatically and structurally but fail to understand how to present a cohesive idea or vice versa. Students may be quite successful writing stories or poems but less proficient at informational writing. DEVELOP A LEARNING PLAN After a learning team has its focus, the next step is crafting a learning plan. (See Page 3 for an example.) At a minimum, the learning plan should include responses to these questions.! What do students need to learn to do better? For example, drawing from the example above, the learning team might say that Students need to improve the quality of their informational writing.! What specific knowledge or instructional skills do teachers need in order to address student achievement in this focus area?! How will teachers acquire this knowledge and these skills?! What information do teachers need?! How will teachers know if they have achieved their goal? Jolly said teams should consider the learning plan a work in progress that will be revised as teams learn more. DOING THE RESEARCH After identifying its focus, each learning team should query its own members to learn what knowledge they can share with others about the focus of their inquiry. For example, ask team members about workshops they have attended that bear on the topic. What articles or books have they read that relate to this topic? What did they learn in graduate courses about this topic? Have they done any writing or presenting on this topic? What other knowledge do team members have that might be related to this topic? This helps teachers view each other as resources. It s a strategy to begin bringing out different strengths, Jolly said. Beyond that, however, Jolly believes the facilitator should be the group s primary researcher. Teachers are already pretty well overwhelmed. The facilitator needs to make it as easy for the teachers as possible. Teachers don t need to go out and beat the bushes to find everything, she said. SHARING THE WEALTH Initially, teachers may spend a great deal of time reading articles and books, interviewing experts, or watching videotapes. In each instance, they should spend time reflecting on what they have learned. At some point, they should be ready to put what they are learning into action. During one meeting, they may visit the classroom of a teacher using a strategy they want to see in practice. They may examine samples of student work, both before they begin changing their practice and after introducing new strategies to discover their impact. They may develop a lesson at one meeting and follow up the next week by discussing their experience with it. At every step, the learning team needs to maintain a journal that is the weekly record of its work, Jolly said. (See Page 4 for an example.) The learning team journal should be kept in a public place, such as the teachers workroom so other staff members can also read the record. EVALUATE YOUR WORK AND IDENTIFY YOUR NEXT INQUIRY Finally, learning teams need to evaluate their work. At the end of one year s work, Jolly said teams will often have numerous ideas about the inquiries they want to make during the next year. By the end of a year, teachers will have realized that this is a teacher learning experience. This is not just about coming up with a new strategy for the classroom. This is all focused on teachers learning more about their students and their teaching, she said. NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

Tools For Schools August/September 2001 Learning Plan COMMENTS TO FACILITATOR 1. What is the learning team s focus? Use this form to help the learning team describe its plan for learning. Team members should consider the learning plan a living document. As the team learns more about its focus area, the learning plan should be revised. Each copy of the learning plan should be considered public and posted or made available some place in the school that is open to all teachers, such as a teachers workroom. This will allow other teachers to be aware of the team s work and share relevant resources. 2. What do students need to learn to do better? 3. What specific knowledge or instructional skills do teachers need in order to address student achievement in this focus area? 4. How will teachers acquire this knowledge and these skills? 5. What information do teachers need? 6. How will teachers know if they have achieved their goal? NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL PAGE 3

Tools For Schools August/September 2001 Learning Team Journal COMMENTS TO FACILITATOR The learning team should appoint a recorder for its weekly meetings. That person should maintain the team s regular learning journal. Team Date Time Location Topic of discussion Team members present: The team journal should be kept in a binder some place in the school that is open to all teachers, such as a teachers workroom, along with the team s learning plan. Individual members should also be encouraged to keep their own journals, either using this form or creating a form that works best for them. These journals do not have to be shared with others. Key new ideas and information (from research) Activities since last meeting and additional discussion Plans and classroom applications (before next meeting) Concerns/reflections/recommendations Plans for next meeting Today s best practice or idea (to be shared with other teams) PAGE 4 NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

Tools For Schools August/September 2001 Learning Team Survey School Subject/grade level 1. How many times have you met with your learning team? 1-3 4-6 7+ Have not met 2. What rating best describes your feelings about these meetings? Scale: 1 (most negative) to 10 (most positive). Most negative (-) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Most positive (+) Unproductive Productive Non-task oriented Task oriented Not well facilitated Well facilitated Incompatible group members Compatible group members Less than honest communications Honest communications 3. What, if any, are the positive impacts of these meetings on you personally? 4. What, if any, are the negative impacts or concerns you have had with the learning team meetings? 5. Rate the benefit of participating on a learning team. Scale: 1 (not much benefit) to 5 (a great deal of benefit). To what extent have you gained... Circle choice New knowledge about teaching and learning? 1 2 3 4 5 New insights about how to reach certain students? 1 2 3 4 5 New ideas about how to improve the way you teach? 1 2 3 4 5 New perspectives on your strengths and weaknesses in teaching? 1 2 3 4 5 A new outlet for expressing and sharing frustrations, concerns, problems with teaching? 1 2 3 4 5 Greater confidence in using a wider range of instructional and assessment methods? 1 2 3 4 5 A stronger sense of connection or support from other teachers? 1 2 3 4 5 A greater sense of yourself as a professional? 1 2 3 4 5 6. With regard to your selected team focus, how successful has your group been with each activity listed here? Scale: 1 (not at all successful) to 5 (extremely successful). How successful has your learning team been with... Circle choice Analyzing and discussing student needs? 1 2 3 4 5 Reading research and studying successful strategies for addressing student needs, and discussing applications of what we have read/studied? 1 2 3 4 5 Discussing similarities and differences in teachers approaches and beliefs about teaching? 1 2 3 4 5 Investigating programs, strategies, and materials that might help motivate students? 1 2 3 4 5 Designing new materials, lessons, or assessments for students? 1 2 3 4 5 Trying out new techniques, materials, approaches in teaching and assessing students? 1 2 3 4 5 Sharing successful strategies you currently use? 1 2 3 4 5 Assessing and sharing results of new approaches to teaching with the learning team? 1 2 3 4 5 continued on Page 6 NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL PAGE 5

Tools For Schools August/September 2001 Learning Team Survey continued 7. Of the teachers on your learning team, how many do you think believe the learning team approach has significant potential to help teachers improve students motivation and performance? (give number) 8. Below is a list of activities that support teacher growth and development. Try to assess the activities in terms of whether they were practiced effectively at the school before the learning teams began. Scale: 1 (not very effectively practiced) to 5 (very effectively practiced) before the learning teams began. Circle choice Teachers talked to each other about how they taught and the results they got. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers learned from each other by watching each other teach. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers designed lessons, assessments, or units together. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers critiqued lessons, assessments, or units for each other. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers reviewed the curriculum across grade levels in a particular subject. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers developed interdisciplinary strategies to increase student interest and learning. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers shared articles and other professional resources and read and discussed books. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers asked each other for advice and help with particular students and topics. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers visited other schools to examine instructional approaches in other settings. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers worked together to examine student classroom tests and other student work samples to better understand student strengths and weaknesses. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers provided moral support and encouragement to each other in trying new ideas. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers helped each other implement ideas from workshops they attended. 1 2 3 4 5 9. In your opinion, what percent of your students have benefited from your learning team participation? Less than 25% 26-50% 51-75% 76% + 10. Indicate your level of agreement with each of the following statements based on your experiences so far with the learning team. Scale: 1 (not at all) to 5 (a great deal). I think my participation on the learning team will... Circle choice Improve my overall teaching effectiveness. 1 2 3 4 5 Improve my skills in helping students learn. 1 2 3 4 5 Change my perceptions about some students learning abilities. 1 2 3 4 5 Increase my understanding of how to motivate students to work harder. 1 2 3 4 5 Significantly change how I teach. 1 2 3 4 5 Significantly change how I work with other teachers. 1 2 3 4 5 11. Indicate your level of agreement with each of the following statements. Scale: 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Circle choice I am enthusiastic about my participation on a learning team. 1 2 3 4 5 I feel a lot of stress during the workday. 1 2 3 4 5 I need more time for learning team participation. 1 2 3 4 5 I am satisfied with my work environment here. 1 2 3 4 5 I am excited by my students accomplishments this year. 1 2 3 4 5 Student motivation is a major problem here. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers here tend to do their own thing in the classroom with little coordination. 1 2 3 4 5 I often feel unsure of my teaching. 1 2 3 4 5 Teachers here get along well. 1 2 3 4 5 Source: SERVE, Atlanta. PAGE 6 NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

Tools For Schools August/September 2001 Tools For Schools Resources learning for teams ISSN 0276-928X The Adaptive School: A Sourcebook for Developing Collaborative Groups, by Robert Garmston and Bruce Wellman. (Christopher-Gordon Publishers, 1999). A guidebook to aid schools in developing the individual teacher talent and energy necessary to improve student learning. Recipient of the 1999 NSDC Book Award. Available through NSDC s Online Bookstore, www.nsdc.org/bookstore.htm. Item #B80. Price: $55, non-members. A New Vision of Staff Development by Dennis Sparks and Stephanie Hirsh. (ASCD and NSDC, 1997). Describes three powerful ideas that drive the new paradigm for staff development: Resultsdriven, systems thinking, and constructivism. Includes case studies of schools and districts that are putting theory into practice. Available through NSDC s Online Bookstore, www.nsdc.org/ bookstore.htm. Item #B50. Price: $22.45, non-members. Professional Learning Communities: Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement, by Rick DuFour and Robert Eaker. (National Education Service, 1998). Research-based recommendations that enabled one school to earn the Blue Ribbon Award from the U.S. Department of Education on three separate occasions. Includes sections on curriculum development, teacher preparation, school leadership, professional development programs, school-parent partnerships and assessment practices. Available through NSDC s Online Bookstore, www.nsdc.org/ bookstore.htm. Item #B77. Price: $30, non-members. Professional Learning Communities: Communities of Continuous Inquiry and Improvement by Shirley Hord. (Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, 1997). Describes the look and feel of a professional learning community as well as providing strategies for developing the same. A full text of the book is available online at http://www.sedl.org/ pubs/change34/. It also can be ordered by visiting SEDL s web site and clicking on catalog. Whole-Faculty Study Groups: A Powerful Way to Change Schools and Enhance Learning, by Carlene Murphy and Dale Lick. (Corwin Press, 1998). Offers practical guidance for starting, leading, and maintaining faculty study groups. Includes case studies as well as tools to help implement study groups. Available through NSDC s Online Bookstore, www.nsdc. org/bookstore.htm. Item #B64. Price: $37, non-members. From the NSDC library Tools For Schools is published five times a year (August, October, December, February and April) by the National Staff Development Council, PO Box 240, Oxford, OH 45056, for $49 of standard and comprehensive membership fees. Periodicals postage paid at Wheelersburg, OH 45694. MAIN BUSINESS OFFICE PO Box 240, Oxford, Ohio 45056 (513) 523-6029 (800) 727-7288 (513) 523-0638 (fax) E-mail: NSDCoffice@aol.com Web site: www.nsdc.org Editor: Joan Richardson Designer: Sue Chevalier NSDC STAFF Executive director Dennis Sparks (SparksNSDC@aol.com) Deputy executive director Stephanie Hirsh (NSDCHirsh@aol.com) Director of publications Joan Richardson (NSDCJoan@aol.com) Director of programs Mike Murphy (NSDCMurphy@aol.com) Director of special projects Joellen Killion (NSDCKillio@aol.com) Business manager Leslie Miller (NSDCLeslie@aol.com) BOARD OF TRUSTEES Mike Ford, president (2002) Deborah Childs-Bowen (2003) Lenore Cohen (2002) Bobb Darnell (2001) Cindy Harrison (2002) Marti Richardson (2001) Carole Schmidt, president-elect (2003) Scotty Scott (2003) Rosie Vojtek, past president (2001) COPYING/REPRINT POLICY NSDC members may make up to 30 copies of individual Tools For Schools articles. Each copy must include a full citation of the source. For permission to make more copies than that or to reprint an article from any NSDC publication, please fax your request on your organization s letterhead to Joan Richardson at (313) 824-5062. Please allow two weeks for a response. No e-mail requests accepted. Past issues of NSDC publications have focused on a number of strategies that would benefit a school that is working with learning teams. This is just a sampling of other resources that can be found on the NSDC web site, www.nsdc.org/library.htm, or ordered through the NSDC Online Bookstore.! Developing norms was the focus of the August/September 1999 issue of Tools for Schools.! Action research was the focus of the February/March 2000 issue of Tools for Schools.! Collecting data was the focus of the October/November 2000 Tools for Schools and the Winter 2000 issue of the Journal of Staff Development! Examining student work was the focus of the February/March 2001 issue of Tools for Schools and the May 2001 issue of Results. BACK COPIES Members may order back copies of Tools For Schools at the following rates. Non-member rates are higher. 1-25 copies: $2 each. 26-49 copies: $1.40 each. 50-100 copies: $1.25 each. 100+ copies: $1each. To order, contact NSDC s main business office. Postmaster: Send address changes to the National Staff Development Council, PO Box 240, Oxford, OH 45056. NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL PAGE 7

