Five Characteristics of Successful Teacher Development

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Like most professionals, teachers want to brush up on skills and be the best they can be in their respective classrooms. Coaching sessions, workshops, or in-school professional development (PD) days give educators much-needed—and even desired—time to reflect on what they’re already doing right and to discover new ways to fine-tune their craft.

While PD is a required part of the job, teachers need to feel like their time is well spent in order to get the most out of it for themselves and their students. In addition to their limited time, the pressure to learn teaching strategies that speak to the new demands of standards-based reform—which puts more emphasis on critical thinking and problem solving as opposed to rote-based learning—is high.¹

Yet, researchers found that while 90% of teachers reported participating in PD, most of them said it was pointless (yikes!).¹ The good news is that when educators engage in well-designed, meaningful, and sustained PD—averaging 49 hours over a six- to 12-month time period—they can help improve student outcomes by as much as 21 percentile points.² However, programs that were less than 14 hours, which is typical of an in-school workshop, had zero effect on student achievement.²

The best teacher development has the following five essential elements in common:

1. It’s relevant.

Talk to your teachers, and ask them what type of development will be most beneficial to their grade level (for elementary school teachers) or discipline (for middle school and high school teachers).³ Which topics or trends best align with their growth as educators? Once you know exactly what your teachers want to get out of PD, the easier it will be to tailor instruction to their specific needs and expectations.

2. It’s practical.

In an era of teacher accountability, it’s no longer enough for educators to learn new teaching strategies, concepts, or methodologies. They also have to take away practical skills that lead to increased student learning. Teachers say that the best PD sessions had them create lesson plans they could implement within two weeks of completing the class.⁴ And when teachers receive feedback specific to the strategies and lessons they learn and implement, they get even more out of their experience.⁴

3. It’s hands-on.

Get your teachers talking to each other, collaborating, completing tasks together, and brainstorming. When teachers are “passive learners,” they get very little out of PD. (Think of a lecture hall filled with snoozing students. Same concept applies here.) From reading and role playing to classroom visits and live modeling, workshops that get educators out of their seats and active are more successful.²

4. It’s community-based.

There is a strong correlation between positive professional learning communities (PLCs)—where teachers give each other continual feedback and meet regularly to examine and adjust their practice—and a boost in student learning.² Teachers are best at teaching each other, and PLCs are most effective when they include video-based reflections of real-life teaching practices, mentoring programs, lesson study (a form of Japanese PD where teachers analyze lessons in groups), and grade-level teams.²

5. It’s ongoing.

A drive-through may be good for ordering fast food, but there’s nothing “fast” about deep professional development. In fact, fragmented, ad hoc PD is forgotten soon after it’s over. In order to maximize your school’s efforts and increase student achievement in the process, teachers have to engage in sustained learning that takes place in 30 to 100 hours over six months to a year.²