Introduction
"We need to deepen our understanding of what good professional development opportunities look like in different contexts, through concrete images, examples, and experiences."
Linda Darling-Hammond, 1998
Policymakers and educators are beginning to recognize that too many teachers lack the knowledge, skills, and training necessary to meet the needs of their students. Though education researchers and school reformers have provided many examples of good professional development in schools, study after study shows that professional development continues to be delivered in a piecemeal fashion. Current professional development programs are largely unrelated to the school mission and too often are inconsistent with changes in curriculum, assessment, and known best practices. Despite rhetoric from state and local education leaders, professional development rarely captures the attention given to more popular issues such as standards, assessment, and accountability. In addition, professional development is frequently the first victim of budget cuts.
Meanwhile, voices both within and outside education are lauding the successes of professional development in the private sector. In recent years, private-sector approaches to professional development have changed the style, content, and delivery of every aspect of staff training and development. Educators have embraced the language of private-sector professional development to call for the reform of professional development for teachers—new models of teacher training should become "outcome-oriented," "performance- based," "flexible," "continuous and seamless," and so on—however, these new models have been slow to permeate schools.
The following report provides education leaders and policymakers with a lens to examine model professional development in education and the private sector. What does effective professional development in each sector look like? How do approaches differ? What incentives are in place to support the successful implementation of professional development? How are resources allocated, decisions made, and organizational cultures changed? What can education learn from the successes of private-sector professional development programs and policies?