Tools For Schools August/September 2001 7 good reasons to join the team Ask Dr. Developer Dr. Developer has all the answers to questions that staff developers ask. (At least he thinks he does!) QThe school year has just started and already my principal wants teachers to divide into learning teams. I m already an excellent teacher and I find it hard to believe that taking time away from my classroom is somehow going to help my students learn more. My students need more of my time, not less! Why would my students benefit if I spend more time with other teachers? ALearning teams can benefit you and your students in at least seven ways. (I could come up with more reasons but the editor never gives me more space!) 1) Having teachers participate in learning teams is a powerful example for your students about the importance of learning. When students see you learn, they are seeing that their teachers value learning for themselves as well as for their students. You can build on that for your students by making direct and frequent references to the learning that you re doing, pointing out what you learned and what you do in your classroom as a result of that learning. 2) Learning teams give teachers an opportunity to experience a way of learning that they can use with their students. As teachers become more comfortable with this style of learning, they are more likely to borrow these ideas for their classrooms. 3) Working with colleagues on issues focused on student learning builds a sense of trust in a school. That can significantly alter the atmosphere in a school and in a district. 4) Learning teams are more efficient than pulling teachers from their classrooms and sending them to workshops to learn. 5) Learning teams respect the knowledge and skills that teachers already have. They encourage teachers to draw on resources closest to them the other teachers in their own buildings and districts. 6) Some of the best learning that teachers do involves working alongside other teachers who are familiar with the same group of students and the expectations of the school district. That might mean talking with them about problems they face with challenging students, observing them while they teach, and offering feedback. 7) Even excellent teachers need to work with other teachers and continue to learn about their practice. Not only will other teachers benefit from the opportunities to learn from you, you will be enriched by spending this learning time with your colleagues. NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL Member Services PO Box 240 Oxford, Ohio 45056 Membership info: (800) 727-7288 Tools may be copied and used in workshops.

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2001 INSIDE Tools For SchoolsTM A bi-monthly publication supporting student and staff learning through school improvement NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL www.nsdc.org 3 Tuning Protocol 4 Collaborative Assessment Conference 5 Standards in Practice 6 Descriptive Review 7 Resources 8 Ask Dr. Developer Select a strategy for examining student work. As various organizations have become interested in the strategy of examining student work, different protocols have been developed to guide that work. A protocol is simply a structure and guide for a group s conversation regarding a piece of student work. The protocols are designed to provide a safe place for teachers to share their students work while also encouraging an honest exchange among participants. Every protocol has been designed to emphasize a different aspect of evaluation. Some, like the Collaborative Assessment Conference, emphasize describing the student work. Others, like the Coalition of Essential Schools Tuning Protocol, em- Examining student work has always been part of a teacher s job. But, in recent years, that practice has moved from being a solitary activity to being a more collaborative effort in which teachers learn about their practice by sharing with and listening to colleagues. In the hierarchy of professional development practices, examining student work would rank near the top because of the way that teachers work together to sharpen their practice to improve student learning. Group Wise Strategies for examining student work together By Joan Richardson phasize evaluative feedback from participants. Selecting a design that fits the culture of a school is a crucial factor in successfully using that design. The tools on Pages 3, 4, 5, and 6 provide various options for examining student work. School teams may want to practice several options before identifying one that best fits their school. Schools may also discover that one strategy works best for one team while another team prefers a different strategy. To learn more about practical options, visit the Learning About Student Work web site maintained by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform (www.lasw.org). That web site includes a synopsis of about a dozen strategies for examining stu- Continued on Page 2

Tools For Schools NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL Strategies for examining student work together Continued from Page One dent work and links to learn more about each of them. Opt for anonymity. To introduce the process and to help teachers become comfortable with the concept, consider doing one or two practice sessions. Bring in student work that does not belong to any of the participants. Visit the Learning about Student Work web site (www.lasw.org) and look for samples of student work that could be used for this practice session. Or, tap colleagues at another school for samples of student work. Teachers are often quite shy about bringing their own student work to the table. They feel very apologetic. They feel that others might castigate them for the errors, for work that s not perfectly done, said Lois Easton, director of professional development at the Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center in Estes Park, Colo. Easton does extensive work with tuning protocols developed by the Coalition of Essential schools. Practicing on student work in which they have no investment can help teachers feel more comfortable about the conversations they might hear regarding the work of their students. Select a project, task, or assessment that addresses one of the schoolwide goals for student performance. The task should require that students produce something that demonstrates what they have learned. This could be a longterm project or a short-term task. Whatever the final result, the student product or performance should be something significant, not a worksheet, quiz, or test. Geneva City Schools in Geneva, N.Y., wanted students to do more writing in math as a way to improve their ability to explain how they solved math problems. So teachers assembled by grade February/March 2001 level to study students math journals, said Jody Hoch, now director of mathematics for the Rush-Henrietta Central School District in upstate New York. Collect documents that will help the study group participants understand the project or task. These might include the initial assignment, scoring/grading criteria (or rubrics), objectives of the assignments, exemplars, models, timelines, checklists, etc. Think about other key information participants will need to understand the project or task and that can be shared succinctly. The presenting teacher should be prepared to briefly describe the context of the student work. The documents listed above would be used to illustrate his or her points during that presentation. Select samples of student work that demonstrate authentic student responses to the project or task. Choose two or three samples to provide contrast. Teachers often find that a sample of work that shows promise but is not a stellar response to the assignment provides the best basis for feedback. Work selected may include final products, drafts, reflections, etc. The Annenberg Institute for School Reform suggests a variety of ways to select student work samples: n Written work (or artwork) from several students in response to the same assignment. n Several pieces of work from one student in response to different assignments. n One piece of work from a student who completed the assignment successfully and one piece from a student who was not able to complete the assignment successfully (same assignment for both). n Work done by students working in groups (include work of at least two groups that were given the same assignment). n Videotape, audio tape, and/or photographs of students working, performing, or presenting their work. This might be PAGE 2 particularly useful for very young children who haven t yet acquired adequate written communication skills. Watch the details. If possible, remove student names from the samples. Make enough copies of the student work so that each participant has his or her own copy. Ensure that the facilitator knows in advance about any unique types of student work, such as sculpture or an entire portfolio of work, that are not easily duplicated. That will enable the facilitator to adapt the format accordingly. If the student work is a video, a fiveminute clip is usually sufficient to demonstrate the work. Prepare a focusing question. The presenting teacher should prepare a focusing question about the work that addresses a real interest or concern. Questions typically focus on either inputs (the assignment, teacher s support of student performance) or outputs (quality of student work, teacher s assessment of the work). A broader question may elicit a wide range of feedback and this may be desirable. For example: How can I support higher quality presentations? (input) What are the strengths and weaknesses you see in the student presentations? (output) A narrower question might provide the kinds of feedback the teacher finds most useful. For example: How can my prompt bring out more creativity in the students work? (input) What evidence is there in the student work of mathematical problem solving? (output) Remember, even with a narrower focus question, participants will offer a range of feedback on and off the question. See the February 2001 issue of Results to read about the use of tuning protocols, one strategy for examining student work.

NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL Tools For Schools Tuning Protocol BACKGROUND: The Tuning Protocol was developed by the Coalition of Essential Schools to provide teachers with feedback on authentic assessments (exhibitions, portfolios, etc.). A teacher or a team of teachers presents samples of student work and the context for the work. The presenter then offers a focusing question. After reviewing the work, participants offer feedback. FACILITATION: Can be facilitated by someone inside or outside the group. tips When looking for evidence of students thinking: TIME: One hour. Directions PRESENTATION. Time: 15 minutes I Presenter shares the student work and sets the context by describing the teaching/ learning situation. Presenter poses one or two key questions to be answered. I As the presenter speaks, participants are quiet, taking notes. CLARIFYING QUESTIONS. Time: 5 minutes. I Participants ask non-evaluative questions about the presentation, such as What happened before X? What did you do next? I I I Stay focused on the evidence that is present in the work. Look openly and broadly; don t let your expectations cloud your vision. Look for patterns in the evidence that provide clues to how and what the student was thinking. INDIVIDUAL WRITING. Time: 5 minutes. I Participants write individually about the presentation. PARTICIPANT DISCUSSION. Time: 15 minutes. I Presenter turns to one side and listens silently during this time. I Participants discuss among themselves, exploring issues raised during the presentation, striving to understand the situation, and raising possible answers to the questions. PRESENTER REFLECTION. Time: 15 minutes I Presenter talks about the participants discussion. I Participants are silent, taking notes as the presenter speaks. DEBRIEFING. Time: 10 minutes I Presenter and participants discuss both the process and the content of the protocol. Source: Lois Easton, professional development director, Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center, Estes Park, Colo., (970) 586-7109, e-mail: leaston@psd.k12.co.us. Source: Some Guidelines for Learning From Student Work, Horace 13 (2), November 1996. Horace is a publication of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Available online at www.essentialschools.org/pubs/ horace/13/v13n02.html. February/March 2001 PAGE 3

Tools For Schools NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL Collaborative Assessment Conference tips When listening to colleagues thinking: I Listen without judging. BACKGROUND: Developed by Harvard s Project Zero, the Collaborative Assessment Conference provides a structure for groups of teachers to look closely at student work, describe it, ask questions about it, and explore implications for instruction. In this practice, describing the assignment and other context factors for the student work is not discussed until participants have described the work and asked questions about it. FACILITATION: An experienced facilitator should lead this process. TIME: 45 to 60 minutes. I I I I I Tune in to differences in perspective. Use controversy as an opportunity to explore and hear the perspectives of others. Focus on understanding where different interpretations come from. Make your own thinking clear to others. Be patient and persistent. Directions GETTING STARTED. The group chooses a facilitator to guide participants. The presenting teacher shares copies of the selected work, without commenting about the work or the assignment. DESCRIBING THE WORK. The group describes any aspect of the work they notice. They do not make judgments about the quality of the work or their personal preferences. RAISING QUESTIONS. The group asks questions about the child, the assignment, the curriculum, or any other area. The presenting teacher takes notes but does not respond. SPECULATING ABOUT WHAT THE STUDENT IS WORKING ON. The group guesses about what the child was working on when he/she created the piece. This could include ways the student was trying to fulfill the assignment, skills the child was trying to master, questions the child was trying to answer, or ideas he/she was trying to express. THE PRESENTING TEACHER SPEAKS. The presenting teacher now adds perspective on each of the previous phases of the conference. The teacher provides his or her own perspective on the student s work and responds to questions or issues raised by the group. IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING. Everyone is invited to share any thoughts about the student work. These could include thoughts about their own teaching, student learning, or ways to support a particular child in reaching his/her goals. FINAL REFLECTION. At this time, participants have an opportunity to reflect on the process of their own thinking during the conference. Source: Some Guidelines for Learning From Student Work, Horace 13 (2), November 1996. Horace is a publication of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Available online at www.essentialschools.org/pubs/ horace/13/v13n02.html. February/March 2001 Source: Harvard Project Zero, a 30-year-old research group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, works with individuals, schools, and other institutions to help create communities of reflective, independent learners; to enhance deep understanding within disciplines; and to promote critical and creative thinking. For more information, contact Harvard Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 321 Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138, (617) 495-4342, fax (617) 495-9709, e-mail: info@pz.harvard.edu, web site: http://pzweb.harvard.edu. PAGE 4

NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL Tools For Schools Standards in Practice BACKGROUND: Standards in Practice was developed by The Education Trust as a quality control tool for analyzing and improving the quality of instruction. SIP is typically used in bi-monthly meetings of small teams of teachers, guidance counselors, and parents. The process calls for a close examination of teachers assignments, student work, and the relevant standard or set of standards. FACILITATION: Usually done by a coach from outside the school. tips When reflecting on your own thinking: TIME: 90 to 120 minutes. Directions 1. A volunteer teacher brings to the meeting a set of student work, along with the assignment. It must be ordinary, right-off-the-desk work. 2. Group members do the assignment themselves in order to experience the task presented to students. 3. Team members identify the state or local standards (or national standards, if both state and local standards are lacking) that align with the assignment. Note: This step has a secondary benefit: In many cases, teachers, parents, and counselors are less familiar with the standards and/or the assessments aligned to them than they should be. Looking through the standards to find those that match gives team members experience with the language and organization of the standards. 4. Without looking at the student work, the team constructs a scoring guide (rubric) for this specific assignment. The scores go from 4, which is an ideal portrait of work that would satisfy this assignment, down to 1, which describes minimal effort. The rubric must include descriptions of exactly what the teacher wants to see in successful work. Descriptions of work worthy of a 4 must include words denoting quality, expressions such as convincingly persuades, vividly portrays, proves without question. It cannot just list features alone. I I I I Ask yourself, Why do I see this student work in this way? What does this tell me about what is important to me? Look for patterns in your own thinking. Tune in to the questions that the student work and your colleagues comments raise for you. Compare what you see and what you think about the student work with what you do in the classroom. 5. The team uses this scoring guide to score the student work. Team members confine their comments to the work and do not make references to the student who created the work. 6. The team summarizes what happened during the session and makes a plan of action. Source: Examining student work, by Ruth Mitchell, Journal of Staff Development, Summer 1999 (Vol. 20, No. 3). For more information, contact the Education Trust at 1725 K Street NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20006, (202) 293-1217, fax (202) 293-2605, e-mail: rmitchell@edtrust.org. Education Trust s web site is www.edtrust.org. Source: Some Guidelines for Learning From Student Work, Horace 13 (2), November 1996. Horace is a publication of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Available online at www.essentialschools.org/pubs/ horace/13/v13n02.html. February/March 2001 PAGE 5

