Apply time with wisdom
By Thomas R. Guskey
Journal of Staff Development, Spring 1999 (Vol. 20, No. 2)
If schools are to function as true learning organizations, they must support learning for both students and educators (Abdal-Haqq, 1996; Lieberman, 1995; Prager, 1992; Raywid, 1993; Woodilla, Boscardin, & Dodds, 1997). For this reason, school schedules at all levels are being restructured to add time for professional development. More challenging student performance standards paired with rigorous accountability policies call for significant changes in instructional practices that can’t be accomplished through modest, short-term professional development efforts. Instead, they demand expanded learning opportunities for teachers and school administrators, generous support from peers and mentors, and extended time to practice, reflect, critique, and practice again (Cohen & Hill, 1998).
A variety of restructuring designs have been proposed to gain more professional development time. Some of these options include increasing the flexibility of educators’ daily schedules, extending the school day, and adding days to the school calendar for professional development activities (Guskey, 1998a; Murphy, 1997). But while providing more time for professional development is important, too many policy makers and educational leaders see that as an end in itself. They assume professional development is inherently good and, therefore, more is always better.
Simply doing more of the same old stuff, however, is not necessarily better. It can actually lead to diminished results, higher levels of frustration, and increased cynicism (Gentile, 1996; Guskey, 1997a). If the additional time for professional development is to yield truly meaningful improvements, we must ensure that time is used wisely, efficiently, and effectively. This will require deep and profound changes in the organizational culture of most schools and in the perspectives of educators who work within them.
To bring about these profound changes and gain the improvements we seek, two things must be done. First, we must dispel some of the myths that pervade current professional development planning. And second, we must establish and then follow specific guidelines for effectively using additional professional development time.
Myths
Three major myths diminish the effectiveness of professional development planning and impede the progress of educators who seek to make the best use of professional development time. Successfully using this time well will depend to a large extent on abolishing these myths.
Myth #1: It’s new, so it must be better.
Over the last two decades, educators have been bombarded by innumerable new programs and strategies, each more elaborate and usually more expensive than its predecessors. Even though using many of these new innovations isn’t justified by current theory or sound evidence, we invest in them simply because they’re new and in vogue (Guskey, 1996a). Keeping up with the profession has become translated to "keeping up with the Joneses," who work in a neighboring school district and are involved in the latest educational trend. When that program or approach doesn’t yield the promised dramatic improvements, we search for a newer one to take its place. And even if the newer one isn’t terribly different from the old one, we can rest assured it will at least have a new name.
Not all new education programs and approaches are created equal. Many are not derived from our best professional knowledge and the majority are more "opinion-based" than "research-based" (Guskey, 1992). Although they may be intuitively appealing and use the most current education lingo, evidence of their effectiveness in improving student learning is often scant or nonexistent.
Take, for example, our current infatuation with "brain-based learning." In recent years, it’s been the focus of numerous books and articles, dozens of education conferences, and countless professional development sessions. But do we have evidence showing that a thorough understanding of brain functioning and neuroscience leads to more effective instructional practice and improved student learning? No, we don’t! Honest critics point out: "Right now, brain science has little to offer education practice or policy" (Bruer, 1998, p. 14), while even thoughtful advocates admit, "Brain research does not — and may never — tell us specifically what we should do in the classroom" (Wolfe & Brandt, 1998, p. 8). One might argue that the implications of a "kidney-based" approach to learning could be just as significant, or perhaps even more so when working with primary grade students, or adults who consume caffeine beverages.
Educators must be much more cautious in committing themselves to new programs and approaches, and must weigh carefully the supporting evidence. They also must be willing to gather their own evidence and analyze effects in their own setting. Furthermore, they must be wary of the growing number of opportunistic entrepreneurs more concerned with what sells in education than with what works for students.
This is not to imply that new programs and approaches are never better. Sometimes they are, and occasionally strong evidence justifies their implementation. But before any major implementation effort, educators should demand evidence and thoroughly examine its validity and relevance to their context.
Myth #2: "Need assessments" will guide us to best practices.
Carefully designed "need assessments" are considered essential in planning well-targeted and highly efficient professional development endeavors. But while they offer valuable information, evidence indicates most "need assessments" are misnamed. Instead of defining teachers’ and administrators’ "needs," they typically identify problems, dilemmas, concerns, and wants. In other words, they more accurately describe symptoms of needs that must be diagnosed more thoroughly and more completely (Jones, 1976; Jones & Hayes, 1980).
Gathering information from educators about current problems and concerns is distinctly different from determining needs. Furthermore, needs change, not only because we come to recognize new ones, but also because programs come and go, population demographics change, professional knowledge expands, and students’ learning needs vary. Although most educators can articulate the problems and difficulties they’re experiencing, they may not be aware of their actual needs.
