Effective Learning Communities for Teachers

Posted by on July 21, 2006

[posted from Public Education Network newsletter]

SCHOOLS CAN BECOME TRUE LEARNING COMMUNITIES FOR TEACHERS

Nearly two decades of research has taught some powerful lessons about how to design and implement meaningful and effective professional development for teachers. For reform efforts centered on improving student achievement to be successful, teachers need to have the necessary skills, tools, and support. Simply trusting that structural and logistical changes will translate into significant improved learning is wishful thinking. Teachers need concrete, continuous professional development to hone their current skills and learn new ones. And they need to be respectfully treated as adult learners who bring skills and experiences to meet the challenge of increasing student achievement. The research on effective professional development is consistent across many studies. Researchers Willis Hawley and Linda Valli in their synthesis of the professional development literature, find that high-quality teacher development is as follows: (1) Informed by research on teaching and learning and provides a strong foundation in subject content and methods of teaching; (2) Integrated with district goals to improve education, guided by a coherent long-term plan, and driven by disaggregated data on student outcomes; (3) Designed in response to teacher-identified needs and utilizes collaborative problem solving in which colleagues assist one another by discussing dilemmas and challenges; (4) Primarily school-based, provides sufficient time and other resources, and enables teachers to work with colleagues in their school building; (5) Continuous and ongoing, incorporates principles of adult learning, and provides follow-up support for further learning; and (6) Evaluated ultimately on the basis of its impact on teacher effectiveness and student learning.

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