Tools For Schools NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL Descriptive Review When you reflect on the process of looking at student work: I I I I I I I I I tips What did you see in this student s work that was interesting or surprising? What did you learn about how this student thinks and learns? What about the process helped you see and learn these things? What did you learn from listening to your colleagues that was interesting or surprising? What new perspectives did your colleagues provide? How can you use your colleagues perspectives? What questions about teaching and assessment did looking at this student s work raise for you? How can you pursue these questions further? Are there ideas you would like to try in your classroom as a result of looking at the student s work? Source: Some Guidelines for Learning From Student Work, Horace 13 (2), November 1996. Horace is a publication of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Available online at www.essentialschools.org/pubs/ horace/13/v13n02.html. February/March 2001 BACKGROUND: Several variations exist for the Descriptive Review. All of them feature close, collaborative description of a student s work as well as the child who created that work. A teacher typically requests a review because he or she has questions about the child. Any artifact of student work can be the subject of a descriptive review as long as participants can view it during their discussion. FACILITATION: Should be provided by an experienced facilitator. TIME: At least 45 minutes. Directions 1. The facilitator introduces the student work and describes what participants should try to see in the work the underlying values and principles, the habits of mind, the assumptions, etc. Time: 2 minutes. 2. Presenters describe their work in detail. Reviewers take notes. Time: 10 minutes for each presenter. 3. Reviewers may ask clarifying questions. Time: 3 minutes. 4. The facilitator begins the first round of discussion by asking, What do you see? Describe this work physically. Describe this work as literally as you can. Reviewers respond in turn around the circle. Time: 3-5 minutes. 5. The facilitator summarizes what is heard, restates important themes and ideas that emerged from the description before going on to the next round. Time: 2 minutes. 6. The facilitator moves into the next round of questioning, framing each round with a guiding question. As the rounds of questions proceeds, the facilitator guides the discussion into becoming less literal. Reviewers should move into discussion of assumptions, values, compromises, patterns, images, etc. Time: 3-5 minutes each round. 7. The facilitator summarizes at the end of each round. 8. The facilitator makes a final summation of the reviewers descriptions. Time: 2 minutes. 9. The facilitator invites the reviewers to offer suggestions or make recommendations to the presenters. The facilitator invites the presenters to share with participants any new insights as a result of listening to the descriptions. Time: 10 minutes. Source: Lois Easton, professional development director, Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center, Estes Park, Colo., (970) 586-7109, e-mail: leaston@psd.k12.co.us. PAGE 6

Learning about NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL examining student work N Examining student work, by Ruth Mitchell, Journal of Staff Development Summer 1999. Presents plan used by the Education Trust for examining student work. Available at www.nsdc.org/library/ studentwork.html. N Hoover Middle School Teachers Examine Student Work, by John Norton. Describes the work of the history team at Hoover Middle School in Long Beach, Calif., which meets weekly to scrutinize student work and their own lessons. On the web version, listen in on an actual critical friends session, examine the student work yourself, and review the Hoover teachers tips for other teachers who want to start their own collaborative groups. Available online at www.middleweb.com/ Hooverpromo.html. N Learning to teach better by examining student work. A budding trend and the research behind it, by Debra Williams, Catalyst: Voices of Chicago School Reform, December 1999. Includes teacher stories, research findings, and examples of student work (high-scoring, typical and low-scoring student work from grade 6 writing) accompanied by the assignments and teacher analysis. Available at www.catalyst-chicago.org/12-99/ 129toc.htm. N Looking at Student Work: A Window into the Classroom by Annenberg Institute for School Reform. 1997. 28-minute video. Features students, teachers, and administrators at Norview High School in Norfolk, Virginia, as they discuss their experiences in looking at student work. For ordering information, visit www.aisr.brown.edu/ publications/pubvs.html. N Looking at Student Work web site, maintained by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Offers extensive resources for studying student work. Visit www.lasw.org. N Looking Collaboratively at Student Work: An Essential Toolkit, by Kathleen Cushman, Horace 13 (2), November 1996. Horace is a publication of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Describes several strategies for examining student work, including the Coalition s tuning protocol. The entire issue is available online at www.essentialschools.org/pubs/horace/ 13/v13n02.html. N Looking Together At Students Work: A Companion Guide to Assessing Student Learning by Tina Blythe, David Allen, and Barbara S. Powell. New York: Teachers College Press, 1999. Provides strategies and resources for working together to examine and discuss student work such as science projects, essays, art work, math problems, and more. Offers a clear process for starting and sustaining collaborative discussions of student work and student learning and detailed descriptions of two structures for examining student work, the Tuning Protocol and the Collaborative Assessment Conference. To order, visit www.teacherscollegepress.com. N The Cart Before the Horse Before the Cart: How Deeper Understandings of Standards, Instruction, and Assessment Can Emerge from Examining Student Work by Don Glass (2000). Posted by the Rethinking Accountability initiative of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Documents discussions from two meetings where teachers, parents, and other stakeholders collaboratively examined a piece of student art and writing. Available online at www.aisr.brown.edu/accountability/lswa/speakout/index.html. N Student work: This focus for staff development leads to genuine collaboration, by Anne Lewis, Journal of Staff Development, Fall 1998. This article was an excerpt from the following article: Teachers in the driver s seat, by Anne Lewis, The Harvard Education Letter, March/April 1998. PAGE 7 ISSN 0276-928X Tools For Schools Tools For Schools is published five times a year (August, October, December, February and April) by the National Staff Development Council, PO Box 240, Oxford, OH 45056, for $49 of standard and comprehensive membership fees. MAIN BUSINESS OFFICE PO Box 240, Oxford, Ohio 45056 (513) 523-6029 (800) 727-7288 (513) 523-0638 (fax) E-mail: NSDCoffice@aol.com Web site: www.nsdc.org Editor: Joan Richardson Designer: Susan M. Chevalier NSDC STAFF Executive director Dennis Sparks (SparksNSDC@aol.com) Deputy executive director Stephanie Hirsh (NSDCHirsh@aol.com) Director of publications Joan Richardson (NSDCJoan@aol.com) Director of programs Mike Murphy (NSDCMurphy@aol.com) Director of special projects Joellen Killion (NSDCKillio@aol.com) Business manager Leslie Miller (NSDCLeslie@aol.com) BOARD OF TRUSTEES Mike Ford, president (2002) Deborah Childs-Bowen (2003) Lenore Cohen (2002) Bobb Darnell (2001) Cindy Harrison (2002) Marti Richardson (2001) Carole Schmidt, president-elect (2003) Scotty Scott (2003) Rosie Vojtek, past president (2001) COPYING/REPRINT POLICY NSDC members may make up to 30 copies of individual Tools For Schools articles. Each copy must include a full citation of the source. For permission to make more copies than that or to reprint an article from any NSDC publication, please fax your request on your organization s letterhead to Joan Richardson at (313) 824-5062. Please allow two weeks for a response. No e-mail requests accepted. BACK COPIES Members may order back copies of Tools For Schools at the following rates. Non-member rates are higher. 1-25 copies: $2 each. 26-49 copies: $1.40 each. 50-100 copies: $1.25 each. 100+ copies: $1each. To order, contact NSDC s main business office. Postmaster: Send address changes to the National Staff Development Council, PO Box 240, Oxford, OH 45056. February/March 2001

Tools For Schools NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL Not for everyone Ask Dr. Developer Dr. Developer has all the answers to questions that staff developers ask. (At least he thinks he does!) QI m intrigued by the idea of having teachers work together to examine student work. But I wonder if my school is prepared for this. How can I tell if we re ready? AWorking together to study student work is an intensive process. Collegiality needs to be part of the culture of a school if this study of student work is going to be successful. That means that teachers must already be comfortable working with each other and learning from other. There must be a respectful and trusting atmosphere in the building. Although collaborating to examine student work should enhance that trust and respect, it s unlikely that this practice, by itself, would create that atmosphere. So, if you re working in a school where teachers are accustomed to going in the room and closing the door, you may not be ready to jump into this practice. Ask yourself these questions about your school. Are teachers already accustomed to looking at student data? Do they do this alone or do they do this as a group? Do teachers already work together on curriculum committees? Do they write curriculum together? Do they have regular planning time with each other? Are they involved in other forms of collaborative professional development study groups, peer coaching, mentoring, etc.? If you believe that examining student work is a goal you want to work towards, consider laying the groundwork for that by working in one of these other areas first. There are also other factors that will impact a school s readiness for this practice. STANDARDS. The school should already be using standards. Teachers must have some framework to operate within when they re examining student work. They need to know the expectations for students. TIME. Teachers also need time to do this work. In many districts, that will require changes in union contracts or, at a minimum, a recognition that teachers participating in this practice need the opportunity to be flexible about their time. Examining student work is not a task for teachers who like to keep one eye on the clock. EXPERTISE. When a school begins to explore this practice, they probably will initially want help from an outside facilitator who has been trained to lead this process. NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL Member Services PO Box 240 Oxford, Ohio 45056 Membership info: (800) 727-7288 TOOLS MAY BE COPIED AND USED IN WORKSHOPS.

tteachers 3 TEACHING TEACHERS Vol. 4, No. 1 September 2008 F O R A D Y N A M I C C O M M U N I T Y O F T E A C H E R L E A D E R S Tap the power of peers What s inside Lessons from a coach Work on language, assume positive intentions when coaching, says Amber Jones. Page 5 Voice of a teacher leader Bill Ferriter believes that compassionate colleagues can solve the retention problem. Page 6 B y L o i s B r o w n E a s t o n First-year teacher Francine Gillespie waited in the 3rdgrade office for her colleagues. She had brought student work to share a science report she d chosen randomly from her students reports on the galaxy. She couldn t wait for her colleagues feedback and suggestions on the quality of the work and their ideas for her to improve her teaching of this unit. Two miles away, four teachers stood in Bud Collier s room, jotting notes on clipboards as Bud taught a mathematics lesson they had created together. One watched a particular student; another scanned the room every 60 seconds; a third noted the work of a pair of Peer-to-peer professional learning takes a variety of powerful forms students in the back of the room. Later, they would meet for a colloquium. Bud would describe how he had felt teaching the group-created lesson; the others would chime in with the data they had collected. In the high school across from Bud Collier s middle school, Enrique Chama summarized his research for the social studies staff. He described why he chose to research the effect of higher-level questioning. He had documented that students resist venturing outside their comfort zone with analysis and synthesis questions and shared what he had done to make higher- Focus on NSDC s standards To be useful, data need a strenuous workout. Page 7 Research brief Direct instruction in writing helps students learn. Page 9 NSDC tool Assess how your group is implementing NSDC s Context standards. Page 11 ns dc National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org NSDC s purpose: Every educator engages in effective professional learning every day so every student achieves.

