Practice-based Insights on Teacher Leaders Designing and Facilitating Professional Development for Teachers
Teacher leaders – current or former classroom teachers working with other classroom teachers and other educators in the school or district – are present in many reform efforts in mathematics and science education. Designing and/or facilitating professional development for classroom teachers is one of a variety of strategies teacher leaders can use to support the improvement of teachers’ instructional practice. As a strategy employed by teacher leaders, professional development may be used for various purposes such as supporting implementation of curriculum, introducing new pedagogical strategies, and deepening mathematics and science content knowledge.
Advice from experienced practitioners offers guidance to those involved in teacher leaders’ efforts to improve teachers’ classroom practice through professional development programs. Insights provided by a group of expert practitioners with diverse backgrounds and experiences in working with teachers included the following ideas:
- Start with what you know – Encourage teacher leaders to draw on their classroom experience in designing and facilitating professional development for teachers.
- Know the discipline – Teacher leaders need a solid understanding of the mathematics or science content in order to design and facilitate professional development.
- One size does not fit all – Prepare teacher leaders to assess and target the needs of the particular teachers participating in professional development.
- Engage the teachers – It is important to help teacher leaders develop effective facilitation skills.
- Two (or more) heads are better than one – Teacher leaders need to collaborate with others when designing professional development.
Teacher leaders often provide job-embedded professional development to teachers, such as assistance with lesson planning and in-class coaching. They may also provide more traditional forms of professional development to groups of teachers or the entire faculty of a school or district. Working with teachers in this manner provides an opportunity to share the vision and desired instructional practices with many teachers at once. It also fosters conversations and professional community among teachers within a school, and helps establish the teacher leader’s credibility as a leader. Because teacher leaders work closely with specific schools, they can also tailor professional development to teacher needs.
Experienced practitioners, including MSP program leaders, offered insights around strategies that teacher leaders can use to provide instructional support to classroom teachers, for the purpose of improving instruction. Data were collected and vetted through multi-round, online panel discussions with practitioners, as well as interviews and focus groups with MSP leaders. The insights below reflect general agreement among these practitioners on important considerations for teacher leaders who design and facilitate professional development. After reviewing these insights, you will be given an opportunity to share your own experiences. The information you provide will be included in the analysis of insights and examples from other practitioners as this website is periodically updated.
Start with what you know – Encourage teacher leaders to draw on their classroom experience in designing and facilitating professional development for teachers.
In facilitating professional development, experienced practitioners noted that a teacher leader should demonstrate an understanding of the “realities of classroom teaching”. Using prior classroom experience as a source of examples and practical advice lends credibility to the professional development. An MSP leader noted that, “The [teacher leader’s] background as a teacher adds to the relevance of the activities in terms of students and curriculum.”
Insight in Action
As part of district professional development, teacher leaders co-designed and presented grade-level sessions on individual Investigations units that teachers would soon be teaching. Because teacher leaders had piloted the program in their own classrooms, they were confident about how the program worked with students; they were able to share their genuine enthusiasm for the program; and they could answer specific questions that teachers had.
Insight in Action
In efforts to reform a district’s entire K-12 mathematics program, it was the teacher leaders’ role to learn the lessons taught as part of the program’s professional development and then teach the lessons in their own classroom. Afterwards, they facilitated the professional development of other teachers to support their implementation of the lessons. 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 lessons in their own classrooms. They also had opportunities to explore and discuss the lessons with their colleagues before and after they taught them.
Know the discipline – Teacher leaders need a solid understanding of the mathematics or science content in order to design and facilitate professional development.
To design or adapt quality professional development in mathematics and science, teacher leaders need a solid understanding of the content so that they understand and can anticipate how teachers will engage with and learn that content. Experienced practitioners noted that it is especially important that they have direct experience – in their prior professional development or classroom teaching practice – with teaching the mathematics or science content. 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.
Insight in Action
One MSP offered coursework to teacher leaders to build on the mathematical and scientific content knowledge they had developed through prior professional and classroom experiences. Expanding their content knowledge in this manner gave the teacher leaders greater confidence to more deeply and accurately focus on content as part of leadership activities. They now regard themselves as not only pedagogical experts, but also content leaders.
