Increasing effectiveness.

This guide is for superintendents, principals, staff developers, teachers and professional development providers-in short for anyone who has a stake in ensuring that professional learning has greater impact on improving practice and increasing student learning. The purpose of this guide is to help schools, districts, and SU/LEAs put in place processes and supports needed to make professional development more effective to meet key student learning and school improvement goals. The guide defines effective professional development and provides tools to self-assess current professional development programs and processes and plan, implement, and evaluate professional learning. Work sheets are available in MSWord in a separate document. Effective professional development depends upon the quality of planning, implementation and evaluation. Within this guide, planning, implementation and evaluation are presented in steps with research-based information and tools and worksheets that can be used to develop a professional development plan, ensure implementation, and evaluate results. The information and processes in this guide are based upon current research about educator learning, change, and organizational development as well as the National Staff Development Council/Learning Forward definition and standards for staff development which are in the Appendices. To be user friendly, information is condensed. The last section includes excellent references used in creating this guide that will provide much greater detail and depth. In this guide, the term " professional development " does not refer to an event or events, but rather to ongoing, sustained, inquiry-based learning that occurs at least weekly throughout the school year. This type of professional learning provides focused, deep learning that builds upon prior learning resulting in positive changes in practice and increased student learning. Research shows that effective leaders and teachers increase student success and that the primary contributor to making educators effective is high-quality, continuous professional learning. High-quality professional learning is different than professional development many educators have grown accustomed to. Research has identified key elements required for professional learning that will change professional practice and that can result in increased student learning. National Staff Development Council/Learning Forward has divided those elements into Context, Process, and Content. Often, professional development content is given most consideration but without a context that supports professional learning and an appropriate research-based learning process, there will be little change in educator practice. The National Staff Development Council/Learning Forward Standards for Staff Development are in the Appendices of this guide. Detailed explanations of each standard and the definition are …