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 2 TAP THE POWER OF PEERS CHARACTERISTICS OF POWERFUL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING Powerful professional learning: Begins with what will really help young people learn. It results in application in the classroom. Requires collecting, analyzing, and presenting real data. Because it is about what happens in the classroom, it is content-rich. It may never formally end; as classroom situations change, new questions arise leading to new answers and more new questions. Honors the staff s professionalism, expertise, experiences, and skills. Although they may work alone on some aspects of professional learning, such as Chama s action research project, powerful professional learning is collaborative or has collaborative aspects to it. Faculty are more likely to buy in to professional learning because they understand the need and respond to it by learning and helping each other implement changes. Establishes a culture of quality. The conversation in the hallways, faculty lounge, and meetings changes. Slows the pace of schooling. Each professional learning activity requires reflection, as well as sharing thoughts and ideas. Many educators organize themselves into professional learning communities to ensure that they have regularly scheduled time to continue their own learning, help others learn, and make sense of what s going on in school. order questions a regular feature of class discussions. His data, collected over four months, were impressive, and his colleagues agreed to try variations of his processes in their own classes if he would coach them. These teachers (their names have been changed) were engaged in peer-to-peer professional learning. Gillespie had brought student work to be examined using a tuning protocol at a grade-level meeting. Her colleagues had taken care of other business online beforehand so they could devote this meeting to professional learning. Anyone from Collier s vertical learning community could have taught the lesson he taught; the team had worked on it as part of lesson study which brought together district mathematics teachers from 6th through 10th grades. Chama was sharing the results of an action research project with his professional learning community. Professional learning is the learning that teachers do themselves and with each other. Professional development, although valuable, usually involves outsiders who develop and train people. Professional development is sometimes the best way a faculty can learn something new, and most of us would prefer to be trained in something like lifesaving. The problem is that professional development often is a one-shot situation, and after the speaker or trainer departs or the university course ends, although teachers have the best intentions, they are unable to implement what they learned. They may have no support so that when there are problems, they have no one to turn to. They may find it easier to keep doing what is familiar, despite initial excitement about change. Other professional learning activities In addition to the professional learning activities Gillespie, Collier, and Chama engaged in, consider these: Building assessments or rubrics together; Analyzing and revising curriculum; Conducting focus groups with students to get student voices; Analyzing videotapes of teaching; Participating in a book or article study; Using any of the protocols described by the National School Reform Faculty; A simple three-part definition of professional learning communities is: A group of educators who meet regularly to engage in professional learning... To enhance their own practice as educators... In order to help all students succeed as learners. GET THE POWER Read about 23 successful professional learning strategies in Powerful Designs for Professional Learning. The expanded second edition introduces new chapters on classroom walkthroughs, differentiated coaching, dialogue, and video. Available through store.nsdc.org. National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2008

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 3 TAP THE POWER OF PEERS Developing and analyzing case studies, or using those available online; Analyzing assignments (Standards in Practice); Developing portfolios to share; Keeping journals and discussing key experiences with each other; or Shadowing students (or adults) in one s own or another school. These and other strategies are fully described in Powerful Designs for Professional Learning (NSDC, 2008). How to get started Professional learning starts in many schools by forming professional learning communities. However, unless teachers engage in professional learning, professional learning communities risk becoming just business as usual, rather than a time for professional learning. Beware the statement, Oh, we do professional learning communities in a school that may merely have renamed faculty, grade-level, or department meetings. A simple three-part definition of professional learning communities is: A group of educators who meet regularly to engage in professional learning... To enhance their own practice as educators... In order to help all students succeed as learners. To be a true professional learning community, all three parts must be in place. Professional learning is not a business-as-usual agenda full of items to be decided or announcements to be made. Some characteristics of professional learning communities are variable, however, such as: WHAT THE GROUP CALLS ITSELF The earliest form of a professional learning community was probably a Critical Friends Group. A group can call itself a professional learning community if it is really engaged in all three parts of the definition. THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN THE GROUP Sometimes two or three close colleagues form a professional learning community. Sometimes a whole faculty participates in a single professional learning community. There s no perfect number, except as participants consider air time. In a group of 10 or more, meeting for an hour or so, participants may become frustrated because they do not have time to talk. At the other end of the range, a group of three to four may lack diversity. Go for eight to 10 members and adjust as necessary by adding more groups. HOW LONG THE GROUP MEETS Some professional learning strategies can be accomplished in 30 minutes; some take a few hours or more. Some require weekly meetings; some require monthly meetings. Some are better done when school is in session; others are better done after school or during breaks (with the teachers receiving compensation). The meeting time can vary according to what members want; however, professional learning communities should be scheduled ahead of time so that they have a regular place on the calendar. The best way to get started is to start. Find someone who would also like to engage in professional learning. Decide when and where to meet. Informally share what you re learning. ( Joe and I looked at student portfolios the other day. ) Be sure to share information with the school administrator and ask for time to share formally during a faculty meeting. Gradually invite other teachers to join you or start their own groups. The impetus to start professional learning communities and engage in professional learning can come from teachers themselves or be launched by administrators, preferably with the help of a design team composed of those teachers most interested in participating. Professional learning communities, like most collaborative efforts, are unlikely to survive an executive mandate: You, you, and you be a professional learning community. It s OK to start small with two or three people sharing their professional practice, their students work, and the questions, dilemmas, and problems that inevitably arise. Professional learning can be contagious. When teachers talk about what they are learning, they infect others around them, who (because learning is natural) may then spread learning to their colleagues. START WITH YOURSELF Ask colleagues to help you examine a piece of student work or an aspect of your professional practice; have a peer serve as facilitator and timer for the process. Take an article to a faculty meeting and ask if other faculty members want to form an ad hoc discussion group. Ask colleagues for help writing an assignment. Develop a case study about a student who is bewildering you and ask others to study it with you. National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2008

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 4 Don t let excuses delay professional learning. If you wait until the school culture is perfect and collegial trust is rampant, you will never begin. Professional learning activities themselves often foster trust, and team-building exercises don t mean much unless they happen when people work on real problems using a professional learning strategy such as a tuning protocol. Start with yourself. Ask colleagues to help you examine a piece of student work or an aspect of your professional practice; have a peer serve as facilitator and timer for the process. Or bring an article to a faculty meeting and ask if other faculty members want to form an ad hoc discussion group. Ask colleagues for help writing an assignment. Develop a case study about a student who is bewildering you and ask others to study it with you. Conclusion What Gillespie, Collier, and Chama do in the classroom is better because they have peer support their students reap the benefits of their teachers professional learning. Gillespie, Collier, and Chama also affect the work of colleagues who hear about what they are doing and want to know more. As their colleagues begin their own journeys into professional learning, they begin to affect the learning of their students. Soon the school as a whole is improving. As more schools sponsor professional learning and the mechanism by which teachers learn (the professional learning community or whatever the learning group may call itself), they turn to the districts for support. Districts become professional learning communities, too. Peer-to-peer professional learning, then, is a powerful way to make change in a system that otherwise seems to resist change. References Easton, L.B. (Ed.). (2008). Powerful designs for professional learning, 2nd Ed. Oxford, OH: NSDC. Ginsberg, M. (2004). Context, in Easton, L.B., (Ed.), Powerful Designs for Professional Learning. Oxford, OH: NSDC. TAP THE POWER OF PEERS Don t let excuses delay professional learning. If you wait until the school culture is perfect and collegial trust is rampant, you will never begin. National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org SEPTEMBER 2008

t3 TEACHERS TEACHING TEACHERS PAGE 8 THE TUNING PROTOCOL: Got an hour? Here is an efficient way to examine student work NSDC TOOL Protocol: A structure and guide for a group s conversation regarding a piece of student work. Examining student work has always been part of a teacher s job. But, in recent years, that practice has moved from being a solitary activity to being more collaborative work in which teachers learn about their practice by sharing with and listening to colleagues. In the hierarchy of professional learning practices, examining student work would rank near the top because of the way that teachers work together to sharpen their practice to improve student learning. Background: The Tuning Protocol was developed by the Coalition of Essential Schools to provide teachers with feedback on authentic assessments (exhibitions, portfolios, etc.). A teacher or team of teachers presents samples of student work and the context for the work. The presenter then offers a focusing question. After reviewing the work, participants offer feedback. Facilitation: Can be facilitated by someone inside or outside the group. Time: One hour. DIRECTIONS Presentation Time: 15 minutes Presenter shares the student work and sets the context by describing the teaching/learning situation. Presenter poses one or two key questions to be answered. As the presenter speaks, participants are quiet, taking notes. Clarifying questions Time: 5 minutes Participants ask non-evaluative questions about the presentation, such as What happened before X? What did you do next? Individual writing Participants write individually about the presentation. Time: 5 minutes Participant discussion Time: 15 minutes Presenter turns to one side and listens silently during this time. Participants discuss among themselves, exploring issues raised during the presentation, striving to understand the situation, and raising possible answers to the questions. Presenter reflection Presenter talks about the participants discussion. Participants are silent, taking notes as the presenter speaks. Time: 15 minutes For more information about examining student work visit www.nsdc.org/library /strategies/ examiningwork.cfm Debriefing Time: 10 minutes Presenter and participants discuss both the process and the content of the protocol. SOURCE: Lois Easton, editor, Powerful Designs for Professional Learning (Oxford, OH: NSDC, 2004.) National Staff Development Council (800) 727-7288 www.nsdc.org OCTOBER 2005

STANDARDS ASSESSMENT INVENTORY Recommendations: Learning Designs Standard Tools to support COMPREHENSIVE strategies

theme / THE BASIC INGREDIENTS WEIGHING the WORKSHOP A S S E S S T H E M E R I T S W I T H S I X K E Y C R I T E R I A F O R P L A N N I N G A N D E V A L U A T I O N BY CATHERINE A. LITTLE AND KRISTINA AYERS PAUL Every teacher can recall a range of experiences in professional development workshops. Some of these may have provided opportunities in which teachers felt engaged, empowered, and supported as learners, while others felt disconnected from practice. Although we recognize that workshops, particularly those with no follow-up support, are not the ideal learning experience for teachers, we also acknowledge that some form of workshop is still a common approach in professional development in the United States. Therefore, even within a context calling for more comprehensive professional development, the workshop merits careful examination in terms of the quality of learning it can provide. Designers, facilitators, and evaluators need tools to guide reflection on quality that will lead to the best possible learning experience for teachers. We developed and used the planning and evaluation framework described here as part of a statewide evaluation of professional development for K-12 teachers in a variety of CATHERINE A. LITTLE (catherine.little @uconn.edu) is assistant professor in the department of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut. KRISTINA AYERS PAUL (kristina.paul@uconn.edu) is a doctoral student in the department of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut. disciplines (Little, Paul, Wilson, Kearney, & Hines, 2008). While we developed this framework as a tool for formative evaluation, we expect that it will be equally useful to planners as a guide for designing workshop-style professional development. FRAMEWORK As we prepared to evaluate professional development that incorporated workshops, we continually returned to key principles such as those stated in the recent NSDC report on the status of professional learning. Effective professional development is intensive, ongoing, and connected to practice; focuses on the teaching and learning 26 JSD DECEMBER 2009 VOL. 30, NO. 5 WWW.NSDC.ORG NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

of specific academic content; is connected to other school initiatives; and builds strong working relationships among teachers (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009, p. 5). While we acknowledge the importance of more comprehensive professional development including sustained learning opportunities, we examined how workshops and similar experiences as a part of that system must be designed to reflect certain quality indicators. Our team of current and former classroom teachers and professional development facilitators drew upon their own workshop experiences, as well as the literature on professional development and adult learning, to identify key criteria for high-quality learning within workshops. The criteria fell into six key categories: coherence, climate, instructional strategies, participant engagement, logistical considerations for participant learning, and assessment and feedback. 1. COHERENCE Birman, Desimone, Porter, and Garet (2000) identified coherence as a critical component of professional development that promotes changes in teacher knowledge and classroom practice. In their definition, coherence refers to how professional development connects to teachers classroom practice and professional goals, as well as the standards that guide curriculum and instruction in schools. The following criteria reflect coherence within a high-quality learning experience: Designers build professional development around substantive and connected content that is appropriate to and representative of the relevant discipline and participant teaching assignments. The emphasis is on ensuring that the content itself is relevant to teachers and of high quality. The learning experience offers specific and explicit connections to standards. Not only do facilitators INGREDIENTS for professional learning highlighted in this article: Plan learning experiences thoughtfully. Measure impact of professional learning. Connect learning to the classroom. Differentiate adult learning. make connections to standards in planning a high-quality learning experience, they also devote specific attention to having teachers explore or review those connections within the experience. Facilitators highlight specific connections to assessment through a focus on assessment strategies linked to content and the use of assessment data in instructional decision making. Classroom-applicable activities are integrated into professional development. This criterion does not mean that the learning experience must be make-and-take nor that it must provide activities that teachers will be able to use immediately without careful consideration of how to integrate them. However, high-quality professional development provides specific applications and/or opportunities for teachers to construct their own classroom connections to the content they are learning. High-quality professional development maintains a focus on K-12 students. This criterion seems like common sense, but keeping this focus at the forefront of planning helps to center professional development around the learning implications for classrooms and the ultimate purpose for teacher professional learning. 2. CLIMATE The climate for learning is an important consideration for adult participants, just as it is for K-12 students. The climate of professional development sets a tone for learning, encouraging participant engagement and also communicating the importance of climate for promoting student engagement. Key considerations for climate include understanding participants as adult learners as well as creating a general environment of respect and purposeful activity. Participants are treated as professionals in both explicit and implicit ways. Facilitators demonstrate respect for the professional knowledge and experiences that participants bring. Facilitators also communicate professional respect through a physical environment that is comfortable for adults and includes easy access to important amenities. High-quality learning experiences promote an interactive climate in which participants feel welcome to share ideas, ask questions, and express their opinions and experiences as related to the classroom context. There is an interchange of questions and answers among facilitators and participants. Facilitators invite questions and are responsive in the answers and resources that they recommend. Facilitators also ask questions to prompt discussion, and they encourage interchange among participants, so that an overall professional conversation occurs among the educators present. There is time for discussion and reflection, including specific time allotted for participants to consider how what they are learning theme / THE BASIC INGREDIENTS NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL 800-727-7288 VOL. 30, NO. 5 DECEMBER 2009 JSD 27

