Teacher Education Curriculum, Professional Development

Each reform initiative, each advance in knowledge of teaching and learning in U.S. education, and every plan for school improvement brings related professional development initiatives. Professional development, also known previously as inservice education and staff development, has been defined by Thomas Guskey as activities designed to [Page 856]enhance the professional knowledge, skills, and attitudes of educators as a way to improve the learning of students. These initiatives have been undertaken routinely by various groups, including federal agencies, states, local school districts, schools, subject matter associations, universities, and private for-profit entities, though they have been funded often at relatively low levels, with some estimates indicating that less than one-half of 1% of school district budgets are earmarked for professional development. This decentralized, entrepreneurial array of professional development created and implemented by a wide variety of organizations, many times with competing interests, results in significant variation in formats and effectiveness of the opportunities. Although teachers in the United States have engaged in professional development activities for decades, teacher professional development opportunities and their effectiveness have been studied substantively only since the late 1970s.

For many years, teacher professional development was predicated on a deficit model rather than a development or growth or capacity building model. Staff development or inservice training was believed to provide opportunities to address deficiencies in teacher knowledge and skills related to conceptions of good practice or the implementation of innovations. The typical format for delivering these professional development activities was almost exclusively some combination of one-shot workshops, university courses required to fulfill either requirements for an advanced degree or requirements set by states or districts that teachers acquire mandated amounts of course work or continuing education units (CEUs), and guest (“expert”) speakers intended to provide motivation for teachers or to promote a school or district initiative. Such efforts often were disconnected from the work of teachers, arbitrary, and atheoretical. The typical format consisted of short, stand-alone workshops in the “sit & get” tradition without teacher input or consultation. They rarely resulted in a transfer of knowledge and skills within the classroom.

The knowledge base related to professional development for teachers began to change and mature in the 1980s. The work especially of the National Staff Development Council (NSDC) and of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) expanded the importance, definitions, purposes, conceptualizations, and research related to professional development. A synthesis piece on models of staff development, published in 1989 by Dennis Sparks and Susan Loucks-Horsley, was especially important in bringing conceptual order and a broader and deeper theoretical basis to the field.