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Teachers must be staff development leaders

By Dennis Sparks
RESULTS - September 1998

"What teachers know and can do is the most important influence on what students learn," the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future declared in its well-documented 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future. The importance of teachers' knowledge and skill was underscored in a recent Tennessee study which found that elementary students who had the most effective teachers for three straight years averaged 54-60 points higher that those who had the least effective teachers.

What Matters Most went on to argue that, "Access to competent teaching must become a new student right. Access to high quality preparation, induction, and professional development must become a new teacher right." Unfortunately, in its current form, professional development ". . . is not well suited to helping teachers with the most pressing challenges they face in deepening their subject matter knowledge, responding to student diversity, or teaching more effectively," the report concludes.

A new vision for professional learning

Imagine a school in which teachers are organized into ongoing professional learning groups of eight to 10. Teachers meet for an hour or two almost every day to discuss what they teach and how they teach it, compare student work with their expectations for student learning, and seek ways to assist students who aren't meeting those standards. They analyze classroom, school, and district data on student achievement to determine goals and apply educational research to improve their practice.

These teachers also attend state and national conferences, participate in local workshops, and are part of various face-to-face and electronic networks. In addition, teachers have time each day for ongoing professional development through processes such as joint planning of lessons, curriculum and assessment work, study groups, and peer coaching.

Teachers must assume important leadership roles in their schools if this new vision of staff development is to become a reality. These teacher leaders will:

• Advocate this new vision of staff development as part of collective bargaining agreements;
  
• Serve as leaders on school and district improvement teams to help determine goals and strategies;
  
• Conduct classroom and schoolwide action research to determine if changes in instruction, curriculum, and assessment are improving the learning of all their students;
  
• Mentor new teachers to provide the professional and social support necessary to successfully complete the first few years of teaching;
  
• Serve on peer review panels for new and veteran teachers to provide appropriate support and assistance and when necessary to make recommendations regarding continuing employment; and
  
• Serve as staff development facilitators, trainers, or coaches within their schools to provide ongoing professional learning and classroom support.

Additional funds must be committed to professional development and conditions within schools must be changed so that such sustained professional learning becomes a regular part of teachers' workdays. In addition, principals and other administrators who support good teaching must also engage in continuous learning.

Even given these challenges, Linda Darling-Hammond, executive director of the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future, remains hopeful. "For every one of these problems, there are states and school districts that have created alternatives that provide teachers with the knowledge and the conditions they need to succeed," she says. "They have demonstrated that these changes make a difference in student achievement." Such improvements depend, however, on teachers assuming significant professional development leadership roles. Nothing less will lead to high levels of learning and performance for all students and staff members.