theme / THE BASIC INGREDIENTS applies to their own setting. Such reflection time might be guided by structured questions or left more open to participant response. 3. INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES The rationale for the Quality Teaching standard from NSDC s Standards for Staff Development (2001) highlights that to the extent possible, participants in professional development should experience instruction the way that they are intended to use it. Moreover, the Design and Learning standards discuss careful planning of learning experiences for teachers and the integration of theories and research on how adults learn as well as how children learn. These standards inform the criteria for planning and evaluating the strategies and activities used within a professional learning context. Participants in high-quality learning engage in substantive activities that are grounded in quality content, organized around significant learning objectives for teachers and, by extension, their students, and planned so that they engage teachers in critical thinking about their own practice. High-quality professional development uses appropriately varied delivery formats, integrating strategies that are relevant to the content and to the participants. This criterion also emphasizes the importance of using high-quality materials that support content acquisition and delivery. Facilitators model instructional strategies for teacher participants. These learning experiences also provide an effective balance of strategies between those that put teachers in the role of their students and those that address teachers directly as adult learners. Questioning provides the groundwork for active communication between the facilitator and participants. Facilitators model questioning strategies relevant to the content and encourage discussion of question preparation and delivery. They use well-designed questions to guide discussions and small-group activities. High-quality learning reflects attention to varying participant readiness and experience levels. Flexible activities with multiple entry points, respectful discussion, and responsive grouping patterns are among the strategies that facilitators may use to provide a differentiated response to the range of participant readiness levels. High-quality learning uses varying groupings that are appropriate to the tasks. This criterion reflects an overall focus on purposeful organization of activities to promote optimal learning and emphasizes giving teachers options for how and with whom they work. 4. PARTICIPANT ENGAGEMENT Planning for effective professional development includes careful consideration of how and in what grouping context participants will work. Evaluation of these experiences, therefore, can include observation of how participants are involved in activities and the degree to which their engagement is evident. This theme and its criteria are perhaps more relevant for evaluation than for planning, but are included here to emphasize the focus on the teacher as engaged learner. Participant engagement in large-group settings includes attention to how and to what degree participants are involved with learning when a whole group is together, as in a whole-group content delivery context or whole-group discussions. Participant engagement in small-group settings reflects attention to how teachers are invited to work with one another on tasks and discussions, and how on-task learning is fostered by the facilitator and by participants themselves. 5. LOGISTICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR PARTICIPANT LEARNING Planning for professional development requires attention to many organizational and management details. These, too, form part of the overall plan for and assessment of quality. High-quality learning experiences make effective use of time, with purposeful yet flexible organization to maintain focus on intended outcomes and to respond to participant needs. Breaks are strategically provided at regular intervals, are of sufficient length, and end on time, and the overall learning experience adheres to a schedule that respects participant time. The materials and resources supplied to participants are organized and provided in adequate supply. Resources include sufficient detail and documentation to allow participants to recall key understandings at a later time. If appropriate, participants are provided with access and time to use technology that is integrated within the learning opportunity. Facilitators maintain an appropriate participantto-technology ratio and recognize and respect individual readiness levels. 6. ASSESSMENT AND FEEDBACK Just as classroom instruction must be grounded in quality assessment that allows educators to monitor student learning and make instructional decisions based on data, high-quality professional development is also grounded in assessment and incorporates assessment within the overall process. Decision making about professional development is guided by overarching goals and by evidence of learning needs among teachers. Such evidence may be drawn from student assessment data, teachers documented goals for growth, district teacher evaluation data, and other sources. During implementation, ongo- 28 JSD DECEMBER 2009 VOL. 30, NO. 5 WWW.NSDC.ORG NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

theme / THE BASIC INGREDIENTS ing assessment should be incorporated through formal and informal methods. Facilitators use a variety of strategies to check for understanding and to adjust the pace and content of instruction according to teachers demonstrated needs. Participants have multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning. In order to conduct ongoing assessment, facilitators must encourage teachers to communicate what they are learning; moreover, opportunities to demonstrate and share learning help to promote engagement and active connections between the professional development content and classroom practice. As participants demonstrate their learning, facilitators provide respectful and appropriate feedback to help participants evaluate their own progress toward the stated learning objectives and individual professional goals. High-quality professional development is not a one-shot session but includes some version of follow-up, whether a formal follow-up with the same facilitator or a structured ongoing conversation. Although often the workshop-oriented structure does not include this element, it is perhaps the most critical element for improving the likelihood that changes in classroom practice will result. APPLICATIONS OF THE FRAMEWORK We see several possibilities for using these criteria as a framework for planning and evaluating professional development. In our experience as evaluators charged with making formative recommendations to professional learning designers, we identified sample performance indicators for each criterion and looked for evidence of these as we observed the learning in action. We then used our observation notes to highlight areas of strength and raise questions and concerns for facilitators, encouraging them to use our observations in planning their ongoing work with participants. We also see that these criteria might be used as a planning tool, much as students might refer to an assessment rubric as they engage in the development of a product. After articulating professional learning goals and objectives, planners might then use the criteria to ensure that all aspects of creating high-quality learning have been considered in their design. Furthermore, the criteria can guide ongoing evaluation as a school, district, or other learning organization strives to build high-quality learning for teachers that ultimately promote high-quality learning for students. REFERENCES Birman, B.F., Desimone, L., Porter, A.C., & Garet, M.S. (2000, May). Designing professional development that works. Educational Leadership, 57(8), 28-33. Darling-Hammond, L., Wei, R.C., Andree, A., Richardson, N., & Orphanos, S. (2009, February). Professional learning in the learning profession: A status report on teacher development in the United States and abroad. Dallas, TX: NSDC. Little, C.A., Paul, K.A., Wilson, H.E., Kearney, K.L., & Hines, A.H. (2008). Examining professional development: An observational framework. Unpublished instrument, Connecticut Teacher Quality Partnership Grant Evaluation, University of Connecticut. National Staff Development Council. (2001). NSDC s standards for staff development. Oxford, OH: Author. 30 JSD DECEMBER 2009 VOL. 30, NO. 5 WWW.NSDC.ORG NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

THE LEARNING System System FOR A DYNAMIC COMMUNITY OF DISTRICT LEADERS ENSURING SUCCESS FOR ALL STUDENTS Selecting coaches Hiring or selecting the right individuals to serve as coaches is critical to the success of any coaching efforts B Y J O E L L E N K I L L I O N A N D C I N D Y H A R R I S O N Vol. 2, No. 7 April 2007 Most schools and districts implement coaching to improve teaching and student learning. Sometimes, the main purpose of coaching is program implementation, such as a comprehensive school reform program. Sometimes, coaching is implemented to refine instruction in general or to support teachers in adapting instruction to meet the needs of certain groups of students, such as English language learners. Sometimes, coaching is intended to support a certain group of teachers, such as novice teachers. Still other coaching programs strive to improve student learning in a more general way. Once a district decides the goals of coaching, other decisions are easier to make. One of the crucial decisions is whether to deploy coaches at the school or district level. This decision will impact the hiring and selection of coaches, supervision of coaches, standardizing the work of coaches, and establishing relationships with colleagues and supervisors. DISTRICT-LEVEL DEPLOYMENT Districts typically deploy coaches at the district level when they want to support implementation of a districtwide initiative. One district, for example, might want to support implementation of differentiation strategies. Another might be Continued on p. 6 WHAT S INSIDE District Leadership Letting go of district-based professional development isn t easy but it is essential. PAGE 2 Focus on NSDC s Standards Investing in jobembedded strategies is the most effective way to use professional development funds. PAGE 3 NSDC Tool What a district leader needs to know about teamwork is demonstrated in Navigating the Maze. PAGES 4-5 National Staff Development Council 800-727-7288 www.nsdc.org Our goal: All teachers in all schools will experience high-quality professional learning as part of their daily work.

COVER STORY Selecting coaches: School-based vs. district-based SCHOOL-BASED COACHES Advantages Relationship with teachers at site Knowledge of school context In classrooms on a regular basis Trust with teachers Familiarity with students Disadvantages Balancing perspectives of coach, administration, and teachers Being perceived as an evaluator of teachers Being an expert in all areas that the school needs Not spending time in the role Continued from p. 1 implementing a new curriculum. Sometimes, a district with limited funds hires several districtlevel coaches to support all schools. Some states and even districts have implemented coaching support for targeted schools. District-based coaches offer the advantage of: Standardizing program implementation throughout a district; Targeting intervention support to schools with the greatest need; Building deep expertise with a smaller group of staff; Ensuring consistency of message and support; and Ensuring that coaches are providing the designated services. Central office staff typically supervises district-deployed coaches. With accountability to central office, providing ongoing professional development and support to coaches may be easier. But district-deployed coaches come with disadvantages too. They may not develop ongoing, deep relationships with individual staff members. As a result, teachers may view district coaches more as monitors than as supporters. Districtdeployed coaches are likely to be in schools only occasionally and therefore have less opportunity to provide sustained support over time, the kind of support often associated with changing classroom instruction. District-deployed coaches have less familiarity with the culture of the schools they visit because they are not members of the community. They hold status as a visitor to rather than a member of the community. A district with many such coaches may also find it difficult to ensure that services are distributed equitably throughout the district. Principals and school leadership teams may not view district-deployed coaches as partners in the school improvement process. Therefore, the Excerpted from Taking the lead: New roles for teachers and school-based coaches, by Joellen Killion and Cindy Harrson. (NSDC, 2006). Available through the NSDC Online Bookstore, store.nsdc.org. innovation those coaches support may not be viewed as an integral part of the school s program of improvement. SCHOOL-LEVEL DEPLOYMENT Districts typically decide to deploy coaches at the school level because they believe that frequent access to coaching will improve teaching and learning. The authors confess a strong preference for this design. When coaches are part of a school s staff, they develop trusting and productive relationships with staff members and the principal. Principals typically prefer having coaches assigned fulltime to their school so that the coach develops a deep understanding of the school s culture and provides sustained support to teachers over time. Coaches who are in a school full-time can influence change and feel greater responsibility and accountability for improving teaching and student learning. They are invited into classrooms to provide support and to work with teams of teachers in planning learning. They are more aware of the learning needs of teachers and can provide multiple opportunities for at-the-elbow learning. Schoolbased coaches also know the students and therefore are likely to have fewer behavior management issues when modeling in classrooms. Teachers view building-based coaches as partners in the trenches with them rather than visitors from central office. Several potential disadvantages of buildingbased coaches exist. Coaches who reside in one building can be pulled into other duties, such as substituting, when there is a shortage of relief teachers or covering recess/lunch duty when someone is missing or an emergency occurs. They are often pulled into other work that is not part of their primary responsibilities because they Continued on p. 7 6 National Staff Development Council I 800-727-7288 I www.nsdc.org APRIL 2007 I The Learning System

