The State Role in Teacher Professional Development and Education Throughout Teachers' Careers

Abstract

Professional development and teacher education policies have the potential to greatly affect teachers' abilities to teach and, as a result, students' abilities to learn. States can play varied roles in the provision of teacher education and professional development. This policy brief summarizes states' policy approaches to teacher professional development and education throughout teachers' careers. It explores what states are currently doing in the realms of pre-service education, induction and mentoring, ongoing professional development, and teacher evaluation, as well as the existing evidence regarding the effectiveness of such policies. We find that states play disparate roles in the provision of teacher education and professional development that fall along the regulatory spectrum from highly prescriptive to rather laissez-faire. Research on the effects of such policies is still in the early stages, and more attention is needed to determine the effectiveness of states' professional development policies.

Adopting an International Innovation for Teacher Professional Development

“…Although the specificity of this state requirement on lesson study is unique considering the fact that the state involvement in professional development has been traditionally limited to specifying credit hours required for certification renewal or advancement (Loeb et al, 2009), it is important to note that these 66 schools in 23 districts represent only 2% of the total of 3,450 schools in 67 regular districts across the state. Thus, it would be reasonable to conclude that the impact of this state mandate on districts would be minimal.…”

“…The present study builds on the previous studies of states’ and districts’ approaches to professional development and instructional improvement in general (Coburn & Russell, 2008; Firestone, Mangin, Martinez, & Polovsky, 2005; Gamoran et al, 2003; Hightower, Knapp, Marsh, & McLaughlin, 2002; Hubbard, Mehan, & Stein, 2006; Loeb, Miller, & Strunk, 2009; Stein & Coburn, 2008) and explores the state- and district-level policy and organizational conditions that allow a promising international innovation like lesson study to be implemented and scaled up successfully in the U.S. context. Specifically, this mixed-method study takes the first step in understanding state and district approaches to facilitate lesson study by analyzing one state’s and 41 districts’ policy documents produced on lesson study, a statewide district survey of 41 professional development coordinators regarding district-level lesson study policy and facilitation, and interviews with a state education representative and five lesson study training organizers and providers.…”

Learning Goals of Professional Development Programs at Science Research Institutions: A Delphi Study with Different Stakeholder Groups

“…However, policies in professional development are often stated ambiguously (Hardy et al, 2010;Kennedy, 2015) and its subsequent goals are also defined rather vaguely. The most common learning goals in policies include strengthening teachers' competencies (Hardy et al, 2010), keeping teachers in contact with new curricula and policies (Loeb et al, 2009), and improving teachers' understanding of high-quality academic research (Department for Education, 2016). Indeed, the literature rarely reports more specific learning goals, such as enhancing CK (Donnelly & Argyle, 2011).…”

Not enough hours in the day

“…Across the OECD, full-time lower secondary teachers with more than 25 years of experience teach about 0.7 hours less per week than mid-career peers with 5-16 years of experience, with significant differences in seven OECD countries. In Portugal, for example, secondary school teachers receive a reduction of two hours at the age of 50 (and 15 years of service), another two at the age of 55 (and 20 years of service), and another four hours at the age of 60 (and 25 years of service) while their overall working hours remain unchanged [59]). The effect of this policy is clearly visible in Figure 2.12, which shows a shift in the central tendency of reported teaching hours across different levels of experience, even though the conditional variance remains high.…”