Transcript Professional Development: Supporting Teacher Effectiveness and Retention Carol Albritton Office of Professional Standards, Licensing and Higher Education Collaboration Sandra O’Neil Office of Academic Standards.

Professional Development:
Supporting Teacher
Effectiveness and Retention
Carol Albritton
Office of Professional Standards, Licensing and Higher
Education Collaboration
Sandra O’Neil
Office of Academic Standards
Current Research on Professional
Development
Professional Learning in the Learning Profession:
A Status Report on Teacher Development in the
U. S. and Abroad
By
Linda Darling-Hammond, et. al.
School Redesign Network, Stanford University
and
National Staff Development Council
February, 2009
the most comprehensive study of professional development
ever conducted in the U.S.
Professional Learning in the Learning Profession
Share the study through jigsaw groups.
– Form groups of 3
– Everyone reads pages 3-6 silently (Preface and Key
Findings)
(6 minutes)
– Each person selects a chapter to read silently (5
minutes)
– Share the key ideas from each chapter with your group
(6 minutes)
Comments on the report’s findings?
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do
and I understand.”
Confucius
*****************
Many teachers state that they learned more in
the first year of teaching than in all the years
of formal teacher preparation.
From Professional Development
to Professional Learning
Rick DuFour asks: “Why do institutions created for and
devoted to learning not call upon the professionals
within them to become more proficient in improving the
effectiveness of schools by actually doing the work of
school improvement?”
Learning By Doing (2006)
Job-embedded learning that improves teacher practice is
formalized by developing a school culture around professional
learning community principles.
Regulations: N.J.A.C. 6A:9-15
Creation of a school level professional development
committee (SPDC) comprising 3 teachers and one
administrator
2008 – 2009 a developmental year for learning about
effective professional learning practices at the school
level
Initial school level plans will be written in Fall 2009 for
the 2010 – 2011 SY and submitted to the local
committee (LPDC)
Multiple training opportunities from NJ DOE and
partner organizations
Details:
Webinar Number One – Download and view the recorded
webinar and powerpoint document:
www.nj.gov/education/profdev/pd/teacher
NJ Professional Development Initiative
Focusing Collaborative Professional Learning
New Jersey Professional Development Standards
for Educators
New Jersey Professional Standards for Teachers
and School Leaders
New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards
School needs assessment and other relevant data
(achievement, demographic, perception, school
processes)
School improvement goals
Students’ daily work / formative assessments /
summative assessments
NJ DOE has a long-standing partnership with NSDC who
developed and published a tool kit to support the
development of professional learning communities:
Collaborative Professional Learning in School and
Beyond: A Tool Kit for New Jersey Educators
Contents
Chap. 1 – A New Kind of Professional Development
Chap. 2 – Aligning the Standards: Making the Case
Chap. 3 – Collaborative Professional Learning
Chap. 4 – Getting Started
Chap. 5 – Supportive Conditions for Collaborative Professional Learning
Chap. 6 – Facilitating Collaborative Teams
Chap. 7 – Making Time
Chap. 8 – Using Data
Chap. 9 – Working Collaboratively
Chap. 10 – Team Planning and Reporting
Chap. 11 – Role of Principal
Chap. 12 – Role of Central Office
Chap. 13 – Evaluating Collaborative Professional Learning
School Culture—
Shared Purpose and Vision
“Great schools ‘row as one’; they are quite clearly in
the same boat, pulling in the same direction in
unison. The best schools we visited were tightly
aligned communities marked by a palpable sense
of common purpose and shared identity among
staff—a clear sense of ‘we.’ By contrast, struggling
schools feel fractured; there is a sense that people
work in the same school but not toward the same
goals.”
Lickona and Davidson (2005)
Culture Audit:
A First Step toward Developing A PLC
Tool Kit —Tool 5.2:
Self-Assessment: School Culture Triage.
Used successfully in public schools of North Carolina, Florida
and Kentucky over the last decade. It can be used with one
school or an entire district to provide immediate feedback.
Form groups of 3.
2. Complete the self-assessment individually for
a school or district you know well. (4 minutes)
3. Score your results by adding the points.
1 point = never
5 points = always or almost always
1.
Culture Audit
A First Step toward Developing A PLC
Discuss these questions in your group:
(6 minutes)
1. Which attributes that align with best
practices received high marks? To what
do you attribute these practices?
(Policies? Infrastructure? Tradition? Reforms? Leadership? Other?)
1. Which attributes that align with best
practices received low marks? To what
do you attribute the low marks?
The Heart of the Work:
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS
Team composition: by grade level, whole faculty,
departmental, articulation, interdisciplinary, small
learning community faculty, etc.
Action research
Study groups
Mentoring/coaching
Analysis of student work
Curriculum design/
curriculum mapping
Common assessments
Tuning protocols
Data analysis
Lesson Study
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING TEAMS
Teams focus on the guiding questions to
achieve results:
What is essential for students to learn?
How will we know if they have learned it?
What will we do if they don’t learn?
What will we do if they already know it?
What do teachers need to know to support
student learning?
Supporting Collaboration
Teachers