The crucial difference between "needs" and "symptoms of needs" was made clear to me years ago while working as a graduate student with Professor Benjamin Bloom. Through a series of studies on "time-on-task," we had identified a strong relation between students’ achievement and the class time they spent actively engaged in learning activities. Our next step was to identify procedures teachers could use to increase students’ engaged time during class sessions.
One day Professor Bloom and I were discussing the new direction of our work. Having been a classroom teacher, I recommended devising strategies teachers could use to better manage their students. "Classroom management is the key to student involvement," I argued. "If we offer teachers strategies to better manage students, more students will be actively involved and learning will improve."
With his eyebrow raised, Professor Bloom turned to me and said, "Tom, I am convinced that if you manage learning well, you don’t have to worry about managing learners."
What he saw, and I did not, was that managing learners is a symptom of a much deeper problem that has to do with the way we manage students’ learning experiences. When learning activities are relevant and engaging to students, managing their behavior is no longer a problem. While I focused on a symptom, Bloom was able to see more deeply and identify the need. Those responsible for planning professional development must strive to do the same.
Myth #3: Planning at the local level is always best.
Because district-initiated professional development activities have a less-than-stellar record of success, professional development planning has been moved in large part to the local school level. In Kentucky, for example, 65 percent of the funds for professional development are placed at the discretion of individual site-based school councils (Cody & Guskey, 1997). This change is founded on the premise that the commitment and good will of educators at the school level will guide them in making wise and prudent professional development decisions.
School-based educators have a wealth of experience that can be invaluable in fashioning professional development. Nevertheless, these individuals work under extremely demanding conditions that often make it impossible for them to develop expertise in the most current ideas and research on ways to improve student learning. Without this expertise or ready access to such expertise, school-based decisions often become shared naiveté at best or shared ignorance at worst (Guskey & Peterson, 1996). As Grant Wiggins (1998) so accurately describes it, "They don’t know what they don’t know!"
Just because something is planned at the local school level doesn’t make it good. It may be new and local, but equally poor. We also must be careful not to mistake interesting activities, such as action research or study groups, for valid and meaningful professional development. Content makes a difference.
Suppose, for example, the action research project focused on stress reduction techniques for different personality types and the study group investigated various retirement plan options. How would this benefit students? Although all educators need to continually learn, the painful lesson we seem to keep rediscovering in professional development is that well-designed structures do not compensate for inadequate substance.
To solve this problem will require significant change in the way professional development activities are planned, organized, and carried out. Specifically, it requires building-level and district leaders to collaborate and work together, combining their experience, expertise, and resources. Jointly planned activities are consistently more effective and more efficient than those planned by either building or district educators working alone (Guskey, 1996b; Harkreader & Weathersby, 1998). Outside expertise tapped through school-university partnerships, regional service centers, and educational cooperatives can be especially valuable in these efforts.
Guidelines for success
With these myths dispelled, we now turn to specific guidelines for ensuring the wise use of our additional professional development time. Although adhering to these guidelines may not guarantee the effectiveness of all professional development activities, ignoring them will inevitably result in inefficient and unproductive efforts.
Guideline #1: Focus on learning and learners.
If professional development time is to be used well and lead to truly meaningful improvement, activities that fill that time must focus clearly on learning and learners. While these activities may take a variety of forms (Drago-Severson, 1994; Sparks & Loucks-Horsley, 1989), all should be related to a school mission that emphasizes important and worthwhile learning goals for all students. This focus forms the criteria by which professional development content and materials are selected, processes and procedures developed, and assessments and evaluations prepared (Guskey, 1997b). It also helps mobilize teachers and school administrators to make major changes in how they and their students participate in the school, although the specifics of this process will differ depending on the context (Lieberman, 1995). Most importantly, it helps keep efforts on task and prevents distraction by peripheral issues that waste time and divert energy (Loucks-Horsley, Stiles, & Hewson, 1996).
Guideline #2: Engage in rigorous self analysis.
To reach your destination you must first have a clear sense of where you are. Realizing professional development goals similarly requires careful examination of current evidence. In particular it requires rigorous self-analysis at the individual and school levels.
Educators must have the courage to ask tough questions and the skills to find honest answers. They must regularly examine all forms of evidence on student learning to identify potential weaknesses in the curriculum or instructional program. If most students are missing certain assessment questions, or failing to meet certain criteria spelled out in a scoring rubric, there is more likely a teaching problem than a student learning problem. Carefully analyzing such evidence at the classroom and school levels, combined with collaborative planning of strategies to remedy identified problems, needs to become a regular part of ongoing, job-embedded professional development efforts.
The importance of this process was emphasized in a recent study of high schools that are members of the Coalition of Essential Schools (Wasley, Hampel, & Clark, 1997). One of the factors identified as critical to making changes that positively affect students was the ability of individual faculty members to develop skills in rigorous self-analysis focusing on student gains. Successful teachers consistently asked themselves, "Who is not learning?", "Why?", and "What can I do about it?" In less successful schools, self-analysis was also present, but often did not center on results with students. Staff members in these schools frequently focused on logistical issues, such as whether a particular lesson would fit into the allotted instructional time. In schools that experienced significant gains, teachers and administrators alike were in the habit of asking themselves tough questions that focused specifically on gains for students. They carefully scrutinized their results, took personal responsibility for learning outcomes, and collaboratively searched for new ways to improve their policies and practices.