Selecting coaches: School-based vs. district-based COVER STORY Continued from p. 6 are accessible and sometimes coaches work is viewed as unessential. Building-based coaches sometimes are viewed as an extension of the administration because coaches frequently interact with principals to plan and coordinate their work, an essential task for coaches if they want to be effective. Depending on the staff s relationship with the school s administration, this may negatively impact the coach s ability to develop trusting relationships. If the coach was a teacher in the building, teachers may have difficulty shifting their perception of the coach in his or her new role. COMBINED APPROACH Another way to deploy coaches is by combining district and building deployed coaches. Some districts select a pool of coaches, engage principals in identifying candidates for their schools, and then assigning coaches from among that pool. In this case, supervision of coaches can become a district, principal, or shared responsibility. Adams12 Five Star Schools in Thornton, Colo., began its coaching model by deploying coaches from the district level. There was a belief that content-area expertise was the most important factor for impacting student achievement. After several years and multiple evaluations, the district could not show a correlation between coaching and student achievement. They identified changes in teacher practice but the changes were not district- or even schoolwide. They learned that some schools used the services of coaches appropriately while other schools did not use coaching services or used them inappropriately. They also learned that there was limited connection between coaches and all the schools they served, even though the district worked hard to maintain consistency of coaching assignment and to ensure that coaches met frequently to reflect on their work and to learn from one another. After several years, the district switched to school-based coaches. To accomplish this, the district invested more funds to provide more coaches. Principals received support in how to deploy coaches within their school in order to help coaches impact student achievement. These student achievement coaches received more support from both district and school staff to ensure their success. When this shift occurred, the program was more successful. Evaluation of the coaching program after the change indicated an increased use of coaches, greater principal and teacher satisfaction with the program, and increased use of data to drive instruction by school staff members. Adams 12 was also identified as making the greatest improvement in state student achievement tests among all districts in metropolitan Denver. While the evaluation does not allow for conclusions that coaching caused increases in student achievement, it does allow for a conclusion that coaching contributed, since the greatest achievement gains occurred in math, the same content area in which coaches did most of their work. OTHER DECISIONS Regardless of how coaches are deployed, districts must also determine whether coaches work in one school or multiple schools. If coaches work in a single school, they can become deeply immersed in the school culture, develop strong relationships with the staff, and provide consistent, ever-present support. If coaches work in multiple schools, developing strong relationships and providing consistent support may be more challenging, especially if they are in the school only part time. Scheduling and providing follow-up become more challenging, although not impossible. Another decision is whether coaches are full-time or part-time. Full-time coaches obviously have more time allocated to accomplish the job. But, because they are not actively teaching, other teachers may not view them as credible. When coaches are teaching the same grade or content in which they provide support for teachers, they always have current examples, understand the real challenges of the classroom teacher, and can model best practices in their own classrooms.n DISTRICT-BASED COACHES Advantages Deep expertise in area of support Ability to directly relate to central office counterparts Requires limited funds Coach roles and central office communication common across all schools Disadvantages Lack of ongoing relationship with teachers Being able to support teachers often enough to ensure instructional practices are in place Too many people to serve with multiple site assignment Who is the real boss? Building level or district? APRIL 2007 I The Learning System National Staff Development Council I 800-727-7288 I www.nsdc.org 7

theme / WHAT WORKS Coaching THE KEY TO TRANSLATING RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE LIES IN CONTINUOUS, JOB-EMBEDDED LEARNING WITH ONGOING SUPPORT BY JIM KNIGHT In the past decade, interest in the form of professional learning loosely described as coaching has exploded. This growing interest in coaching is likely fueled by educators recognition that traditional one-shot approaches to professional development where teachers hear about practices but do not receive follow-up support are ineffective at improving teaching practices. Much more support is needed to help teachers translate research into practice, and for many districts, that support is coaching. JIM KNIGHT is a researcher at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. He has written several books and articles about instructional coaching and maintains a blog at jimknightcoaching.squarespace.com. You can contact him at jknight@ku.edu. DEFINITION What is coaching? Researchers and practitioners have described several distinct approaches with unique goals and methods. Peer coaching (Showers, 1984), classroom management coaching (Sprick, Knight, Reinke, & McKale, 2006), contentfocused coaching (West & Staub, 2003), and blended coaching (Bloom, Castagna, Moir, & Warren, 2005) are just a few approaches. Three approaches are especially common in today s schools: literacy coaching (Moran, 2007 & Toll, 2005), cognitive coaching (Costa & Garmston, 2002), and instructional coaching (Knight, 2007). Cognitive coaches engage in dialogical conversations with teachers and others, observe them while working, and then use powerful questions, rapport building, and communication skills to empower those they coach to reflect deeply on their practices. The term literacy coach is used widely to refer to educators who use a variety of tools and approaches to improve teachers practices and student learning related to literacy. Instructional coaches partner with teachers to help them incorporate research-based instructional practices into their teaching so that students will learn more effectively. Despite the unique goals and methods of each of these approaches, there are several commonalities: Focus on professional practice. The purpose of most forms of coaching is to improve the ability of a school to educate students by improving the way teachers teach in the classroom. Job-embedded. The professional learning experiences facilitated by coaches are usually directly applicable to teachers classrooms. Teachers who collaborate with coaches make plans, explore content, reflect, and implement new practices that they will use immediately in their lessons. Intensive and ongoing. Coaching is not a one-shot workshop, but rather differentiated professional support, meeting each teacher s unique needs over time. Coaching often occurs one-to-one and may involve several interactions lasting 18 JSD WINTER 2009 VOL. 30, NO. 1 WWW.NSDC.ORG NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

days, weeks, and, in some cases, months. Grounded in partnership. Coaches see themselves as equal partners or collaborators with teachers. Thus, teachers have choice and control over how coaching proceeds. Dialogical. Coaches strive to enable dialogue when they coach teachers. Coaching is not about telling teachers what to do but rather about engaging in reflective conversations where coach and teacher think together. Nonevaluative. Although coaches frequently observe teachers teaching, and, indeed, teachers may observe coaches teaching, coaches do not set themselves up as evaluators of teachers. Rather, they discuss teaching with teachers in a nonjudgmental way. Confidential. Most approaches to coaching describe the relationship as confidential. Coaching will likely be more successful when teachers are comfortable speaking openly about their strengths and concerns. Facilitated through respectful communication. Coaches need to be excellent communicators who articulate their messages clearly, listen respectfully, ask thought-provoking, open-ended questions, and whose observations are energizing, encouraging, practical, and honest. CONDITIONS FOR SUCCESS Between 2005 and 2008, researchers and consultants associated with the Kansas Coaching Project at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning have worked with coaches and other educators in schools, districts, and state agencies in more than 35 states. During these workshops and consultations, certain factors repeatedly surface that appear to be critical for coaching success. Focus and continuity. Districts that attempt to implement too many COACHING practices simultaneously overwhelm teachers with the changes they are expected to implement and decrease their enthusiasm for any change. Similarly, when districts frequently adopt and abandon programs and initiatives, teachers often take a wait-and-see approach to professional learning. Coaches will find a better setting for professional learning if districts have a sustained focus on a few high-leverage strategies. A learning-friendly culture. Teachers are more likely to experiment and learn when they feel respected and free to take risks. Conversely, when teachers feel they are punished more than praised and constantly under scrutiny without sufficient encouragement, their desire to learn may decrease dramatically. Teachers who work in learning-friendly schools will be more much likely to collaborate with coaches. Principal support. Principals need to support their coaches by attending coaching workshops, observing coaches while they conduct model lessons, speaking frequently about the importance of professional learning and coaching, learning what the coach shares with teachers, and meeting frequently with coaches to ensure that their coaches share their vision for professional learning. Clear roles. If teachers perceive their coach as an administrator rather than a peer, they may hesitate to open up about their needs or take risks. Therefore, principals and coaches should ensure that coaches work as peers providing support and service to their colleagues, and principals and other administrators should perform important administrative tasks such as teacher evaluations and walkthroughs. Principals respectfully hold teachers accountable, and coaches provide sufficient support for teacher professional learning. Protect the coaching relationship. Coaching works best when teachers are collaborating with a coach because they want to, not because they are forced to. If a principal tells a teacher they have to work with their coach, the coach may be perceived as a punishment. If a principal strongly encourages a teacher to change, but offers the coach as one of several growth options (others might include books, articles, web sites, and video programs), the coach can be perceived as a lifeline rather than a punishment. Time. The single most powerful way to increase the effectiveness of coaches is to ensure that they have sufficient time for coaching. In conducting research on coaching at many sites around the nation, my colleagues and I ask coaches to map out how they use time in their roles. Overwhelmingly, their maps indicate that less than 25% of their time is spent in coaching tasks. Principals theme / WHAT WORKS NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL 800-727-7288 VOL. 30, NO. 1 WINTER 2009 JSD 19

TEACHER TRANSFER RATE theme / WHAT WORKS and other district leaders need to ensure that they do not ask coaches to do so many noncoaching tasks that they rarely have the opportunity for sustained coaching. Continuous learning. Coaches and administrators should walk the talk when it comes to professional learning by continuously improving their own professional practice. Coaches need to have a deep understanding of the practices or content knowledge they share with teachers as well as the coaching practices and communication skills that are necessary for effective coaching. COACHING Principals need to understand what coaches do, and how they can contribute to conditions that support coaching. Additionally, both coaches and principals need to be coached so that they are constantly learning how to improve the way they lead instructional improvements in schools. WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS For a recent book chapter, Jake Cornett and I reviewed more than 200 articles, presentations, reports, articles, and books that contain some form of research on coaching (Cornett & Coaches need to Knight, 2008). The bulk have a deep of this research was conducted on peer coaching, understanding of the practices cognitive coaching, and or content instructional coaching. In knowledge they one landmark study, Bush share with (1984) conducted a fiveyear study of staff devel- teachers as well as the coaching opment in California. practices and Bush s research team studied the impact various communication skills that are approaches to professional necessary for development had on effective whether or not teachers coaching. used new teaching practices. They found that when teachers were given only a description of new instructional skills, 10% used the skill in the 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% RATE OF TRANSFER INTO CLASSROOM PRACTICE following peer coaching professional development 20% 14-16% 12-13% 10% 10% Workshop, Workshop modeling, Workshop and modeling and practice 0% TYPES OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT classroom. When modeling, practice, and feedback were added to the training, teachers implementation of the teaching practices increased by 2% to 3% each time. When coaching was added to the staff development, however, approximately 95% of the teachers implemented the new skills in their classrooms. (See chart above.) In her book Cognitive Coaching: A Synthesis of the Research (2001, p. 1), Jenny Edwards identified nine anticipated outcomes: 1. Increase in student test scores and other benefits to students ; 2. Growth in teacher efficacy; 3. Increase in reflective and complex thinking among teachers; 4. Increase in teacher satisfaction with career and position; 5. Increase in professional climate at schools; 6. Increase in teacher collaboration; 7. Increase in professional assistance to teachers; 8. Increase in personal benefits to teachers; and 9. Benefit to people in fields other than teaching. 16-19% Workshop, modeling, practice, and feedback 95% Workshop, modeling, practice, feedback, and peer coaching Source: Effective staff development, by Robert N. Bush. In Far West Laboratory (Ed.), Making Our Schools More Effective: Proceedings of Three State Conferences. San Francisco: Author, 1984. In a recent study of instructional coaching (Knight & Cornett, 2008), 51 teachers attended an after-school workshop on unit planning and teaching routine, based on The Unit Organizer (Lenz, Bulgren, Schumaker, Deshler, & Boudah,1994). Teachers were randomly assigned into two groups, one that received coaching and one that did not. Research assistants observed the classes taught by teachers in both groups, watching for evidence of use of the newly learned teaching practice. In classes taught by teachers who were coached, observers saw evidence of use of the unit organizer during 90% of their visits. However, in classes taught by teachers who were not coached, observers saw evidence of use of the unit organizer in only 30% of the classes. It is important to note that research on cognitive coaching doesn t necessarily apply to instructional coaching, and vice versa. Nonetheless, a few generalizations seem to be fairly unavoidable. First, in most of the studies we reviewed, the best implementation rate one could hope for 20 JSD WINTER 2009 VOL. 30, NO. 1 WWW.NSDC.ORG NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

theme / WHAT WORKS following a one-shot workshop was 15%. Second, coaching that focuses on helping teachers implement new practices leads to implementation. Finally, the research on cognitive coaching suggests that this approach has a positive impact on teachers beliefs about their efficacy as teachers. REFERENCES Bloom, G., Castagna, C., Moir, E., & Warren, B. (2005). Blended coaching: Skills and strategies to support principal development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Bush, R.N. (1984). COACHING Effective staff development. In Making our schools more effective: Proceedings of three state conferences. San Francisco: Far West Laboratory. Cornett, J. & Knight, J. (2008). Research on coaching. In J. Knight (Ed.), Coaching: Approaches and perspectives (pp.192-216). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Costa, A. & Garmston, R. (2002). Cognitive coaching: A foundation for renaissance schools. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon. LEARN MORE THE COACHING PROCESS Differentiated Coaching: A Framework for Helping Teachers Change, by Jane Kise. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2006. Taking the Lead: New Roles for Teacher Leaders and School-Based Staff Developers, by Joellen Killion and Cathy Harrison. Oxford, OH: NSDC, 2006. APPROACHES TO COACHING Coaching: Approaches and Perspectives, edited by Jim Knight. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2008. Edwards, J.L. (2008). Cognitive coaching: A synthesis of the research. Highlands Ranch, CO: Center for Cognitive Coaching. Knight, J. (2007). Instructional coaching: A partnership approach to improving instruction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Knight, J. & Cornett, J. (2008). Studying the impact of instructional coaching on teacher practice. Article in preparation. Lenz, B.K., Bulgren, J., Schumaker, J., Deshler, D.D., & Boudah, D. (1994). The unit organizer routine. Lawrence, KS: Edge Enterprises. Moran, M.C. (2007). Differentiated literacy coaching: Scaffolding for student and teacher success. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Showers, B. (1984). Peer coaching: A strategy for facilitating transfer of training. Eugene, OR: Center for Educational Policy and Management. Sprick, R., Knight, J., Reinke, W., & McKale T. (2006). Coaching classroom management: Strategies and tools for administrators and coaches. Eugene, OR: Pacific Northwest Publishing. Toll, C.A. (2005). The literacy coach s survival guide: Essential questions and practical answers. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. West, L. & Staub, F.C. (2003). Content-focused coaching: Transforming mathematics lessons. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. 22 JSD WINTER 2009 VOL. 30, NO. 1 WWW.NSDC.ORG NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

