PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 1

Proposal for Practicum

Relevant Professional Development for Human Capital Growth

Michael G. Feris

MED 5305 Classroom Teacher as Researcher

Concordia University

Marilyn Jo Hayes, PhD

December 11, 2014

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Chapter One - Introduction

In 2013, District A voted on a bond that would provide laptops for all students and teachers

within the district. Before the distribution of this new technology, the school board decided that

all professionals in the district provided with a laptop would need to go through a series of four

professional development sessions to equip them with the tools and strategies necessary to use

this technology in the classroom, and ultimately increase student learning. The sessions were led

by two district employees from the technology department, and the curriculum for these sessions

was created at the district level with no teacher input.

The first two sessions were one and a half hours long and were presented back to back. The

presentation style was direct teach with some question answer time at the end. Teachers were

often asked to repeat words or phrases in unison that were considered important. During the first

session attendees were asked to answer a series of questions about their personal technology

proficiencies and then given prompts to draw a picture of a face where the facial characteristics

were determined by how they answered the proficiency questions. The third session, presented

one month later on a district-wide professional development day, had a similar structure both in

presentation and in curriculum. Not once in three sessions was a laptop talked about, looked at,

or discussed, nor were there tools or strategies presented to the teachers. The consensus was that

this professional development was a waste of time for the educators, and a waste of district

money because of the lack of relevance and effectiveness.

The purpose for this mixed methods study is to explore what barriers lead to ineffective

professional development, and how that has contributed to apathetic attitudes professional

learners often have about PD especially when filtering down from the central office. This study

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also will look at the critical importance of human capital development and how this can be the

single greatest contributor to student learning.

I believe that after implementing this plan, there will be an increase in professional learning,

growth in student passing rates for state mandated examinations, and an increase in enrollment

for Advanced Placement (AP) classes.

Chapter Two - Literature Review

It doesn’t matter in what field you are employed, professional development is a way of life

and indeed a necessity as employees seek professional learning (PL) opportunities for growth. In

education unfortunately professional development (PD) is often met with dissatisfaction because

there is usually a lack of money, relevance, preparation, curriculum design, collaborative input,

follow through, or opportunities to share. Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin (1995) state that

effective PD must engage teachers providing chances to observe and reflect on new practices and

strategies, it must be participant driven and not filtered down from higher administration, it must

be collaborative and encourage a culture of the sharing of knowledge, there must be follow

through and sustainability, and there has to be a support structure of modeling, coaching, and

collaborative problem solving.

In music classrooms there are fewer teachers, often one or two per campus, and feelings of

isolation or a lack of support can be present. With specialty classrooms such as Music, Art, Shop,

and Theatre Technology it is the responsibility of the administration to provide opportunities for

collaboration and collective learning. Stanley, Snell and Edgar (2013) suggest that collaboration

has a powerful impact on professional learning and is often missing from professional

development initiatives. One big reason for this is inconvenience. In Leander ISD, there are five

high schools and three of those schools have only one choir director. There is at least 15 minutes

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of travel time between campuses and a good 40 minutes across the district so collaboration

would need to look one of two ways. Either the district would pull choir directors for a district-

wide professional development day or they would try and get the directors to meet outside of

school hours. There are problems with each of these options. First, whenever you pull teachers it

costs money in substitutes. Substitute money is already a huge district expense especially at the

secondary and specifically high school levels. The second problem is that districts cannot force

professional development outside of the contractual hours of employment. This is a big reason

why professional development initiatives cannot happen over the summer. Frequently

specialized teachers feel frustrations in PD because there is no on-site support. Most specialized

teachers have a very specific curriculum so finding ongoing support can be difficult especially

for implementing new ideas and teaching strategies. The best fix to the problem would be to

have other curriculum specific teachers on the same campus from time to time to work in a

collaborate setting. Possibly even Skype or video conferencing would be an option to encourage

cooperative teacher learning in these classrooms (Stanley, Snell & Edgar, 2013). One last issue

that specialized teachers face is that school or district provided PD is usually geared towards core

classrooms. What administrators fail to realize is that specialized classrooms are so vastly

different than core classrooms when generalized PD is presented, those teachers can feel

alienated and that their content area is not being taken seriously.

