What Makes Professional Development Ripple Through a School?

In this article in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Min Sun (Virginia Tech), William Penuel (University of Colorado/Boulder), Kenneth Frank and Peter Youngs (Michigan State University), and Alix Gallagher (SRI International) report on their three-year study of how and when professional development diffuses, spreading effective practices from one teacher to another. Their study showed that the key is effective PD that has these characteristics:

• It goes beyond one-shot presentations and is sustained over time.
• The content is anchored in the standards, content, curriculum, and assessments being used by teachers.
• It involves teachers in analyzing students’ work and group discussion.

“When interactions involve activities that give rise to deep, critical reflection on practice,” say the authors, “peers’ knowledge and instructional expertise can be a major source of professional growth for teachers… This expertise diffuses when teachers interact and collaborate with each other to address commonly identified classroom problems.” Teacher leaders are particularly important in facilitating this process. 

Their surprising finding: the spillover effect of good PD is almost as powerful and lasting as the impact of the PD itself. “Within schools,” they conclude, “to promote spillover effects, principals can purposefully motivate teachers to participate in such professional development. Professional development designed to promote both participants’ own instruction and their helping behaviors can develop ‘already-to-go’ teachers to become ‘experts’ who have sufficient knowledge to help other teachers, and it can develop ‘experts’ into ‘go-to’ teachers in the school who have collaborative skills to better disseminate their expertise. Both kinds of teachers can potentially become teacher leaders, such as teacher mentors, instructional coaches, or other team leaders.”

“Shaping Professional Development to Promote Diffusion of Instructional Expertise Among Teachers” by Min Sun, William Penuel, Kenneth Frank, Alix Gallagher, and Peter Youngs in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, September 2013 (Vol. 35, #3, p 344-369), 

From the Marshall Memo #498