feature coaching of HOW TO BE a WISE CONSUMER COACHING strategies TeAcHeRs can use TO MAXIMIze coaching s BeNeFITs By David Yopp, elizabeth A. Burroughs, Jennifer Luebeck, clare Heidema, Arlene Mitchell, and John sutton Instructional coaching is gaining popularity as a school-based effort to increase teacher effectiveness and student achievement. A coach can be broadly defined as a person who works collaboratively with a teacher to improve that teacher s practice and content knowledge, with the ultimate goal of affecting student achievement. By its very nature, coaching requires effort from both the coach and teacher. Because instructional coaching is collaborative rather than directive, it will be most effective when teachers share responsibility for the outcomes. In our work with coaching in schools, we ve observed behaviors that make teachers effective consumers of coaching. Effective coaching requires feedback. An effective consumer of coaching asks the coach for targeted feedback. One mathematics coach recalled beginning a post-lesson conference by asking, Do you want some feedback from me? The teacher said no, and the coach was left wondering what to do next. In another instance, a coach asked a teacher in a prelesson conference what she would like the coach to look for. The teacher said, Anything. Any advice would be helpful. In a third case, when asked what she would like the coach to look for, the teacher responded that she d recently tried to get more students responding to her high-level, open-ended mathematics questions. Would you watch my questioning strategies and student reactions to help me improve this aspect of my teaching? she asked. The teachers in the first two scenarios were not being good consumers of coaching. Because the coach in the first scenario was working with Knight s (2007) concept of choice and respected the teacher s right to refuse feedback, the coaching session was essentially over when the teacher said no. The second teacher could have contributed more to the optimal coaching situation. While the coach appreciated the teacher s openness, the coach was left wondering what 50 JsD www.learningforward.org February 2011 Vol. 32 no. 1

observations would be most helpful. The coach might point out aspects of teaching the teacher felt she was already good at, possibly offending the teacher and reducing the coaching session s effectiveness. The third teacher exhibited traits of a good consumer of coaching. The coach knew exactly what the teacher wanted to work on, and the teacher and coach had several coaching sessions in which questioning strategies were the focus. The coach was able to help the teacher increase her wait time, develop more challenging content-focused questions, and incorporate strategies to ensure that the majority of students were engaged in important mathematical thinking. Coaching is a reflective process. An effective consumer of coaching is open to reflection and is an active participant in the reflective process. A coach asked a teacher during a post-lesson conference, How do you think it went? and the teacher answered, Fine. The coach asked if there was anything that the teacher had hoped would go better, and the teacher said no. The coach then asked if the teacher would like some feedback, but the teacher appeared to have already disengaged from this reflective opportunity. In a session with a different teacher, when the coach asked the teacher how she felt it went, the teacher said she felt it went well but was concerned that the students didn t really comprehend how the use of manipulatives in the mathematics lesson demonstrated the meaning of addition of fractions. The coach reported, We engaged in a rich conversation about what we thought the students did learn and ways to plan lessons that focused students on the purpose of the lesson. We also developed formative assessments that would help us monitor students understanding the next time the lesson was taught. It was a collaborative process where the teacher and I shared ideas and cooperatively developed a more effective lesson. These two examples demonstrate the importance of reflection. Reflection differs from feedback. Reflection describes a cooperative process between teacher and coach. This might occur during a prelesson conference when a teacher and coach discuss the purpose of an upcoming lesson the coach will observe or reflect on what important content they expect students to learn. Does the lesson involve discovery learning? Will the teacher use direct instruction? What difficulties does the teacher anticipate students will encounter? Knight (2007) and Hull, Balka, and Miles (2009) discuss the importance of reflection in adopting new teaching strategies and in monitoring, evaluating, and modifying them. These discussions target the coach s role in helping teachers to reflect. Yet, for reflection to take place, the teacher must participate in the process and share responsibility with the coach for setting the stage for reflection. During the post-lesson conference, a coach might ask the teacher, How do you think it went? a reflective question suggested by West and Staub (2003) to set the stage for careful consideration and critical assessment of a recently delivered lesson. Teachers must reflect on their broad goals for instruction and communicate them to the coach. What do they expect from the students in the subject area? Is it to become better problem solvers? To engage in more inquiry and exploration? A good consumer of coaching is open to answering these types of questions. Effective coaching requires teachers to communicate their needs. An effective consumer of coaching tells the coach what he or she needs. During the first prelesson conference with a coach, one teacher said, I need help getting my students interested in mathematics. They don t pay attention during my lessons, and even when I do group work, they don t stay focused. Before long, they are off doing other stuff or causing trouble. The coach watched one of this teacher s lessons that involved group work and noticed several issues. The coach reported, I saw ways to improve the tasks she assigned so that instruction was more relevant to the students experiences, ways to present the task so that students would be more engaged and better understand their roles, and ways to improve how she monitored the students as the task unfolded. I modeled a lesson for the teacher, illustrating some strategies for the aspects described above, and together we planned a similar lesson for her to deliver. The teacher came to realize that the problem she had called students interest in mathematics was better addressed by asking how we could engage the students and keep them engaged during a mathematics lesson. This scenario demonstrates how important it is for a coach to understand a teacher s needs. Coaching authors offer advice on how to assess teaching needs (Hansen, 2008), develop links between a coach s goals and a teacher s goals (Morse, 2009), inquire into a teacher s interest (Knight, 2007) and give teachers choices on what to be coached on (Knight, 2007; Hull, Balka, and Miles, 2009). This advice targets the coaches: What advice do teachers need? Good consumers of coaching find ways to clearly communicate their needs to coaches. In our work with teachers and coaches, we use a survey that a coach gives to teachers at the beginning of the semester to set the stage for coaching (see p. 53). This instrument asks teachers to reflect on aspects of their teaching and to indicate whether Because instructional coaching is collaborative rather than directive, it will be most effective when teachers recognize and share responsibility for the outcomes. February 2011 Vol. 32 no. 1 www.learningforward.org JsD 51

feature coaching they would like to be coached on these topics. Teachers can help coaches target their needs by providing this information at the beginning of a school year. Effective coaching requires teachers to communicate their expectations for coaches as the lesson transpires. An effective consumer of coaching tells his or her coach what kind of classroom interaction he or she desires. One of the coaches with whom we ve worked reported observing a lesson where, in the middle of a mathematical explanation, the teacher turned to the coach and asked, Do you know a better way to explain this? The coach was taken aback and had difficulty responding. The coach reported that she would have been better prepared had she known that the teacher wanted that type of involvement. Another coach reported team teaching lessons with a teacher. She and the teacher would even pause lessons to have sidebar chats about what was transpiring and what to do next. This teacher and coach had developed a clear understanding about what role the coach would play during lessons. This same coach reported that she didn t always have this type of role in the teachers classrooms. Her role was always based on a teacher s preferences, goals, and comfort level. In contrast, a different coach reported that on her first visit, a teacher invited her to sit in a corner and observe the lesson. The coach took her place on a stool in back and never got up during that lesson or any other. The teacher might have been open to the coach circulating among the students and observing student work, but the coach never broached the subject. In this last example, we could point the finger at the coach for not clarifying her role with the teacher. But the remedy to the issue was communication, and communication is two-sided. Good consumers of coaching are willing to initiate discussions with their coaches about what level of interaction they expect from coaches in their classrooms. Effective coaching is content-based. An effective consumer of coaching is willing to examine her or his own content knowledge. Many teachers with whom we have worked ask to be coached on teaching strategies that are not content-focused, such as cooperative learning, classroom management, engagement strategies, and wait time. While these are important concerns, such topics need not dominate coaching sessions. There is almost always a way to relate such issues to teaching and learning within a content area. In mathematics, for example, strategies such as cooperative learning that are not unique to mathematics can be discussed in the context of how they enhance specific mathematics content learning. This point is made salient in recent research. Lockwood, McCombs, and Marsh (2010) found evidence that reading coaches improved student achievement in reading, but they did not find the same level of evidence in students mathematics scores. They had looked at mathematics achievement scores because they knew the state mathematics assessments involved a significant amount of reading in the mathematics questions development. This result does not suggest that mathematics coaching is not effective. Instead, it suggests that coaching should target specific subject content. Because coaches are often trying to focus on teacher-stated needs, a coach might bypass conversations about content if he or she doesn t sense a willingness from the teacher to discuss them. A good consumer of coaching can help keep the coaching conversations grounded in content by expressing a willingness and desire to discuss content and constantly ask how specific strategies improve learning of particular content. Effective coaching is structured and involves at least three components: a prelesson conference, a lesson observation, and a post-lesson conference. Effective consumers of coaching help coaches schedule these. Coaches often report difficulties in scheduling the components of a coaching cycle with teachers. Too often we find that this difficulty comes from teachers being unaware of what coaching entails. A teacher needs to know that the three components of coaching prelesson conference, classroom observation or modeling, and post-lesson conference come as a package. In one setting we experienced, when coaches themselves did not schedule the time to visit with teachers but relied on district personnel to set up the schedules, there was little or no time for a prelesson conference or post-lesson reflection. At the same time, teachers reported through surveys that they valued being coached, and many said they would have liked to have more time to discuss issues with their coach. We have found that it is critical for teachers to ensure that time will be available at both ends of the lesson observation. Coaches are sometimes hesitant to interfere with busy schedules. By taking responsibility for scheduling coaching, teachers become good consumers of coaching. commitment TO collaboration There is no single recipe for effective coaching, and approaches to coaching vary as widely as do the teachers, coaches, and schools involved. What remains constant is the teacher s responsibility to become a consumer of coaching. A commitment to creating a collaborative and rewarding coaching relationship will help maximize its benefits. ReFeReNces Hansen, P. (2008). Mathematics coaching handbook: Working with teachers to improve instruction. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education. Hull, T. H., Balka, D.S, & Miles, R.H. (2009). A guide to mathematics coaching: Processes for increasing student achievement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. 52 JsD www.learningforward.org February 2011 Vol. 32 no. 1

how to be a wise consumer of coaching WHAT DO TeAcHeRs NeeD FROM coaches? sample items from a teacher s needs inventory used in mathematics coaching programs (Yopp, sutton, & Burroughs, 2010). 1. how confident do you feel creating and teaching mathematical applications and connections to other areas of mathematics? Not at all confident Very confident i would not like to partner with my coach on this topic. Not sure if i would like to partner with my coach on this topic. i would like to partner with my coach on this topic. 1 2 3 4 5-0 + 2. how confident are you with the mathematical reasoning behind the mathematics you teach (understanding why we teach it), how it relates to other mathematics topics, and why it is valid? Not at all confident Very confident i would not like to partner with my coach on this topic. Not sure if i would like to partner with my coach on this topic. i would like to partner with my coach on this topic. 1 2 3 4 5-0 + 3. how confident do you feel managing a classroom where students are engaged in inquiry-based or discovery-based tasks? Not at all confident Very confident i would not like to partner with my coach on this topic. Not sure if i would like to partner with my coach on this topic. i would like to partner with my coach on this topic. 1 2 3 4 5-0 + 4. how confident do you feel encouraging student participation? Not at all confident Very confident i would not like to partner with my coach on this topic. Not sure if i would like to partner with my coach on this topic. i would like to partner with my coach on this topic. 1 2 3 4 5-0 + 5. how confident do you feel creating an environment where students listen to one another? Not at all confident Very confident i would not like to partner with my coach on this topic. Not sure if i would like to partner with my coach on this topic. i would like to partner with my coach on this topic. 1 2 3 4 5-0 + Knight, J. (2007). Instructional coaching: A partnership approach to improving instruction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Lockwood, J.R., McCombs, J.S., & Marsh, J. (2010, September). Linking reading coaches and student achievement: Evidence from Florida middle schools. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 32(3), 372 388. Morse, A. (2009). Cultivating a math coaching practice: A guide for K-8 math educators. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. West, L. & Staub, F.C. (2003). Content-focused coaching. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh. Yopp, D., Sutton, J., & Burroughs, E. (2010). Teacher needs inventory. Bozeman, MT: Examining Mathematics Coaching (EMC), Montana State University and RMC Research Corporation. David Yopp (yopp@math.montana.edu), Elizabeth A. Burroughs (burrough@math.montana.edu), and John Sutton (sutton@rmcdenver.com) are co-principal investigators of the Examining Mathematics Coaching (EMC) project, NSF Discovery Research K-12 program. Jennifer Luebeck (luebeck@math.montana.edu), Clare Heidema (heidema@rmcdenver.com), and Arlene Mitchell (mitchell@rmcdenver.com) are senior researchers on the project. February 2011 Vol. 32 no. 1 www.learningforward.org JsD 53