One size does not fit all – Prepare teacher leaders to assess and target the needs of the particular teachers participating in professional development.
Professional development is not a case of “one size fits all.” A teacher leader must understand the needs of the teacher participants so that the professional development addresses teachers’ concerns and is geared to their knowledge and experience. Experienced practitioners advised that a teacher leader be mindful that these teachers’ needs may be different from those s/he experienced as a professional development participant. While drawing on prior experience lends credibility to the professional development, the concerns and questions that participating teachers bring to the professional development may be substantially different than what the teacher leader experienced.
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. Knowing the teacher participants, and bringing a repertoire of different strategies to use in professional development, increases the likelihood that the professional development will have the desired impacts on teachers.
Insight 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 percent 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 were easily able to identify with the classroom teachers’ experiences and to recognize places where teachers were struggling. They communicated to the district-based coaches about concepts and strategies that were particularly challenging to the teachers. Using this information, coaches and teacher leaders worked in teams of three or four to design professional development experiences that reflected the real needs of the classroom teachers.
Engage the teachers – It is important to help teacher leaders develop effective facilitation skills.
Teacher leaders must understand the mathematics and science content and materials around which the professional development is focused, but knowledge alone is not sufficient. Teacher leaders must engage teachers effectively, eliciting their thinking, and encouraging the kinds of reflection that advances teacher understanding. Through their facilitation of professional development, teacher leaders can help teachers “confront issues” or challenging problems in their teaching practice. Use of good communication skills is particularly important. As one practitioner explained, “Facilitation requires more than just presentation skills if teacher leaders are to successfully facilitate teacher learning.” To that end, it is helpful for a teacher leader to have a good understanding of adult learning as well as the capacity to apply that knowledge to the design and/or facilitation of professional development.
Two (or more) heads are better than one – Teacher leaders need to collaborate with others when designing professional development.
Teacher leaders may not have expertise in all the areas needed to design effective professional development: mathematics and science content, experience with the materials, facilitation skills. Collaborating with others can strengthen the professional development by ensuring that all the needed expertise is present on the team. Teacher leaders also need knowledge of how to design professional development experiences. This knowledge may accrue from experience or from training, but it may also be provided by colleagues through collaboration. As noted by an MSP leader, “A good group of folks will create a stronger product that reaches more people than an individual can do.”
For instance, a teacher leader might solicit feedback from another teacher leader on a prospective design or seek out resources to supplement his/her own knowledge or experience. An MSP leader made a case for STEM faculty and middle school teacher leaders collaborating in designing programs to deepen teachers’ 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.”
Insight in Action
An MSP Institute involves middle school teacher leaders and STEM faculty in distinct, but mutually reinforcing roles, designing and facilitating science professional development. Teacher leaders review data regarding coverage of the curriculum and student outcomes, then work with STEM faculty to identify key content areas for teachers’ professional development. Teacher leaders head up the design effort, and STEM faculty take the lead in delivering the professional development.
If you are interested in how these practitioner insights were collected and analyzed, a summary of the methodology can be found here.
Teacher Leadership Matters
Empirical evidence shows that teacher leaders’ practice impacts teachers’ instructional practice and, in some studies, provides evidence of positive impact on student outcomes. Findings across studies include:
- Teacher leaders’ practice, particularly in providing instructional support to teachers, impacts teachers’ classroom practice.
- Teacher leaders’ practice occurs in a larger context of conditions that impact teachers’ practice.
- Teacher leaders’ practice is related to positive student outcomes.
Learn more about research on why teacher leadership matters
Research on Teacher Leaders Designing and Facilitating Professional Development for Teachers
In a review of the published literature, twenty seven research studies were identified of teacher leader programs in which teacher leaders designed and/or facilitated professional development for teachers. These studies examined three aspects of this teacher leader practice. One set of studies examined teacher leaders engaged in the practice of designing and/or facilitating professional development for teachers. Findings from these studies suggest that teacher leaders with deeper knowledge of subject area content and pedagogy may be more likely to provide support to classroom teachers through designing and/or facilitating professional development than teacher leaders without such expertise. Another set of studies investigated the impact of programs that prepared teacher leaders to provide instructional support to teachers, including designing and/or facilitating professional development. Findings from these studies suggest that teacher leaders, when prepared explicitly to lead professional development of other teachers, go on to provide professional development for teachers. When teacher leaders are prepared without explicit attention to leading professional development, this practice becomes one of several strategies they employ to support classroom teachers. A third set of studies indicated the teacher leaders designing and/or facilitating professional development was one component of interventions that yielded positive impact on classroom teachers. These studies did not investigate the unique contribution of this teacher leader practice.
