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Customize learning for each audience

By Pat Roy

Results, December/January 2005

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2005. All rights reserved.

Learning: Staff development that improves the learning of all students applies knowledge about human learning and change.

Differentiation of instruction is a focus for many districts and schools as educators try to find ways to assist all students to learn at high levels. Differentiation grows out of the knowledge that no single model of instruction will meet the needs of all students.

In the same way, differentiation is necessary for the staff who work with students. This is one of the messages of the Learning Standard, one of the 12 NSDC Standards for Staff Development. If one-size-does-not-fit-all for students, how can we continue one-size-fits-all professional development?

The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) is a framework about human learning and change that staff developers need to know, understand, and apply to their work (Hall & Hord, 2001). CBAM is based on the principle that change is a process and not an event. This means everyone connected with assisting educators to learn new instructional practices or improving principal leadership needs to think about change as a series of actions and processes spread over a long period of time. Most people do not transform their behaviors and practices as a result of a single event - no matter how powerful. Developing a new classroom or leadership habit takes time, support, and determination.

CBAM identifies a variety of concerns that educators may express as they implement new practices. Each of those stages requires a different form of support/intervention to resolve those concerns. For example, personal concerns are one of the initial stages of concern. At this stage, a teacher is concerned about how the innovation will affect him or her personally. Educators might wonder what new skills and knowledge will be required of them and whether they will be able to learn those new skills. They wonder whether the materials they need will be available or whether students might react negatively to new forms of instruction and disrupt classroom routines and discipline. If these concerns are not addressed, the teacher may get "stuck" at this stage and never move on. Interventions/support appropriate for the personal concern stage include acknowledging that these concerns are legitimate and appropriate, explaining plans for distributing classroom materials, arranging visits with others who have already implemented the innovation, and demonstrating how to implement the innovation in small steps.

Stages of Concern can also be applied to groups of educators who are learning to use the same innovation. Informal procedures to determine the stage of concern include hallway conversations (one-legged interviews) and formal procedures such as a 35-question survey. These diagnostic tools can be used to create a profile for the group. Not everyone will express the same concerns at the same time, but major areas can be identified and addressed for the group.

CBAM provides a framework for understanding concerns and designing interventions that resolve issues expressed in each stage. Using this framework, professional development becomes a dialogue between staff developer and participants - not a monologue in which professional development is delivered in a preordained sequence with no regard to participant concerns. The staff developer continuously probes and diagnoses participants' needs. The staff developer can then use what's learned to design next steps in the process to support and sustain change.

Implementing new practices requires individualized support. CBAM can provide a framework for determining the kinds of support that lead to high-quality implementation of new practices and sustained use of those practices. This framework can bring the Learning Standard to life.

REFERENCES

Hall, G. & Hord, S. (2001). Implementing change: Patterns, principles, and potholes. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

About the author

Pat Roy is co-author of Moving NSDC's staff development standards into practice: Innovation configurations (NSDC, 2003).