Monash teacher-education experts report on their latest findings.

A standard model of professional development for teachers sees learning as a linear process with fixed outcomes, regardless of teacher experience or expertise. The reality is far more complex.

For highly accomplished teachers – those who show skilled and sophisticated practice – their motivations for engaging in professional development and the way they apply their learning in practice can be quite different.

We took a deep dive into the experiences of a group of Victorian secondary school teacher leaders, following their participation in a specific professional development program. Here’s what we found out.

Professional development should not be one size fits all

Teacher professional development programs are often developed and organised in ways that provide the same experience for all teachers that attend, irrespective of their level of experience or expertise.

The expectation is that attending teachers will learn outcomes predetermined by the professional development provider – often referred to as ‘fidelity to implementation’ in educational research.

This accuracy approach is typically seen as critical to successful translation of evidence-based interventions into practice. As such, researchers often look for ‘what gets in the way’ to identify barriers to implementation and offer solutions to improve fidelity.

This ‘fidelity to implementation’ approach fails to recognise teachers as professional decision makers who know their subject matter, contexts and their students, and who can make appropriate decisions to maximise learning outcomes.

Highly accomplished teachers see professional development in distinct ways

Highly accomplished teachers – especially those in leadership roles – approach and apply their learning from professional development opportunities in different ways.

When the teachers in our study undertook professional development, we identified three perspectives – or lenses – that influenced which ideas they heard from the program and how they applied them in practice. The three lenses are:

• Personal understandings: How do these ideas influence my current thinking about teaching and learning?
• Classroom practice: How can these ideas support my classroom practice?
• Leadership practice: How can these ideas be utilised to support the learning of colleagues in my school?

How highly accomplished teachers put ideas from professional development into practice

Our research showed that there is also huge variety in the way teachers ‘heard’ the messages from the professional development program, as they made sense of ideas by connecting them to their own professional knowledge and experiences, while also considering their school context. Similarly, there was a large variety in how these teachers put ideas into practice in their school.

These teachers made sense of the ideas presented during the program by connecting them to their own professional knowledge and experiences, and their contextual needs.

Here are five different ways teachers can respond to ideas:

• Rejection: Make a considered professional decision that the approaches and ideas currently being used were already achieving the goals promoted by the professional development program.
• Replication: Use ideas presented directly in their classroom. We saw no examples of this in our data, despite being a cornerstone of the ‘fidelity to implementation’ approach.
• Application: Apply ideas from the program with some adjustments appropriate to their context.
• Adaption: Draw on the presented ideas in ways that entail a sophisticated use of the teachers’ thinking and pedagogical reasoning.
• Amplification: Instances where ideas are significantly extended from how they were presented.

Our findings challenge the idea of a standard model of professional development, which focuses on a linear one size fits all approach. Thinking of success as adoption and implementation of ideas is too simplistic - there needs to be an acceptance, and even encouragement, of diverse outcomes for highly accomplished teachers.

Highly accomplished teachers create the biggest changes

When working with highly accomplished teachers, professional development facilitators need to consider how these teachers are making sense of the ideas being presented – recognising teachers as decision making professionals.

It requires a move away from the precise implementation of professional development programs and an expectation of standardised outcomes. Instead, facilitators should leverage existing teacher expertise, and focus on the practical applications of ideas into specific school contexts.

This is important, because research shows these are the teachers who will have a larger impact on student learning, as well as support and mentor their colleagues.

We also advocate that schools and teacher leaders rethink how professional development activities and programs are effectively woven into school-based professional learning structures and processes to value the professional decision making of highly accomplished teachers.

References

Carpendale, J., Berry, A., Cooper, R., & Mitchell, I. (2021). Balancing fidelity with agency: understanding the professional development of highly accomplished teachers. Professional Development in Education, 1-19.

McChesney, K., & Aldridge, J. M. (2019). What gets in the way? A new conceptual model for the trajectory from teacher professional development to impact. Professional Development in Education, 1-19.

Schoenfeld, A. H. (2011). Toward professional development for teachers grounded in a theory of decision making. ZDM Mathematics Education, 43(4), 457-469.