Research on Teacher Leaders Designing and/or Facilitating Professional Development
Teacher leaders frequently provide support to classroom teachers through designing and/or facilitating professional development. Teacher leaders provide various kinds of professional development for teachers (e.g., workshops, seminars, courses) which may be multiple sessions or one-time events. In providing professional development, teacher leaders focus on particular subject matter content or pedagogical approaches intended to build the instructional skills and abilities of classroom teachers. In a review of empirical literature on teacher leadership, twenty seven studies were identified that featured teacher leaders involved in the design and/or facilitation of professional development of classroom teachers (See Table 1).
Research Studies that Included the Strategy of Teacher Leaders Designing and/or Facilitating Professional Development
(Click on the name of each study to read a description of the intervention involving teacher leaders’ designing and/or facilitating professional development.)
What Research Says
TThe MSP-Knowledge Management and Dissemination project conducted an extensive review of the empirical literature on teacher leadership. The review was based on a rigorous process developed by the MSP-KMD project (read a detailed description of the process) that applied standards of evidence to the findings of each study. This review focuses on three aspects of the topic of professional development provided by teacher leaders:
- Teacher leaders engaged in the design and/or facilitation of professional development for teachers
- The impact of teacher leader training programs on the teacher leader practice of designing and/or facilitating professional development
- The impact of teacher leaders’ practice, including designing or facilitating professional development, on student and teacher outcomes
Teacher leaders engaged in the design and/or facilitation of professional development
Studies indicated that designing and/or facilitating professional development was a responsibility of teacher leaders. In studies by Dagenhart et al. (2005) and Dozier (2007), teacher leaders in mathematics and science reported that leading professional development was one of their leadership activities. Gillis et al. (1991) and Moore (1992) considered the frequency with which teacher leaders in science designed and/or facilitated professional development compared to other forms of support for teachers. Findings from these two studies were mixed. Moore (1992) reported that providing professional development was among the most common activities in which science coordinators were expected to engage. Gillis et al. (1991), on the other hand, reported that informal forms of sharing with teachers were more frequently reported by science teacher leaders than were formal forms of support, such as leading professional development workshops. While these studies provide evidence that teacher leaders engage in the practice of designing and/or facilitating professional development, they did not investigate the factors that influenced when and how teacher leaders engage in this practice.
Spillane et al. (2001) and Bliss (1999) examined the relationship between subject area and the teacher leader practice of designing and/or facilitating professional development. Spillane et al. (2001) found that teacher leaders in science were more likely to be engaged in instructional leadership practices, including providing professional development for teachers, than teacher leaders in the language arts. Bliss (1999) found that teacher leaders in mathematics were more likely than teacher leaders in science or English to be engaged in instructional leadership practices, including providing professional development for teachers. These findings should be considered in light of the methodological strengths and limitations of these studies. The studies examined teacher leadership in different subject areas and in different grade ranges, suggesting that the findings are applicable across settings. Spillane et al. (2001) drew from multiple sources of data and described data analysis strategies that support the validity of the findings. Neither study provided information on how participants were identified, which limits the generalizability of these findings to other teacher leaders.
