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Move beyond workshops with NSDC standards

By Pat Roy

Results, September 2004

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2004. All rights reserved.

I recently read in a dissertation that teachers who completed a self-assessment inventory concerning professional development in their schools saw the words "professional development" and immediately thought of attending a workshop! I was dismayed. For so many educators, staff development still equals a workshop.

Not long after that, a participant in one of my training sessions on NSDC's Standards for Staff Development said she assumed the standards would help her create better workshops and teach her how to motivate the people to whom she delivered that workshop. She was surprised and maybe disappointed that the day focused on very different content.

NSDC's Standards for Staff Development describe a comprehensive system of professional development that involves the consistent and sustained effort of everyone in the organization--from school staff through the board of education. The standards begin with an underlying assumption that the school is the center of change. This statement should not be misinterpreted to mean that district-level staff perform no role in school-level change. Fullan and Stiegelbauer (1991) assert that the "district administrator's task is to increase the basic capacity of the system to manage change effectively" (p. 191).

Similarly, they found that neither top-down nor bottom-up strategies were adequate to leverage the changes needed in schools and classrooms. Centralized (top-down) change seems not to work because it uses a one-size-fits-all approach "that is inappropriate and ineffective except for the narrowest of goals" (p. 200). Decentralized (bottom-up) change can be challenging because of staff members' "lack of capacity to manage change" (p. 200). These findings tell us that a combined effort of district administration with school-level staff will most likely result in increased learning for students. The most effective change strategy includes "co-management, with coordination and joint planning enhanced through the development of consensus between staff members at all levels" (Louis, 1998, p. 161). Only districts with this kind of collaborative change strategy will successfully implement professional development that results in improved student learning.

A joint and collaborative effort focused on enhancing professional development, as described in the standards, might be difficult for some to imagine. In Moving NSDC's Staff Development Standards into Practice: Innovation Configurations (2003), Shirley Hord and I describe what school board members, superintendents, central office staff, principals, and teachers would do to put the standards into operation. This book can be a valuable resource to help create a system that supports high-quality professional development.

The NSDC standards also redefine professional development. Instead of workshop topics that are chosen through needs assessment surveys, high-quality professional development is driven by data concerning what students need to know and be able to do. Instead of "sit-and-get" sessions delivered by outside experts, high-quality professional development involves collegial conversations about student work and strategies to improve classroom practices and student learning. Instead of days set aside in the calendar for staff development events, professional development involves "just-in-time" learning that occurs during the regular workday. Instead of classroom doors remaining closed, professional development encourages the "deprivatization" of classroom work in order to create high-quality teaching for all students.

Each standard begins with the same phrase: Staff development that improves the learning of all students. ... The goal of the standards is to ensure that professional development results in professional learning that improves the learning of all students.

REFERENCES

Fullan, M. & Stiegelbauer, S. (1991). The new meaning of educational change. NY: Teachers College Press.

Louis, K. (1998). The role of the school district in school improvement. In M. Holmes, K. Leithwood, & D. Musella (Eds.), Educational policy for effective schools (pp. 145-67). Toronto: OISE Press.

National Staff Development Council (2003). Moving NSDC's staff development standards into practice: Innovation configurations. Oxford, OH: Author.

About the author

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