Professional Development that Makes a Difference
Part 1 – The Four Components of Effective Professional Development
It turns out that ensuring positive outcomes from professional development, especially transfer of new knowledge and skills into the classroom, is not easy. Research has been conducted on the outcomes of professional development for more than 20 years and the results are quite discouraging. Are we wasting our money?
In the chart below you can see a summary of the results of this research. Given professional development that had these training components, the chart shows the percentage of participants that were able to: demonstrate a clear understanding of the concepts delivered, demonstrate the new skill correctly and consistently transfer the skill into the classroom.
| Training Component | Mastery of Knowledge | Demonstrate the Skill | Transfer to Classroom |
| Description of the Concepts & Content |
10% |
5% |
0% |
| Examples, Modeling |
30% |
20% |
0% |
| Practice |
60% |
60% |
5% |
| Peer Coaching |
95% |
95% |
95% |
Only when coaching/peer coaching was added to the learning experience did the numbers jump to 95% across the board for consistently understanding the content, demonstrating the skill and transferring the new knowledge and skills into the classroom.
These studies demonstrate how challenging it is to ensure that positive change will actually occur as a result of professional development. So, what does that mean if you are shopping for professional development for your staff or planning your own? How can you ensure your training resources are not wasted?
Bruce Joyce and Beverly Showers have spent decades exploring professional development and identifying the conditions that are necessary to ensure that the knowledge and skills being taught are actually implemented in the work setting. They have identified both the components of effective professional development and what needs to be in place in the workplace to ensure transfer. Given what we know about good teaching and learning it is not surprising that their research shows that these four training components are critical for effective professional development efforts:
- Knowledge and Theory – Mastery of the theory, content and concepts is critical to consistent application and the problem solving that comes with it.
- Modeling and Demonstration – Training needs to involve multiple examples, demonstrations and modeling of the new skills, ideally, presented in contexts that approximate the workplace.
- Targeted Practice – This area is commonly underestimated. For example, it can takes 8-10 weeks and 25 repetitions to achieve reasonable competence applying a new, moderately complex skill.
- Coaching/Peer Coaching – Peer coaching for Joyce and Showers means collaborative implementation. It is a team working together to plan, develop and implement the new learning in the work setting and getting the support they need to do it.
Their research suggests that multiple training components are necessary for almost every professional development goal. For example, understanding of the knowledge and concepts being presented is greater if the training includes more than just a description of the content. Including multiple examples, demonstrations and opportunities to practice applying the knowledge will greatly increase the understanding of the content.
Clearly, particular care needs to be taken in designing professional development efforts. Transfer needs to be considered at the outset and is perhaps best thought of as the continuation of the training in the workplace. The presentation or event is only one step. The follow-up work could be led by: the initial trainers, other experts working in the school to support staff, staff working together or, ideally, a combination.
If transfer to the classroom is the goal, sending staff off to the most interesting and exciting event is unlikely to result in changes that will impact students unless plans have been developed to support sufficient practice and implementation of the content in a collaborative context. Conversely, a poorly designed or delivered learning opportunity that does not include quality content, clear objectives and the necessary training components is unlikely to produce significant change even if preparations have been made for follow-up support.
For our part, the VT-HEC has adopted a set of Standards for Ensuring Quality Professional Development that incorporates these effective practices. It is our goal to use these Standards in the design of all our programs. In addition to our courses and workshops, we welcome opportunities to work with schools to help design and support sustained, coordinated and focused improvement efforts tailored to their needs. Our work with schools includes: School Transformation, Literacy Across the Curriculum, Applying Brain-Based Learning Principles, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Collaborative Implementation, School Leadership Teams and Developing Behavior Plans. Please contact us if you are interested in exploring such a partnership.
The research by Joyce and Showers can be found in their book: Student Achievement Through Professional Development, published by ASCD.
There is a short summary of the work of Joyce and Showers here: http://literacy.kent.edu/coaching/information/Research/randd-engaged-joyce.pdf
Coming soon – Part II: Building Systems to Ensure Transfer and Bill Daggett’s Prescription for VT’s Transition to the Common Core