theme / SCHOOL-BASED SUPPORT 5 key points to building a coaching program BY JIM KNIGHT JIM KNIGHT, a research associate at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning, is the author of Instructional Coaching: A Partnership Approach to Improving Instruction (Corwin Press, 2007). You can contact him at 1122 W. Campus Rd., Suite 508, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, 785-550-8708, fax 785-864-5728, e-mail: jknight@ku.edu. Across America today, hundreds of instructional coaches are being hired to improve professional practice in schools. Preliminary results (Knight, 2007) suggest there are reasons to be optimistic about this form of professional development. Since coaches provide on-site professional learning, they can adapt their approach to meet the unique needs of the teachers and students in the schools where they work. And, since coaches can provide professional development that addresses teachers concerns at different stages of the change process (Hall & Hord, 2006; Prochaska, Norcross, & Diclemente, 1994), coaching can lead to sustained implementation of new teaching practices in schools. The danger is that schools will imple- 26 JSD WINTER 2007 VOL. 28, NO. 1 WWW.NSDC.ORG NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

ment school-based coaching too simplistically, underestimating the complexity of change initiatives. However, if educational leaders recognize and respond to the complexity of change, in particular by paying attention to five key points in building a coaching program, school-based coaches can make a difference. When coaching programs are designed well, the chances of making a significant difference are greater and the potential of coaching can be realized. 1. TOP-DOWN AND BOTTOM-UP In a 1997 study, teachers reported that they were four times more likely to implement teaching practices they learned during partnership sessions than those they learned in traditional sessions (Knight, 1998). Partnership takes an approach that: Professional developers and teachers are equal partners; Teachers should have choices regarding what and how they learn; Teachers should reflect and apply learning to their real-life practice as they are learning; Professional development should enable authentic dialogue; and Professional development should respect and enable the voices of teachers to be heard. In our ongoing study of coaching, however, we have found that a purely partnership approach that exclusively relies on bottom-up initiatives has limitations (Knight, 2007). A bottom-up approach that does not have the principal s guiding hand as the instructional leader will lead to teachers adopting new teaching practices, but unsystematically with some and not others implementing the change so school improvement may progress incoherently. A purely bottom-up approach also risks placing teachers significantly out of step with district and state mandates. When a bottom-up approach offered teachers complete freedom to choose whether to participate, those teachers who most needed to change frequently were the ones who chose not to participate. Of course, a purely top-down approach is not a practical alternative. When leaders adopt a purely topdown stance, they risk introducing what counselors refer to as an ironic process, an approach that, causes the very outcome that it was meant to avert (Miller & Rollnick, 2002, p. 37). Telling teachers they must work with an instructional coach actually makes it more difficult for coaches to assist teachers. When you tell teachers to do something, they resent it, said Ric Palma, an instructional coach in Topeka, Kan. (personal communication, August 29, 2004). If they do it, they re going to do it in a half-baked manner. And others will just refuse, because they don t like to be told what to do. Instructional coaches need a balance of bottom-up and top-down strategies to be effective. They should position themselves as equal partners collaborating with fellow teachers, basing their professional actions on partnership principles. Principals should support their onsite coaches by focusing school change initiatives to make it easier for teacher and coach to work together on interventions that have the highest possibility of impacting student achievement. Most importantly, the principal and coach must work together to ensure that those who need help get it. 2. EASY AND POWERFUL In The Evolving Self, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (1993) says that for Instructional coaches should position themselves as equal partners collaborating with fellow teachers, basing their professional actions on partnership principles. theme / SCHOOL-BASED SUPPPORT NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL 800-727-7288 VOL. 28, NO. 1 WINTER 2007 JSD 27

theme / SCHOOL-BASED SUPPORT When someone offers a service that is easy to use and that helps students, teachers become interested in using it pretty quickly. an idea or innovation to supercede another idea or technology, the new idea must be easier and more powerful. Ideas, values, technologies that do the job with the least demand on psychic energy will survive, the author states (p. 123). An appliance that does more work with less effort will be preferred. Similarly, for teachers to abandon an old teaching practice to embrace a new one, coaches must offer a practice that is both more powerful and easier to use than the current strategy. Teachers will not adopt practices that are difficult to implement. Thus, one of a site-based coach s primary tasks is to do everything possible to make it easier for teachers to implement new teaching practices. Coaches highlight, simplify, and clarify practices described in teacher manuals, prepare materials, make copies or handouts if necessary, model in the teachers classroom, observe teachers, and provide feedback. My job is to remove every barrier that might stand in the way of a teacher implementing a new practice, said Tricia McKale, a coach in Topeka, Kan. (personal communication, April 8, 2005). To support schoolbased coaches in helping teachers adopt change, professional development leaders must provide coaches with the resources and time they need to remove barriers teachers face in implementing new methods. Also, coaches and leaders must evaluate the teaching practices they are sharing with teachers to ensure that they are making a real difference in children s and teachers lives. When teachers have a chance to implement a practice that really works and that is easy to implement, they usually adopt it quickly. Research on coaches Since 1999, researchers at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning have been studying instructional coaches (Knight, 2007). In particular, researchers have studied two programs: Pathways to Success, in partnership with USD 501 in Topeka, Kan., and Passport to Success, in partnership with the Maryland State Department of Education. 3. SELF-ORGANIZING AND HIGHLY ORGANIZED When coaches work with an open mind, without a formalized, structured approach, and see their task as spreading a healthy virus in schools, they are more likely to succeed. At Landon Middle School in Topeka, Kan., for example, coach LaVonne Holmgren shared writing strategies from the Strategic Instructional Model with a few pioneering language arts teachers when she arrived at the school. After those teachers were successful, others wanted to try the strategies, and soon a majority of the language arts staff was using the strategies. At that point, Holmgren guided the staff in creating a schoolwide curriculum ensuring that all language arts teachers taught grade-appropriate writing strategies. Had Holmgren arrived at the school with a plan to institutionalize the writing strategies, she likely would have met resistance or other roadblocks. By allowing the plan to grow and develop based on teacher interest and student need, she got deep commitment to a schoolwide plan that every teacher implemented. To help accelerate the spread of healthy viruses, coaches should ensure that: They share teaching practices that are powerful and easy to use; Their first encounters with teachers are highly effective; Teacher leaders within the school have opportunities to be early adopters; and They use a variety of communication strategies (newsletters, e- mails, bulletin boards, word of mouth) to ensure that teachers know about successes when they occur. When someone offers a service that is easy to use and that helps students, teachers become interested in using it pretty quickly. Support coaches by allowing them time to build rapport and respond to teachers needs. Once a critical mass of teachers use what the coach has to offer, the coach and principal together encourage the creation of more permanent structures. 4. AMBITIOUS AND HUMBLE Alex LeClaire (a pseudonym) began his coaching career excited about helping teachers use strategies he had found extremely successful in teaching writing. He began the school year with a passionate presentation to teachers about the power of strategic instruction, and he quickly lined up conferences with teachers in their classrooms, in the staff room, and at team meetings to convince them to get on board. The more LeClaire pushed, the less enthusiastic his colleagues became and the more barriers they put up. As teachers turned away, LeClaire became even more zealous in his attempts at persuasion. Eventually, he became frustrated and began privately, then publicly, criticizing his colleagues for failing to do the right thing for kids. His criticism, of course, alienated staff even more, and by the end of his first year, LeClaire felt his efforts were wasted, and he blamed the teachers, who he 28 JSD WINTER 2007 VOL. 28, NO. 1 WWW.NSDC.ORG NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

said were too stubborn to change. Another coach, Lauren Morgan (a pseudonym), was the embodiment of humility. Morgan was determined not to force herself on teachers and to work with only those who wanted to work with her. Morgan was careful not to put herself out in front of the staff; she preferred to stay in the background. Teachers liked her, but they always seemed a little too busy to try her ideas. As time went by, Morgan found she had very few teachers collaborating with her. She waited patiently, but the right time never seemed to come along. Morgan found herself doing more and more busy work within the school and less coaching. At the end of the year, Morgan realized that she had worked with only eight teachers, and most of those had made only a superficial attempt at new practices. Successful coaches embody a paradoxical mixture of ambition and humility, a mix of attributes similar to those described by Jim Collins (2001) for Level 5 leaders. Level 5 leaders are incredibly ambitious but their ambition is for the institution, not themselves (p. 21). Effective coaches, like Collin s Level 5 leaders, should be a study in duality: modest and will- theme / SUPPPORT NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL 800-727-7288 VOL. 28, NO. 1 WINTER 2007 JSD 29

theme / SCHOOL-BASED SUPPORT ful, humble and fearless (p. 22). Devona Dunekack, a coach in Topeka, Kan., embodies both personal humility and willful ambition. I just ask teachers if they re interested in an extra set of hands, Dunekack said (personal communication, March 16, 2004). I never put on airs that I know more than them. I m just not trying to be anything other than a colleague. Dunekack works to nourish relationships with each teacher in the school, and builds up trust before sharing ideas. She is supportive and kind, but keeps charts on each teacher and the extent of their commitment to coaching. If a teacher does not collaborate with her, Dunekack doesn t take it personally, but sees that teacher as a challenge, and through a forceful kindness, almost always wins over each teacher. Not surprisingly, more than 95% of the Outstanding teachers at Eisenhower coaching Middle School collaborate with Dunekack, and programs begin with outstanding Eisenhower students have coaches. Hiring shown the greatest coaches who improvement on state embody both reading assessments in ambition and the Topeka district for humility helps each of the past three create a years. successful Outstanding coaching programs begin with experience. outstanding coaches. Hiring coaches who embody both ambition and humility helps create a successful experience. 5. ENGAGED AND DETACHED Lynn Barnes, coach at Jardine Middle School in Topeka, Kan., is an outstanding relationship builder. She is positive, funny, warm, and very supportive of others. She loves, she says, communicating with people making them feel good about themselves and what they teach (personal communication, July 14, 2005). Not Effective coaches have to care deeply about teachers and students, and they also clearly have to communicate to others that they care. surprisingly, Barnes considers coaching to be the perfect job to make people feel good about themselves, to feel good about their profession. Effective coaches have to care deeply about teachers and students, and they also clearly have to communicate to others that they care. You have to build a relationship before you do anything, Barnes said, and to do that, you truly need to care about the individual you are working with and their students. Yet coaches have to be careful not to weave too much of themselves into their jobs. As Ronald Heifitz and Martin Linsky (2002) observed, To lead is to live dangerously because when leadership counts, when you lead people through difficult change, you challenge what people hold dear their daily habits, tools, loyalties, and ways of thinking. And people resist in all kinds of creative and unexpected ways that can get you taken out of the game: pushed aside, undermined, or eliminated (p.2). Jean Clark, a coach at Bohemia Manor Middle School in Cecil County, Md., learned this firsthand. Shortly after beginning her job, Clark says she stepped into the staff lounge in time to overhear a teacher say, The reason why there s evil in this building is because of Jean Clark. Clark had to learn to remain steady and calm. She came to understand that leading as a coach put her in the line of fire. It s not about me, she said. This is their stuff. It s not personal. Some people are going to like me, and some people aren t, and in the end, they will come along whether they like me or not, if they see their children growing. Clark succeeded as a coach, and her school has had the greatest gains in the county in the last two years. The ability to connect with others is a critical characteristic of effective coaches. Principals and staff development leaders should provide training on how to communicate effectively and how to build that emotional connection with others. Coaches also need a structured support network with other coaches to support them in the face of inevitable resistance. SUMMARY More than a decade and a half ago, Seymour Sarason published The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform (Jossey-Bass, 1990), a book whose title captured the frustrations experienced by many educational 30 JSD WINTER 2007 VOL. 28, NO. 1 WWW.NSDC.ORG NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

leaders valiantly promoting school improvement initiatives. The preliminary positive results of coaching and other promising professional development and school reform efforts suggest that there now is, indeed, cause for optimism about future reform efforts. When planners and implementers support coaches by recognizing and responding to the complexity of change, in particular by responding to the five paradoxes outlined here, their chances of success improve greatly. REFERENCES Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap and others don t. New York: Harper Business. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1993). The evolving self. New York: Harper Collins. Hall, G.E. & Hord, S.M. (2006). Implementing change: Patterns, principles, and potholes (2nd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education. Heifetz, R.A. & Linsky, M. (2002). Leadership on the line. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Knight, J. (1998). The effectiveness of partnership learning: A dialogical methodology for staff development. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. Knight, J. (2007). Instructional coaching: A partnership approach to improving instruction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Miller, W.R. & Rollnick, S. (2002). Motivational interviewing: Preparing people for change (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. Prochaska, J.O., Norcross, J.C., & Diclemente, C.C. (1994). Changing for good. New York: Quill. Sarason, S.B. (1990). The predictable failure of educational reform: Can we change course before it s too late? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. theme / SCHOOL-BASED SUPPPORT NATIONAL STAFF DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL 800-727-7288 VOL. 28, NO. 1 WINTER 2007 JSD 31

TOOL Clarify the coaching role Use this chart to help teachers understand the coach s role and the services a coach will provide. A coach is... A coach is not... Source: Adapted from: Taking the Lead: New Roles for Teachers and School-based Coaches, by Joellen Killion and Cindy Harrison. Oxford, OH: NSDC, 2006. T3 5