According to Loughran (2014), one of the most common and least effective forms of

professional development is “’spray and pray’” (para. 2). This type of PD usually is a one shot

workshop presented by outside consultants that can have little to no long-term impact, and are

often organized from the top and filtered down through the schools. So much of this type of

professional learning involves doing things to teachers rather than with them.

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The most effective type of PD has long-term impact and involves lots of follow through and

support. Bambrick-Santoyo and Peiser (2012) encourage observation and reflection for every

teacher monthly if not a more frequent pattern. This type of PL encourages teachers to find areas

of weakness and continuously work to improve instruction. It also helps when teachers play a

role in the decision making process of their own learning. Bambrick-Santoyo and Peiser (2013)

speak of the importance of teachers structuring their own evaluation criteria. A common

evaluation usually consists of setting a date months in advance so the teacher can prepare the

perfect gold lesson. Next, the teacher tells the students when the observation is happening and

continuously reminds them how behavior is of top priority when the principal is in the room.

Finally, the day comes and the lesson is successful. The students are engaged and they are

learning. The principal checks off the satisfactory category just like any other item on their daily

to do list and so goes the cycle year after year. In this scenario, little is learned about the teacher

or their classroom practice on a daily basis and little is done by the administrator to encourage

continuous growth. However, in a teacher directed evaluation the teacher records and watches

videos of their teaching and comes up with a plan for what they want to work on in their

classroom. The administrator is a part of this process but only in guidance and then gives

feedback on what they see. As a result, professionals not only find relevance in their personal

growth they also feel that the evaluator is helping facilitate growth rather than finding faults in

teaching. Evaluations should be an opportunity for professional learning and not a stress-packed

ritual that only occurs once a year. The point is that when teachers know they have some control

over their learning they are more apt to take it seriously (Stanley, Snell & Edgar, 2013).

Professional ownership provides a safe environment for growth and allows the educator to

identify their own areas of weakness and to outline where they want to grow.

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Effective PD almost always accompanies some type of mentor relationship between

educators. The student teaching experience is probably the most impacting and shaping portion

of the undergraduate degree, but it doesn’t last long enough to carry you through the first five

years out on your own. Although it may be impossible to have this exact level of PD continue

into years of service it can continue in spurts through peer collaboration or sitting down with a

mentor teacher and discussing your teaching process. There is so much richness to gain from

shared experience, especially when a seasoned teacher is able to guide effectiveness. Teacher

leaders are often the most equipped to diagnose areas of weakness. Meili and Seeskin (2011)

believe that schools should identify teacher leaders based on high test scores and overall student

effectiveness and train them to lead professional development within their schools.

Administration can provide insight into the school’s academic needs and collaborate on what PD

opportunity would best support teacher leaning as well as provide training for experts in their

new roles as mentors (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995). These teacher leaders should be

compensated either through additional money or a reduced teaching load so they can better

provide guidance to teachers (Meili & Seeskin, 2011).

Teachers need opportunities to share what they know (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin,

1995). There is rarely a time that teachers can share about their own classroom successes and

strategies or about positive PD that they may have experienced. One reason for this is that there

is no time built in to the day to day schedule that allows for this type of meeting. Local

leadership can often times let share-moments slip through the cracks because they are

preoccupied with everyday minutia, and equally culpable are teachers not asking for time to

share their experience with peers. One of the greatest resources teachers have is their collective

knowledge which left untapped goes to waste. Team planning strategies, professional learning

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communities, and evaluating play a major role in personal professional growth and it should be

the responsibility of district and local leadership to provide support for this type of learning.

Department meetings are an important tool in encouraging collaboration and sharing teaching

strategies.

Some educators are capable of finding their own PD and pursuing professional learning

independently, and some PL involves the teacher refining their own skills. As educators

participate side by side with students in their learning teachers find that they are able to go

deeper with the students and student learning increased. In the choir classroom, teachers that

continue to take private lessons to refine their personal vocal technique can better relate to the

vocal production of their students. Additionally, when a teacher sings and performs the music

that they assign to the students they have a better understand of the student’s experience and can

relate to their learning (Stanley, Snell & Edgar, 2013). Teachers need to come out of their areas

of comfort and take on new strategies and ways of teaching meeting the students where they are

trying to learn from their perspective (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995).

