High-Quality Teaching: Providing for Rural Teachers' Professional Development

This article was adapted from a Policy Brief with same title, published by Appalachia Educational Laboratory. This work was sponsored wholly or in part by Institute of Education Sciences(IES), U.S. Department of Education, under contract number ED-01-C0-0016. Its contents do not necessarily reflect views of IES, Department, or any other agency of government. Policymakers and educators see professional development as a way to improve quality of instruction in classrooms across nation, but empirical literature linking professional development to improved student achievement is extremely thin. Logically, though, it would seem that right kinds of professional development would improve instruction, and that better instruction would result in higher student achievement. Very limited empirical evidence suggests that such linkages may exist. Quite a number of studies report that teachers believe professional development improves their teaching (Sandercock, 1996; Nadolny, 1999). A few studies-particularly case studies-report changes in teachers' practice that seem to result from their participation in professional development (Bodone Borko, Elliott Burrowes, 2003). Other research is less sanguine, however, suggesting that traditional teaching often persists even after participation in programs that seek to foster improved instructional practice (Caret, Birman, Porter, Desimone Wenger, 1998). 2. Learning requires open and sustained dialog among members of organization (Senge, 1994). 3. Learning depends upon propensity to reflect on data about organizational performance (Choo, 1998). Several approaches to professional development draw on these principles. Professional learning communities Some authors have advocated sustained programs of school-level professional development under aegis of the professional learning community (Boyd Hord, 1997; Hord, 1998; WaId & Castleberry, 2000). With this approach, all educators in a school assume responsibility for students' success by themselves becoming learners. Educators engage in learning collaboratively and share widely what they learn. Typically, focus of professional learning communities is on teaching practice, so these efforts feature reflective inquiry in a variety of ways. Data-based improvement Grounded in management approaches such as Total Quality Management, some improvement strategies involve educators in establishment of standards and benchmarks followed by an ongoing process of assessment and classroom-level reform. The Malcolm Baldrige program is perhaps best-known approach of this type, but there are other, less prescriptive alternatives (Walpole & Noeth, 2002). With all such approaches, processes used to set standards and periodically assess performance constitute professional development Feldman & Tung, 2001). …