School-based Resource Staff and
Supervisors

Principal

District Curriculum and PD Supervisors
Launching a PLC: Some Advice
from A School Leader
1. Read the article “How to Launch a
Community” by Rick DuFour. (3 minutes)
2. Highlight or underscore 2 statements that
you can take back and share with
colleagues.
3. Discuss the 2 statements in your group.
What concrete advice from this principal’s
experience can you apply to your school
or district?
(3 minutes)
Getting Buy-in
1. Read the article “Getting Everyone to Buy
In” by Rick DuFour. (3 minutes)
2. Highlight or underscore 2 statements that
you can take back and share with
colleagues.
3. Discuss the 2 statements with your team
members. What practical lesson is found
in this principal’s experience?
(3 minutes)
Comments?
“Unless teams of teachers
improve together, schools
never will.”
Michael Fullan
Research Linking
Professional Learning Communities with
School Improvement
Linda Darling Hammond, The Right to Learn
Michael Fullan, Change Forces
Fred Newmann and Gary Wehlage,
Successful School Restructuring
Mike Schmoker, Results
Steve Klein, et.al., Fitting the Pieces:
Education Reform that Works
Research Linking
Professional Learning Communities with
School Improvement
Richard Sagor, Collaborative Action
Research for Educational Change
Jonathan Saphier, John Adams’ Promise
Doug Reeves, The Leader’s Guide to
Standards
Robert Marzano, What Works in Schools
Gordon Cawelti, “The New Effective
Schools” in Best Practices, Best
Thinking and Emerging Issues in School
Leadership
New Jersey Tool Kit
The tool kit is password-protected on the
NJDOE web site. It will be available for
download from December 1, 2008 until
December 31, 2009. To access the tool kit
after entering the URL, write to:
[email protected]
Email your questions and comments related
to professional learning
Additional Resources
“A Common Language” – professional learning
community defined by partner organizations
(request at [email protected])
Learning by Doing. (2006) Rick DuFour, et. al.,
Solution-Tree.
Failure Is Not An Option (2004) Alan
Blankstein, Corwin Press.
Additional Resources
Leading Professional Learning Communities. (2007)
Hord and Sommers, Corwin Press.
Finding Time. (2008) Ed. Valerie Von Frank, NSDC
Creating a Culture. (2008) Ed. Valerie Von Frank, NSDC
Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work.
(2008) DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, and Many, Solution Tree.
www.allthingsplc.org
www.nsdc.org
www.solution-tree.com
Opportunities
• NJ DOE series of webinars on collaborative
professional learning (download prerecorded webinars and
view individually or with teams of educators – instructions online)
• Convocation for superintendents and LPDC
chairpersons
• NJ DOE regional training opportunities for
school/district teams
• Partner organizations provide opportunities state wide
and regionally
• Development of PLC virtual networks of schools and
districts
Partner Organizations
NJDOE
NJEA
NJASA
NJPSA
NJSBA
NJASCD
Kean University
Training opportunities:
www.nj.gov/education/events
www.nj.gov/education/njpep
Professional Development:
www.nj.gov/education/profdev/pd/teacher
Highly Qualified Teacher Requirements:
www.nj.gov/education/profdev/nclb