This session covers the a pilot study conducted by Leading Educators that explores effective strategies for contextualizing professional learning in schools by addressing two key questions:
- Effective Data Sources: What data sources are best suited to tailor professional learning to the unique needs of specific schools?
- Stakeholder Engagement: Who should be involved in selecting, analyzing, and interpreting data, and how should this engagement occur to determine professional learning priorities?
Schools and systems could use a variety of data to incorporate teacher input and contextualize PL, such as student learning outcomes, instructional practice observations, pedagogical knowledge, sense of self efficacy, and teacher perception of priority areas. What are the most effective data sources to contextualize professional learning to specific schools? Who should be engaged in selecting, analyzing, and interpreting data to make decisions about professional learning priorities, and how are those stakeholders best engaged? How do these choices influence teacher investment in professional learning and commitment to new practices? We sought to learn about processes for selecting, analyzing, and interpreting data to make decisions about professional learning priorities in two Leading Educators’ partner districts and how involvement in these processes influenced teachers’ and leaders’ perceptions of the quality and utility of professional learning. The study’s ultimate goal was to produce a framework to describe the continuum of approaches for gathering and using data – including stakeholder input – to design effective PL. In this Brown Bag, we will share findings and important questions for future research on PL design related to teacher agency.
Materials
Overview Document
Recording
Session Slides
Supporting Materials
Additional Q&A:
- If the focus was on choice regarding what PL, I wonder if that captures the full range of “choice” in the PL context. Meaning, a teacher might not have chosen coaching, but within coaching, there is (usually) a great deal of choice.
- This is a great aspect of PL choice to explore in future projects. Interviewees in both districts we studied reported engaging at high frequency in activities that we would assume included lots of opportunities for choice: PLCs, coaching, and co-planning. Narrowing down to more deeply understand agency, motivation, and satisfaction within each of these types of PL could be a valuable future direction.
- Do you anticipate expanding the scope of this with a similar study with more districts? Or working to answer some of your “next step” questions?
- We do not have a follow-up study planned yet, but we are certainly interested in doing so. If you are also interested and would potentially like to collaborate, please reach out!
- I am hoping that most of my questions are answered by reading your report, so beyond that I am curious to learn more about how you partner with districts around PL in the research.
- Partnering with districts to conduct research together is closely aligned with our organizational values. We codesigned this particular study with one of the two partner districts that participated in it after the research questions emerged as key questions for that district. The second district joined after the study had already launched, but had also shared an interest in the study’s research questions.
- What percent of the PD opportunities in the study were in person or virtual?
- We did not collect data on the mode of PL delivery/participation. Based on the context interviewees provided in the interviews, we believe that the majority of the PL experiences they were considering were in-person, but this was not explored directly. We agree that it would be a great area to explore further in future studies.
