Thomas Guskey on Evaluating and Planning Professional Development

In this Journal of Staff Development article, professional development expert Thomas Guskey (University of Kentucky) revisits his well-known criteria for assessing professional development experiences: 

• Level 1: Participants’ reactions – Did they like the PD? Did they believe their time was well spent? Did the content and material make sense to them? Were the activities well-planned and meaningful? Was the leader knowledgeable, credible, and helpful? Did they find the information useful? Were the amenities satisfactory? Questionnaires are the best way to gather data on this level of satisfaction.

• Level 2: Participants’ learning – Did they learn what they came to learn? What new knowledge, skills, attitudes, and dispositions were acquired? Gathering information on this level is a little more difficult than gathering information on the “happiness quotient” at Level 1.

• Level 3: Organizational support and change – These are key elements that must be in place “back home” for a professional learning experience to bear fruit. For example, if teachers attend a workshop on cooperative learning, master the key principles and practices, and return to their district full of enthusiasm, only to find that their students will be graded on a curve in a highly competitive environment, the PD won’t have much impact. 

• Level 4: Participants’ use of what they learned – Did the new knowledge and skills make a difference in teachers’ professional practice? Data on this question can be gathered only by thoughtful classroom observations in participants’ schools. 

• Level 5: Student learning outcomes – This is the true bottom line: Did the professional learning benefit students in specific, measurable ways? It’s important to look at a broad range of possible outcomes, measured in valid and reliable ways that are linked to the intervention. Data could come from student test scores, performance tasks, grades, student surveys, staff questionnaires, and other measures. Suppose, for example, that students’ test scores went up as a result of changed professional practices – but more students dropped out. 

Guskey closes with three important implications from this model for evaluating professional development:

• Each of the five evaluation levels is important.
• Tracking effectiveness on one level tells very little about impact at the next level.
• When planning professional learning, the order of these levels must be reversed. “The most effective professional learning planning begins with clear specification of the student learning outcomes to be achieved,” says Guskey, “and the sources of data that best reflect those outcomes. With those goals articulated, school leaders and teachers then work backward.” 

“Gauge Impact with 5 Levels of Data” by Thomas Guskey in Journal of Staff Development, February 2016 (Vol. 37, #1, p. 32-37), no e-link available

From the Marshall Memo #631