A recent study from the National Center on Education and the Economy examines teacher professional learning in four systems: British Columbia, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore. These places have two key similarities: They are considered high-performers as measured by student achievement on international comparison tests, and they view teacher professional learning as central to the job of educating students.
In particular, each system is built around what’s called an “improvement cycle,” which directly ties to student learning. The cycle follows three steps: First, assessing students’ current learning levels; second, developing teaching practices that help students get to the next stage of learning; and third, evaluating the impact of the new practices on student learning and refining them.
The authors of the report are careful to note that the improvement cycle doesn’t work in isolation—it requires strong links between leadership roles, resource allocation, and the focus of evaluation and accountability measures. To make the cycle work and to create a culture of continuous and meaningful growth, schools must organize improvement around effective professional learning, create distinct roles for the people who lead professional development, advance teacher expertise, share responsibility between teachers and administrators for professional growth, and build collaborative learning into daily school life.
Each system has its own unique focus. Singapore boasts three different career tracks for teachers, including one that allows top performers to continue teaching while also working with less experienced teachers. British Columbia focuses on inquiry-based learning communities that allow teachers to research one specific area all year and focus on deep learning and sustained practice. Hong Kong utilizes collaborative lesson planning, a process that includes lesson observation and analysis. Shanghai focuses on mentoring, which includes tiered mentoring responsibilities for teachers based on experience and weekly lesson observation and critique.
The report provides a few key takeaways. First, all four systems are centered on the assumption that student learning matters and that teacher professional growth improves both student achievement and schools. Second, each system emphasizes the power of bottom-up initiatives. Rather than requiring specific programs, schools are permitted to organize professional learning and then held accountable for the results. Accountability centers on student learning; in Singapore, for example, school leaders must set objectives for teachers to develop their skills in using student assessment to identify the next state of student learning. Finally, each system evaluates the quality of professional learning by examining traditional student performance data (like test scores) and qualitative data (focus groups, surveys, interviews). Together, these complementing sets of data are used to hold educators accountable for their own growth and the growth of others around them (yes, you read that right—in a few of these systems, only teachers who effectively develop themselves and others will rise to leadership positions). American schools would do well to take a page out of these high-performing systems’ playbook.
SOURCE: Ben Jensen, Julie Sonnemann, Katie Roberts-Hull, and Amelie Hunter, “Beyond PD: Teacher Professional Learning in High-Performing Systems,” The National Center on Education and the Economy (January 2016).
