Professional Development in Education

Few educators would deny that professional development in most school districts has had a small, ineffective role in the professional lives of teachers and a little impact on student learning (Hawley & Rosenholtz, 1984). But participation in staff development programs has long been a requirement in state recertification and local bargaining agreements. Historically, continuing education for teachers has taken the form of teacher institutes in which experts lecture audiences of 100 or more teachers. Whether teachers gained knowledge or new skills as a result and whether those skills translated into more effective teaching was not of much concern to either researchers or school administrators.

It was not until the 1970s that educational research focused on staff development and how teachers transform new learning into classroom practice (Lieberman & Miller, 1978). Teachers' continuing education began to be considered an important factor in school improvement where previously, staff development focused solely on improving teachers' subject-matter competence.

By all accounts, both forms of professional development described above are still in practice in schools across the country. In fact, in a recent study that asked teachers about their worst professional development experience, 70 percent of respondents described school or district inservice sessions (Sandholtz, 1999). This outcome echoes a similar study undertaken 30 years ago that found that unlike school-based experiences, the teacher institutes "were much less successful in helping teachers to change the methods of their teaching, or to use different materials or media" (Gray, 1970, cited in Lieberman & Miller, 1978, p. 8).

There are many frequently recommended features of "good" inservice programs, including:

• Programs should be lengthy, not brief.
• Teachers should help define the content, not have topics imposed on them.
• The learning should be integrated with classroom practice, not delivered in one setting.
• Teachers should form learning communities, not work in isolation (Kennedy, 1998).

Even after more than 30 years of studying teacher learning in the workplace, most inser-vice activities for improving student and teacher learning are still irrelevant.

STATE OR LOCAL CONTROL?

According to Ward, St. John, and Laine (1999), professional development was largely funded and controlled by states in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today, however, 80 percent of public school teachers experience professional development as school- or district-sponsored workshops and inservice programs (Hirsch, Koppich, & Knapp, 1998). As teacher quality moves back into the education limelight after years of debate about curriculum and governance issues, states are looking for ways to support professional development and have more control over outcomes. With both state and federal government budget surpluses, requests for funding professional development for teachers also have increased.

According to researcher Robert Stout (1996), two general policy goals have been associated with staff development in this century: general upgrading of teacher skills and preparing teachers to accomplish new tasks. In addition, most states require some form of professional development for teachers to renew their certification; however, few states provide any guidance on the content or pedagogy of that professional development. A few attempts to regulate professional development have, for example, specified the number of required hours for courses, mandated that examinations be given, or dictated content in response to a hot curricular issue. As a result of the lack of requirements for professional development, most teachers meet new certification requirements by accumulating college credits toward another degree and, eventually, a salary increase as articulated by most local collective bargaining agreements. Even in states that do provide guidance and financial resources to support professional development (e.g., Florida and Kentucky, see Hirsch, Koppich, & Knapp, 1998), adequate teacher time, the use of substitute teachers, and access to effective professional development opportunities remain significant issues.

Teachers are motivated to participate in professional development by a number of policy incentives, including salary enhancement, certificate maintenance, career mobility, and the opportunity to gain new skills and knowledge to enhance classroom performance. It is this last motivation that remains most elusive for state and local policymakers. Increasingly professional development for teachers is being required as part of a school improvement plan: Most state and federal funding programs require schools and districts to account for how they spend their resources and often designate amounts for professional development. However, little evidence exists that the states or the federal government actually track the use of those dollars for professional development or evaluate whether any change in student or teacher learning resulted from the professional development opportunities within the school improvement plan.

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