Studies from Coggins et al. (2003), Manno and Firestone (2006), Oehrtman et al. (2009), and Yost et al. (2009) suggested that teacher leaders with deeper knowledge of subject area content and pedagogy may be more likely to provide professional development than teacher leaders without content area expertise. Manno and Firestone (2006) compared the practice of teacher leaders identified as content experts, defined as holding a Bachelor’s degree and certification in mathematics or science, to those without such degrees or certification. This study found that teacher leaders identified as content experts were more likely to provide support in curriculum implementation, including professional development than teacher leaders without content expertise. Coggins et al. (2003) found that instructional coaches who felt knowledgeable about pedagogy and subject area content were more likely to provide instructional support to teachers, including designing and/or facilitating professional development. Oehrtman et al. (2009) and Yost et al. (2009) reported that content area expertise was beneficial for teacher leader when leading professional development. Oehrtman et al. (2009) found that teacher leaders in mathematics and science with strong content area expertise were more effective in facilitating professional development to improve teachers’ understanding of pedagogy than teacher leaders without such expertise. Yost et al. (2009) reported in a study of teacher leadership in mathematics and reading, content expertise was one factor that supported teacher leaders who were responsible for leading professional development in their middle schools. The finding that content area expertise impacted teacher leaders designing and/or facilitating professional development was supported through the use of multiple data sources (Coggins et al. 2003; Manno & Firestone, 2006; Yost et al., 2009) and the inclusion of detailed descriptions in support of the reliability of data analysis strategies and instrumentation (Coggins et al. 2003; Manno & Firestone, 2006; Yost et al., 2009), providing additional confidence in the validity of this finding.
Findings from this set of studies indicate that teacher leaders provide support to classroom teachers through designing and/or facilitating professional development and that this practice occurs across grade levels K-12 and subject areas. Further, teacher leader content expertise was found to influence the frequency and effectiveness of this teacher leader practice. Studies by Spillane et al. (2001) and Bliss (1999) suggested that subject area may also affect when teacher leaders engage in the practice of designing and/or facilitating professional development, studies did not examine why this affect may be present, indicating an area for future research.
Teacher leader training programs impacting teacher leader engagement in the design and/or facilitation of professional development for teachers
Several studies indicated that teacher leaders replicated the professional development they received in their training programs when later leading professional development of classroom teachers. In studies of programs where teacher leaders were explicitly prepared to lead professional development, (McGatha et al., 2005; Russell, 1990; Slater et al., 1998), the only activity of teacher leaders was to deliver professional development. Programs that prepared teacher leaders to engage in unspecified instructional support to teachers (Fancsali, 2004; Fortner & Boyd, 1995; Frechtling & Katzenmeyer, 2006; Harris & Townsend, 2007) reported that teacher leaders designed and/or facilitated professional development as one of several strategies for supporting classroom instruction. Studies by Even (1999), Lewthwaite (2006), and Venville et al. (1998) reported on interventions designed to prepare teacher leaders to provide instructional support, including leading professional development, but did not report on the specific teacher leader practices as outcomes.
The alignment of teacher leader preparation with the activities they engaged in as teacher leaders was supported by the findings of two related studies: Miller et al. (1999) and Wallace et al. (1999). Wallace et al. (1999) found that teacher leaders reproduced in their own practice the model of teacher leadership presented to them in their teacher leader preparation program. Miller et al. (1999) extended the findings from Wallace et al. (1999) with attention to the impact of the design of preparation programs on teacher leader practice. Miller et al. (1999) found that teacher leader practice varied according to the extent that their preparation program attended to developing leadership skills and knowledge of mathematics, science, and pedagogy. Miller et al. (1999) reported that teacher leaders were most likely to lead professional development workshops when their preparation programs placed a strong emphasis on leadership skills.
Among the set of studies that investigated the impact of interventions that prepared teacher leaders to lead professional development of classroom teachers, the majority (Fancsali, 2004; Frechtling & Katzenmeyer, 2001; Harris & Townsend, 2007; Lewthwaite, 2006; Miller et al., 1999; Slater et al., 1998; Wallace, 1999) supported their findings through analysis that considered data from multiple sources. This set included studies of teacher leaders across all grade levels within K-12, and in mathematics and science, providing some evidence that these findings apply across settings. A common methodological concern among these studies is a lack of information on the selection of participants, or the use of samples where participation in the program was voluntary (Fortner & Boyd, 1995; Lewthwaite, 2006; Slater et al., 1998; Venville et al., 1998). This limits the generalizability of these findings, in that the findings might be attributed to a common characteristic among the participants rather than the program intervention. This concern is mitigated to an extent by consistencies in the findings and methodological strengths across the studies.
Considered as a set of studies, there is support for the claim that teacher leaders are more likely to provide professional development when prepared explicitly to engage in this practice. This suggests that initiatives that expect teacher leaders to provide professional development should address in their preparation the content and design of the professional development that they will be leading.