There are some inherent issues that educators and administrators need to overcome before

they pursue PD sessions. Administrators and teacher leaders need to process through the PD they

want to incorporate into their school. It is easy to get inspired at a conference and even want to

implement lots of new strategies with the faculty and staff (Cutler, 2014). However, rather than

trying to immediately implementing new campus initiatives it is important to process through all

the information in a collaborative way and come up with a strategic plan for putting ideas into

action while providing lots of follow through. New initiatives must be ongoing, and a great

resource for ongoing support is using teacher leaders on campus. A failure occurs when local

leadership rely too heavily on outside experts when implementing new concepts and strategies

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because there are rarely funds granted to support continued training for putting new ideas into

effect. Your greatest resource is the successful teacher leaders within the school that know how

to identify areas of weakness and know what needs to be done to make change. Using on campus

staff also saves budget money because they are already on payroll through the district and they

can provide ongoing support and training. Teachers must also rid themselves of past experience

and approach PD with the hope that they will learn something new. No matter how many years

you have under your belt, you are never above learning something new (Cutler, 2014). One of

the issues when approaching PD is that teachers would rather complain about irrelevant PD

rather than offer ways to improve it. It is easier to complain than it is to give up your time to

create or provide positive learning opportunities. Principals must create a school culture that is

conducive to professional learning and pursuit of personal professional growth (Darling-

Hammond & McLaughlin, 1995).

Human capital development is becoming more and more popular as principals think through

the effectiveness of their school (Donaldson, 2013). With human capital development there is a

stronger feeling of administration doing something with teachers rather than doing something to

teachers. The focus for relevant and effective PD changes from the attitude of let’s get through

this to making the people you have the most effective for student learning. The thought is similar

to an athlete thinking this is the body I have, and I want it to be the strongest it can be. How

leadership provides professional growth opportunities will largely have an effect on student

learning. A principal’s effect on student learning is second only to teachers because of their

influence on PD opportunities, and arguably the most important role ensuring excellent teaching

within their school (Donaldson, 2013).

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Chapter Three - Methodology

This mixed methods study will use mostly a qualitative research design with some

quantitative research. It is considered a qualitative study because teachers will be surveyed on

how they felt the effectiveness of their professional development was in the past year. These

surveys will be distributed throughout the year after each PD has been completed.

First, the Vandegrift High School (VHS) administration team will form a committee of

administrators, department chairs, and teachers and discuss the calendar for the upcoming year

noting days that are set aside for PD. Second, the VHS Professional Development Team (PDT)

will decide what types of PD would best benefit teacher and student learning. These PD

initiatives should coordinate with the Campus Improvement Plan (CIP). The PDT will also create

a three year plan for mentorship and coaching including all teachers that will happen on a

monthly basis providing pre-conference, observation, and reflection opportunities. The first year

of implementation will involve a small group of mentors and volunteer teachers. Year two will

include the remaining staff, and year three will provide training for teacher leaders to become

mentors and teaching coaches.

Qualitative Research Design

Teachers at Vandegrift High School will receive training either as mentors and coaches or as

professional learners. Mentors will continuously dialogue with teachers on how the process is

working, and at the end of each semester all staff will be given a survey on the effectiveness of

the mentor/mentee relationship. Additionally, all staff will be given surveys on the effectiveness

of professional development days both coming from the district level and the local level. The

PDT will meet and discuss the results of the surveys as well as plans for continuous

improvement.

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Quantitative Research Design

The PDT and the administrative team will look at disaggregated data from the end of the year

STAAR, EOC, and AP tests to determine the effectiveness of the professional development and

coaching. For AP tests, student participation will also be considered to see if there was a rise or

drop in the number of students that decided to enroll in AP classes as well as take the AP exams.

Expected Findings

The researcher expects to find that with the implementation of the professional development

initiative at Vandegrift High School that there will be an increase in professional learning as well

as an increase in student passing rates on all STAAR, EOC, and AP exams at the end of the

school year. The researcher also expects to find an increase in AP exam participation for students

that are enrolled in AP courses.