Guideline #3: Study the history of new ideas and proceed gradually.
Education has a long history of research and development established by true giants in our field. These brilliant individuals set forth great ideas coupled with specific suggestions for implementation. Often, they also have provided evidence of their successes and described reasons for occasional failures. Instead of honoring their contributions and standing on their shoulders to enhance our vision, however, more often we stomp on their toes.
We marvel today, for example, at the advances in cognitive science and the new insights of modern "constructivists." At the same time, we fail to acknowledge the contributions of John Dewey (1933, 1938), who described identical perspectives in outlining "progressive education" during the 1920s and 1930s, or the strikingly similar, child-centered approaches offered by "open education" advocates during the 1960s and 1970s (Barth & Rathbone, 1971; Rathbone, 1971). We hold aloft the ideas of multiple intelligences, but neglect the seminal work of Thurstone (1938), who described various "primary mental abilities" more than 60 years ago, and Guilford (1967, 1977) who set forth a comprehensive, multi-dimensional model of intelligence in the 1960s. Likewise, today we emphasize the importance of "performance-based instruction" and using assessments as learning tools, but ignore the practical and tested guidance on these processes offered decades ago by Benjamin Bloom (1968, 1976).
Education is a dynamic profession with an ever-expanding knowledge base. To become a true profession, however, we must understand that knowledge base and build on it. This means we must know the history of ideas and become discriminating consumers of research evidence in order to make better and more thoughtful decisions (Guskey & Huberman, 1995). If we do not know that history, we are indeed doomed to repeat it, committing the same mistakes again and again (Cuban, 1990). We also must be willing to challenge educational consultants who preface their comments with the phrase, "Research shows..." but then fail to offer specific references or citations.
Most importantly, we must proceed with implementation at a gradual pace, carefully gathering evidence along the way. A thoughtfully constructed, small-scale, pilot effort before large-scale implementation is always a good idea. Even with sound theory on our side, we often have little more than vague conventional wisdom to guide early implementation. While conventional wisdom and common sense are important, they often turn out to be wrong–or at least simplistic. Although validating the effectiveness of programs or approaches can be time-consuming, and the urgency to make improvements is compelling, such a validation process is far more efficient in the long run than expending huge amounts of time, money, and resources on untested programs of unproven worth (Airasian, 1983).
Guideline #4: Continually evaluate progress.
Many educators see evaluation as a costly, time-consuming process that occurs at the end of a professional development activity and requires technical skills beyond those possessed by most teachers and administrators. But good evaluations of professional development do not have to be costly, nor do they require sophisticated technical skills. What they require is the ability to ask good questions, and a basic understanding about how to find valid answers. Good evaluations provide information that is sound, practical, and sufficiently reliable to use in making thoughtful and responsible decisions about professional development processes and effects. To be optimally effective, that information should be gathered at a variety of levels throughout the professional development process, beginning with the earliest stages of planning and continuing through implementation, follow-up, and institutionalization (Guskey, 1998b; Guskey & Sparks, 1991).
The goals of all professional development activities should be accompanied by a description of how attainment of those goals will be documented or assessed. In other words, what evidence would be trusted to ensure that progress is being made or that the overall goals have been met? Because of the complexity of most improvement efforts, multiple indicators are likely to be necessary when making these judgments, and both intended and unintended consequences should be considered. Educators at all levels must learn how to gather this evidence, make sense of it, and use it to refine their improvement efforts. By collecting information on important indicators of student learning at regular intervals throughout professional development processes, necessary corrections and revisions can be made early on to ensure greater success in the end. Regular meetings at which early results are shared, mutual problems discussed, and solutions collaboratively planned can be particularly beneficial (Sparks, 1998).
Conclusions
The constant lament among educators today, especially about professional development, is "We don’t have enough time" (Goodson, 1992). But just as allocating more time in school for students does not guarantee better learning (Denham & Lieberman, 1980), simply providing more time for professional development does not guarantee greater effectiveness on the part of educators. It is not the amount of professional development time, but how we use the time that counts. With deep changes in the organizational culture of schools and in educators’ perspectives toward professional development, however, meaningful improvements can be made.
To gain these improvements, we must guarantee that our newly acquired professional development time is used well. Doing so will not be easy, for a multitude of myths and misconceptions vie to divert us. But if we focus on learning and learners, engage in rigorous self-analysis, study the history of new ideas and proceed gradually, and continually evaluate our progress, improvements are sure to come.
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Thomas R. Guskey is a professor at the College of Education at the University of Kentucky. He can be reached at the Taylor Education Building, College of Education, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, (606) 257-8666, fax (606) 257-4243; e-mail: guskey@pop.uky.edu.
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