Professional Development and Job-embedded Collaborative Learning must be adequate, ongoing, and available to support reading assessment and instruction. Successfully implementing this element promotes dynamic coaching and professional development support that is responsive to schoolwide needs.
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High-Quality Professional Development
High-quality professional development (PD) is planned and implemented across three stages of implementation: Preparation and introduction, demonstration and engagement, and evaluation and mastery. PD should be data-driven at each stage and should reflect a school/district’s needs. It should also match a school/district’s definition of “high quality” according to a pre-determined definition. Finally, PD should also be incorporated within a continuous improvement process (e.g. PDSA).
In this Explore the Elements video, we describe the traits of high-quality professional development across three phases: planning, implementation, and evaluation.
Indicators of Success are the critical, evidence-based, daily practices of an effective, schoolwide system of support. Use our Framework Navigator tool to rate your level of implementation.
- PD is aligned with school goals, state and district standards and assessments, and teacher evaluation.
- PD focuses on core content and modeling of teaching strategies for the content.
- PD includes opportunities for active learning and application of new teaching strategies.
- PD includes opportunities for collaboration among teachers.
- PD involves embedded follow-up and continuous feedback.
Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) & the CEEDAR Center
This guide was designed to assist school leaders in planning and implementing professional development about high-leverage practices to K-12 educators.
The Education Policy Center at the American Institutes for Research (AIR)
This article describes the need for principal professional development, presents findings of current school leadership research, and provides options and examples for leveraging current policies.
Research Collaboration
This checklist provides a way to determine whether professional development follows adult learning principles. It can also be used to provide ongoing feedback and coaching or as a guidance document when designing or revising professional development.
CEC
The resources in these 22 guides were developed to help leaders incorporate HLPs into professional development, teacher evaluations, observation feedback, and critical support resources for their teams.
Job-Embedded Learning
Job-embedded PD activities include workshops, trainings, web-based opportunities, coaching sessions, professional learning communities, and other opportunities offered to staff during work hours that provide relevant, up-to-date learning and support.
In this Explore the Elements video, we describe features of job-embedded professional learning and provide examples of how these learning experiences address a variety of topics related to reading instruction and assessment.
Indicators of Success are the critical, evidence-based, daily practices of an effective, schoolwide system of support. Use our Framework Navigator tool to rate your level of implementation.
- PD is relevant, continuous, and connected to real life issues.
- Workshops address a variety of topics related to reading instruction and assessment.
Wallace Foundation
This groundbreaking synthesis of research on school principals finds that effective principals have positive impacts on student achievement and attendance, as well as teacher satisfaction and retention.
GTL Center
This brief describes the research on job-embedded professional development, provides several descriptive examples, and details the conditions necessary for successful implementation.
Coaching
There are various coaching models, practices, and processes that can help schools implement a quality schoolwide coaching program. Regardless of which coaching model is used, coaching must include opportunities for observation, practice, feedback, and assessment.
In this Explore the Elements video, we provide guidance on coaching models, practices, and processes that can help schools implement a quality schoolwide coaching program.
Indicators of Success are the critical, evidence-based, daily practices of an effective, schoolwide system of support. Use our Framework Navigator tool to rate your level of implementation.
- Teachers receive coaching that includes observation, modeling, and performance feedback.
- Teachers have clear and measurable goals for improving one or more aspects of their practice.
- Teachers are routinely and consistently provided feedback on their practice to help them grow and achieve their professional goals.
Center on Teaching and Learning
This guide provides guidance in planning implementation of effective behavior and academic support systems and includes tools for leadership to use when aligning systems to sustain evidence-based practices.
National Center on Systemic Improvement (NCSI)
Infographic highlighting effective coaching practices.
National Center on Systemic Improvement (NCSI)
This brief synthesizes research on coaching and offers a framework for effective coaching practices.
National Center on Systemic Improvement (NCSI)
This module addresses four practices coaches can use to improve teaching and student learning. These practices include observation, modeling, providing performance feedback, and using alliance-building strategies.
SEDL
This article examines how education leaders can help literacy coaches have the greatest impact at their schools.
Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center)
These resources are designed to support leaders and staff members from regional comprehensive centers, state education agencies, and districts in developing a strategic action plan for supporting school turnaround leaders through coaching.
Georgia Department of Education
Nine-part video series on coaching, presented by a Georgia Department of Education coaching specialist.