Chapter Four – Results and Discussion

Professional development is often irrelevant, not specific to content areas, not properly

presented, not prepared adequately, and does not provide follow through support. As a result

educators can feel disenchanted at the thought of district or school provided staff development.

Professional development is most effective when there is a combination of educator interest and

follow through with the support of the administration through funds and flexibility for

implementation. This project is designed to provide relevant and implementable staff

development to all teachers at Vandegrift High School.

Below is the data from 50 to 60 interviews that were conducted this past semester asking

questions about personal professional development experiences. The interviews were given to

educators across the state of Texas both at the elementary and secondary level. The results are as

follows:

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This first chart deals with coaching and mentoring opportunities provided by campus or

district. It is good to see that the highest percentage shows a strong satisfaction in coaching and

mentoring opportunities. However, 48.94% show that the have either never been

coached/mentored or that these opportunities were only provided during student teaching or

when first starting on campus or in district.

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This second chart shows how people have experienced follow through after a professional

development session. In my opinion, lack of follow through is the biggest issue leading to

unsuccessful implementation of professional development sessions. No matter how inspiring the

PD may be, people must be given relevant ways to implement into their classroom as well as

ongoing support as difficulties arise.

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Collaboration is a critical aspect of professional growth. It is good to see that a majority of

people are given opportunities to collaborate with their colleagues. I would imagine that the

more specialized the classroom the more difficult it is to provide collaborative opportunities. For

example, if you are the only choir director on a campus, then the only way to collaborate with

colleagues is to travel to another campus. For this to happen the teacher would either need to take

a personal day or the campus would need to provide for coverage of their classroom.

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The Plan

The plan will involve training from district specialists and specialists on site. All teachers will

be required to satisfy 3 trainings per year for the next 3 years and include how they incorporated

strategies from these PD sessions into their classroom as a part of their yearly portfolio. District

specialists and onsite specialists will be made available to answer questions and provide follow

through both in modeling and in implanting strategies into the classroom. Teachers will also be

given a google classroom account and can share ideas and suggestions with each other on the

main message board. Teachers will also be given opportunities to share what they are doing at

faculty meetings both corporately and in smaller groups. Teachers will need to fill out surveys on

the effectiveness of the training including what they think is working or needs to be adjusted.

They will also be encouraged to ask for specific staff development within the topics of building

relationships through appreciating cultural differences and differentiating instructions for cultural

diverse students.

The plan will include professional development training in two areas. First, teachers will be

trained on ways to build relationships with students, and to recognize and promote the cultural

differences of all students in the classroom. This training will include specific strategies that

teachers can use in their classrooms to build relationships and promote cultural awareness, will

provide time for the teachers to share what they do in their classroom, and provide modeling.

Second, there will be training by veteran teachers on how to better differentiate their instruction

to support meeting the needs of all the students in the classroom. The focus will be on creating

small group learning and student lead learning in the classroom.

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What is the need for this plan?

This plan is being implemented for the same reason that all professional development is

created, to increase student learning. However, this plan will involve teachers and administrators

during the choosing and creation process of their own professional development. When

educators are a part of the creation process there will be greater buy in and should increase

successful implementation.

How will this plan be measured?

This plan will be measured in two ways. First, teachers will be given surveys throughout the

two year implementation period. They will be asked about the creation process, the relevance to

their content area, how helpful the PD was, and how much success they had in implementing the

PD into their classroom. Second, AEIS data as well as student achievement data (e.g.

benchmarks, district assessment) will be desegregated and measured against previous year’s

scores. Adjustments will be made in areas that still need improvement.

Chapter Five - Conclusion

Professional development is a critical aspect of student learning and human capital growth.

Administrators must see this as such and make opportunities for their human capital to receive

relevant and accessible professional learning experiences. Student learning is successful when

two things are present on campus. First, teachers must be able to build relationships with their

students. If the students feel cared about, then they will care about what they are doing. Second,

it is as important for administrators to provide good sustainable professional development to

teachers as it is for teachers to provide interesting and relevant learning opportunities for their

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students. If administrators don’t value ongoing professional learning then how can they expect

their teachers to value creating a rich and engaging learning environment for their students?

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115-123

Cutler, D. (2014, July 20). Fixing bad professional development [Web log post]. Retrieved November

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