Every Child Reading: A Professional Development Guide

A Companion to Every Child Reading: An Action Plan

November 2000

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The Context for Professional Development

Teachers are more likely to improve student achievement in reading when these conditions prevail:

Everyone who affects student learning is involved.

It is largely ineffective to educate classroom teachers about early reading instruction unless their administrators, policymakers, specialists, teaching assistants, tutors, and parents operate with similar concepts and practices. If leaders agree about essential program elements, teachers can identify goals for their own learning and communicate these to their administrators. Teachers need to know how they will be evaluated, what resources and instructional materials will be available, what kind of assistance will be offered, and whether the practices taught this year will be valued the next. By setting goals and establishing priorities, administrators commit support to teachers for learning the essentials of research-based instruction.

Student standards, curricular frameworks, textbooks, instructional programs, and assessments are closely aligned with one another.

When academic standards, curricular frameworks, textbooks, instructional programs, and assessments are aligned, teachers can more readily commit effort and resources to implementing them. Reading components, principles, or practices are most likely to be used when they are embedded in the core program adopted by the district. If everyone is committed to an effective approach, results are usually better.

Professional development is given adequate time and takes place in school as part of the work day.

Teaching children how to read and write is a complex activity that is learned with knowledge, coaching, and experience. Because teachers are professionals who do more than manage a room full of students, they need time to reflect on the success of their lessons with others who are working toward similar goals. Professional development could easily include an average of three hours per week or 80 to 100 hours per year in study, collaboration, observation of master teachers, and research. School-based professional development should focus on the evidence for student learning and remedies for insufficient progress.

The expertise of colleagues, mentors, and outside experts is accessible and engaged as often as necessary in professional development programs.

Regular (weekly to bimonthly) collaborations with grade level teams, specialists, and facilitators can be seminars in curriculum development, interpretation of student assessments, or acquisition of teaching skill. Such collaboration will challenge the tradition of teaching as a solitary, private endeavor. Positive schoolwide change requires collaboration of faculty, administration, and community toward a commonly held vision. That vision is most often achieved when teachers learn from each other as well as from experts. Observation is an important element of this type of learning. It can include: peers observing each other; teachers observing expert teachers and discussing what they have seen; and observations of teachers by experts who provide them with feedback. Off-site courses, institutes, and seminars that feature credible experts are critical for enriching teacher knowledge, but support and follow-up is necessary if new practices are to take root.

Strong instructional leadership is present.

Vocal and visible commitment from district and building administrators is necessary to support improvement of reading instruction districtwide. The superintendent and other district leaders can set and hold to the agenda for a reading initiative and provide firm guidance on fundamental issues of instruction. They can promote understanding among all educators of documents such as Every Child Reading: An Action Plan,1 the Report of the National Reading Panel,2 and Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children.3 Appeal to such authoritative documents may represent an important shift in how decisions are made. In the past, teachers have often been left to discover or invent good practices without such guidance. Leaders must also cultivate school board and community support for specific goals and practices in literacy instruction.

There is commitment to a long-range plan with adequate funding.

Preparation for change, change itself, and institutionalization of change in teaching practices may take three to five years. Short-term solutions to long-range challenges will not work. The process of committing to long-term funding is essential in sustaining focus and effort, because other priorities will compete and undermine commitment to this type of improvement effort. Adequate funding must be linked directly to the expected results of better instruction.

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The Process of Professional Development

Adult learners, like children, need to inquire, reflect, and respond to new ideas if they are to embrace them. Making sense of experience and transforming professional knowledge into daily teaching habits takes time.1 Teachers need to implement practices they understand and that help them attain goals; otherwise, what is learned will be forgotten when a new trend comes along.

For a teacher to learn a new behavior and effectively transfer it to the classroom, several steps are involved:

1. Understanding the theory and rationale for the new content and instruction.
2. Observing a model in action.
3. Practicing the new behavior in a safe context.
4. Trying out the behavior with peer support in the classroom.

Many successful attempts may be needed before the new behavior feels comfortable and well learned.2 Moreover, an individual teacher's efforts to improve practice are much more likely to succeed and persist if they are part of a schoolwide and, ideally, districtwide effort.

At present, teachers often expect that change will be mandated from an administration that is distant from their needs and problems. Departure from this norm would be a great step forward. To engage teachers more fully in their own professional development, the following conditions of change, growth, and learning should be respected: Change occurs in definable stages.3
Ideas need to be incubated before people are ready to act on them. In the case of reading instruction, foundation knowledge concerning reading development, the structure of English, and the research on instruction are essential.*

Such foundation knowledge and research should be studied and discussed before a major change in behavior is expected of teachers. For example, spring seminars might precede a new program implementation in the fall. Summer coursework could involve intensive learning of content, leading into gradual introduction of reading instruction changes as the school year progresses.

A variety of professional development activities will meet individual needs better than a "one-size-fits-all" approach.

Professional development programs should consider the fact that teachers' needs vary. Options could include study groups, collaborative teams, individual projects, peer observations, demonstrations, apprenticeships, classroom research projects, observations and feedback from those who are more expert, and pilot programs. These activities should be grounded in clear statements about the goals, content, and practices of evidence-based reading instruction. The content and practices that are most likely to result in better student outcomes do not need to be reinvented, but teachers will prefer some choice as to how, and in what order, that knowledge and skill is acquired.

Self-evaluation is part of an individual professional development plan.

Teachers' previous education, experience, interests, and aptitudes will vary. In a culture of collaborative learning it should become the norm for teachers to identify the ways in which they need to improve. The starting point for teachers' self-evaluation should be objective assessment of students for the purpose of improving student performance. If teachers identify an important aspect of student learning that is not being well taught, they can work together to design their own professional development activity.

After initial concentrated work, follow-up consultation and classes are offered.

Learning to teach involves learning a large repertoire of skills and exercising judgment about when to use what, with whom, and why. New teaching skills must be practiced and refined with support and coaching. Coaching-which may be provided by peers, content experts, or supervisors-is an important aspect of professional development. Sustained contact with teachers who are learning new skills and when to apply them should be part of the long-range plan.

Sufficient time is allowed before the outcomes of a professional development program are determined.

Again, a long-range vision for school change and instructional improvement may include three to five years of work toward a common goal, although measurable progress should be expected every year. That goal should reasonably assume that fewer than 5 percent of the student body will experience reading difficulties that require long-term special services. Student achievement tests and portfolios, classroom observations, curriculum-based measures, individual case studies, and teacher surveys will all have a role in determining if the professional development program is effective.

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