Learning Over Teaching

While away, I read an interesting article written by EducationWeek’s Madeline Will titled “What Works – and What Doesn’t – in Teacher PD.”

Will writes,

“When done right, professional development can improve teacher practice and student experiences. But when done wrong, it can have little to no impact and end up frustrating teachers who don’t see any relevance to their work. And it’s all part of a costly, $18 billion market with little quality control.”

“A new paper, published by the Research Partnership for Professional Learning and written by researchers at Harvard Graduate School of Education and Brown University, examines the literature to understand what works in the field of professional development – and, just as importantly, what doesn’t.”

“Here are five takeaways from the report.”

“1. PD should focus on instructional practices rather than content knowledge. Over the past two decades, professional development has focused on building teachers’ content knowledge, said Heather Hill, a principal investigator and professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and a co-author of the paper. The idea was that if teachers have a firm understanding of, say, how fractions work, they will be better at teaching fractions. But the body of literature suggests that’s not necessarily the case, Hill said, adding that the realization was ‘personally a little earth-shattering. Instead, professional development that focused on changing teachers’ instructional practice – such as by identifying key teaching strategies and providing support for carrying out those changes in the classroom – was found to be more effective for improving student outcomes.”

“2. PD should prioritize concrete materials for practice over general principles. There are two approaches toward PD that can be at odds. The first is to give teachers materials like curricula, lessons, and assessment items that offer concrete ways to reach the goal, but may leave them without a strong understanding of the learning philosophy behind the new approach. The second is to emphasize more general principals to promote broader and more lasting changes in instruction, but leave it up to the teachers themselves to integrate those changes in their existing lessons, materials, and assessment. The research review found that focusing PD on concrete materials is more effective than teaching general principles, which usually ends up requiring teachers to do additional work on their own time. PD that provides support for the day-to-day is more likely to increase uptake and improve the quality of the implementation.”

“3. Have follow-up meetings after PD or coaching. A low-cost way to boost the effectiveness of a PD program is to add a post-implementation follow-up meeting, the research review found. Teachers can share their experiences implementing the practices learned and receive feedback from colleagues and program facilitators. They can also ask questions and voice concerns about parts of the new program that are particularly challenging to implement.”

“4. PD should help teachers build relationships with students. Past research has shown that strong teacher-student relationships, can lead to higher student academic engagement, better attendance better grades, fewer disruptive behaviors and suspensions, and lower school dropout rates. Those effects were strong even after controlling for differences in students’ individual, family, and school backgrounds.”

5. Coaching and teacher collaboration are key strategies. The research review emphasized the effectiveness of both peer collaboration and coaching. Evidence suggest that teachers can and do learn from each other, and that when schools promote collaboration, teacher practice and student outcomes improve. Coaching – which can include modeling instruction, co-planning lessons, direct feedback, and other consultations and support – has also been found to successfully improve classroom instructional quality and student outcomes. However, the design of these practices matters. Collaboration should be focused on shared and specific goals for improvement rather than meeting to vaguely improve practice. And teachers should have dedicated and protected time to work and learn together.”

The problem with this report is that it focuses on mostly teacher behavior and not the learner.

Let me take a stab at what five coaching points might look like for an adult learning leader if the focus turns to the learner.

1. PD should focus on the learner, with instructional practices and content knowledge supporting that focus. Too much traditional professional development focuses on teachers and not enough on learners. What is it we want the learner to learn? How do we know the learner has learned it? What do we do when the learner hasn’t learned it? These three questions start the adult learning leader down the pathway of focusing in on learner behavior, and gives the adult learning leader marching orders regarding what to do and when to do it.

• PD should prioritize learning, which includes focusing on the specific over the general. The better the adult learning leader gets at helping the young learner become as specific as possible regarding learning goals, the better chance there is to arrive at a place where deep learning occurs.

• Schedule continuous meetings between the adult learning leader and the young learner(s). Learning is a continuous process. It’s a videotape and not a snapshot. A solid learning plan can help the adult learning leader and their young learner(s) stay on target regarding the work they will do together over the long term.

• Learning is all about relationships. In a learner-centered model, the adult learning leader begins with building a strong working relationship with their young learner(s). After that is achieved, then learning skills like reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development can happen, but not before the relationship work. Traditional schools struggle with relationship-building, mainly because they don’t reserve time to work on the task.

• Coaching, collaboration, and feedback are key to deep learning, for both the adult learning leader and the young learner. This is another struggle for the traditional system. Too many teachers, still today, practice teaching in isolation – without any type of effective coaching, collaboration, or feedback. A learner-centered model depends on rich coaching, collaboration, and feedback between adult learning leaders, their young learners, the young learner’s family, and their community at large.

As long as we continue to focus on improving teaching, learning will suffer.

It’s time to change our focus.

Learning over teaching.

Til tomorrow. SVB