Teacher Leaders Designing and Facilitating Professional Development for Teachers

During an online panel discussion and in interviews, experienced practitioners (including MSP program leaders) offered insights around strategies that teacher leaders can use to provide support to classroom teachers for the purpose of improving instruction. The insights below reflect general agreement among these practitioners on designing and facilitating professional development to improve instruction and include illustrative examples from their own practice. After reviewing these insights, you will be provided with opportunities to share your own experiences with using these strategies for these purposes. The information you provide will be included in the analysis of insights and examples from other practitioners as this website is periodically updated.

Insight: Teacher leaders should draw on prior classroom experience as they design and facilitate professional development for teachers.

A teacher leader can make use of prior classroom experience as a source of examples and illustrations from teaching to make professional development more accessible to teachers. While this classroom experience lends credibility in both design work and facilitation, it is essential that a teacher leader demonstrates through his or her facilitation an understanding of the "realities of classroom teaching". During a professional development session, a teacher leader can draw upon his/her classroom experience to address issues that teachers may raise and to provide practical advice.

Insights in Action
As part of professional development work at the district level, teacher leaders worked over time to co-design and present grade-level sessions on individual Investigations units prior to teachers being asked to teach the units. Because teacher leaders had piloted the program in their own classrooms, they were confident about how the program worked with students. Because of their experience, they were able to share their genuine enthusiasm for the units and the program, and also able to answer specific questions that teachers had.

Insight: In designing and facilitating professional development, teacher leaders should have a solid understanding of the content of professional development which comes, at least in part, from experience in their own practice.

In the practice of designing or facilitating professional development, teacher leaders need a high level of proficiency with the content of professional development and what it aims to develop among teachers, particularly the mathematics or science content of that professional development. For teacher leaders facilitating professional development, it is especially important that they have experience, in their own practice, with the mathematics or science content to draw upon when facilitating professional development with teachers. Their knowledge needs to be deep enough to be able to listen and interact with teachers and to build on or challenge their ideas about content.

Insights in Action
In efforts to reform a district’s entire K–12 mathematics program, it was the teacher leaders' role to learn the lesson taught as part of the program’s professional development and then teach the lesson in their own classroom. Afterwards, they facilitated the professional development of other teachers to support their implementation of the lesson. Teacher leaders had several opportunities to think about and try out the new materials, which gave them credibility with teachers and communicated confidence that the materials could work. Teacher leaders were open and transparent about what worked, what was problematic, and other issues they encountered when teaching the lesson in their own classrooms. They also had opportunities to explore and discuss the lesson with their colleagues before and after they taught it.

Insight: Teacher leaders should be knowledgeable about the needs of teachers participating in professional development and how to target those needs through professional development programs.

When engaging in the practice of designing or facilitating professional development, it is essential that a teacher leader is knowledgeable about the needs of the teachers participating in professional development and be aware that the teachers’ needs may be different from the needs of the teacher leader when s/he was a professional development participant. It is also helpful for a teacher leader to have experience with a variety of professional development programs and strategies, so as to understand what a particular program demands of teachers. Finally, it is helpful if a teacher leader has a good understanding of adult learning and the capacity to apply it in the design and/or facilitation of professional development.

Insights in Action
As part of a district-level coaching program, two tiers of teacher leaders (full¬time, district-based coaches and school-based teacher leaders with 20-30% release time from the classroom) engaged in professional development work to improve mathematics instruction. District-based coaches were initially apprenticed, working with experienced program staff to design workshops, after-school study groups, and summer institutes. In this system of teacher leadership, district-based coaches and/or school-based teacher leaders facilitated the professional development. Because they were still working in the classroom, the school-based teacher leaders could identify with the classroom teachers’ experiences and recognized places where teachers were struggling. They served as a conduit back to the district-based coaches with information about areas and concepts that were particularly challenging. Using this information, coaches and teacher leaders worked in teams of 3 or 4 to design professional development experiences that reflected the real needs of the classroom teachers.

Insight: Teacher leaders should engage in the practice of designing professional development in collaboration with others.

For teacher leaders designing professional development, it is essential that teacher leaders collaborate with others in creating a strong design for professional development, which could take the form of feedback on a design or seeking out resources to supplement a teacher leader’s knowledge. For example, one MSP Principal Investigator made a case for involving STEM faculty and middle school teacher leaders in designing programs to deepen teacher content knowledge, arguing that "teachers bring the middle school perspective that university faculty doesn’t have, and the university faculty brings a stronger mathematics content background.” It is also helpful for a teacher leader to have knowledge of just how one goes about constructing a design for professional development experiences, and while this knowledge may accrue from experience or from training, it may also be provided by colleagues through collaboration.

Insight: Teacher leaders engaged in facilitating professional development for teachers should have the skills required of an effective facilitator.

A teacher leader needs facilitation skills in order to engage teachers effectively, elicit their thinking, and encourage reflection that advances teacher understanding. Through their facilitation, teacher leaders can help teachers "confront issues" or challenging problems in their teaching practice. Use of good communication skills are particularly important as teacher leaders engage teachers in professional development. As one practitioner explained, “Facilitation requires more than just presentation skills if teacher leaders are to successfully facilitate teacher learning.”

Now It's Your Turn...

If you would like to comment on any of these insights or provide an example based on your own experiences with designing or facilitating professional development as a strategy for supporting instructional improvement, we invite to share your comments or example here.

If you would like to share additional insights (not included in the list above) from your own experiences with designing or facilitating professional development, we invite you to add these insights here.

If you are interested in how these practitioner insights were collected and analyzed, a summary of the methodology can be found here.