National Center on Systemic Improvement (NCSI)
The purpose of this guide is to help practitioners systematically implement effective coaching practices as a pathway toward improving teaching and learning.
Sig Network
This tool is a coaching observation tool and provides information about ongoing feedback and coaching for individuals who provide professional development training.
NCSI
This rubric can be used to help measure the fidelity of coaching so that these data can be used by coaches and other educators to continuously improve upon how coaching occ
NCSI
This blank worksheet is a companion to the coaching fidelity rubric. It is used to record coaching fidelity data.
REL Southeast
Administrators, teacher leaders, and coaches should use this guide to reflect upon literacy coaching strengths and challenges, spark conversations among staff, and identify areas for improvement.
Professional Learning Collaboration
Professional learning communities (PLCs) allow educators to work collaboratively in order to achieve better results for their students. PLCs use data to assess current practices, examine results, and make individual and collective adjustments to achieve desired outcomes. At the heart of every PLC is a shared vision focused on student learning. Through collective inquiry, PLCs collaborate to examine best practice and engage in reflective dialogue.
In this Explore the Elements video, we discuss strategies for using Professional Learning Communities as a form of collaboration to achieve desired outcomes based on a shared vision for student learning.
Indicators of Success are the critical, evidence-based, daily practices of an effective, schoolwide system of support. Use our Framework Navigator tool to rate your level of implementation.
- Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) occur as a cycle of collective inquiry to assess current practices, examine results, and make individual and collective adjustments to improve student outcomes.
- PLCs meet regularly (at least once per month).
- Administrators actively participate in PLC meetings.
Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk
This booklet addresses methods for intensifying instruction, including reducing group size, increasing learning time, scaffolding cognitive processes, and being more explicit and systematic.
Institute of Education Sciences, Regional Education Laboratory Southeast
This document provides a roadmap to guide leaders in the implementation of evidence-based literacy practices in classrooms and schools.
Learning Policy Center
The purpose of this brief is to inform decisions about the design and implementation of PLCs and coaching initiatives by presenting research-based findings about the potential supports and barriers that influence their efficacy.
Institute of Education Sciences, Regional Education Laboratory Southeast
This guide is designed to assist teachers and schools in applying evidence-based practice to teach the foundational skills of reading.
IES
This practice guide provides four recommendations that address what works for English learners during reading and content-area instruction.
REL SE
This infographic helps help state education agencies, local education agencies, and early childhood center leaders implement evidence-based emergent literacy instruction.
REL West
This infographic illustrates how inquiry cycles can improve teacher collaboration and student outcomes by focusing on instructional practice.
Professional Development Plan
A well-articulated PD plan incorporates key actions for planning, delivering and evaluating PD using data sources, prioritized needs and goals, resources, and identified funding streams to provide differentiated new knowledge and skills based on teacher and student needs to increase student learning and behavior outcomes.
In this Explore the Elements video, we discuss important characteristics of a well-articulated professional development (PD) plan that incorporates key actions for planning, delivering, and evaluating schoolwide professional learning.
Indicators of Success are the critical, evidence-based, daily practices of an effective, schoolwide system of support. Use our Framework Navigator tool to rate your level of implementation.
- Multiple data sources are used to prioritize PD needs and goals.
- Workshop learning objectives are aligned to schoolwide PD needs and goals.
- There is a clearly articulated PD plan in place that reflects a range of topics, providers, dates, participants, and funding sources.
Research Collaboration
This checklist provides a way to determine whether professional development follows adult learning principles. It can also be used to provide ongoing feedback and coaching or as a guidance document when designing or revising professional development.
Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center)
These resources are designed to support leaders and staff members from regional comprehensive centers, state education agencies, and districts in developing a strategic action plan for supporting school turnaround leaders through coaching.
Boise State University
These rubrics are constructed based on evidenced-based practices for students with high incidence disabilities. Boise State has used research to create items that define the implementation of these practices.
IES SE
The School Leader's Literacy Walkthrough is designed to assist school leaders in observing specific research-based practices during literacy instruction (or students' independent use or application of those practices). It is based on rigorous research that indicates the most effective way to teach reading and is aligned to contemporary state standards.
CEC
The resources in these 22 guides were developed to help leaders incorporate HLPs into professional development, teacher evaluations, observation feedback, and critical support resources for their teams.
GTL Center
This module contains information and activities on high quality professional learning approaches that prepare evaluators, educators, and district leaders for implementing evaluation systems.
Learning Forward
This guide offers information and tools for creating professional learning plans.
