13 minute read
Professional Learning that Lasts
Giselle O. Martin-Kniep, Jeanette Adams-Price
Dr. Giselle O. Martin-Kniep is President and Founder of Learner-Centered Initiatives, Ltd., in NYC, NY. She is a recognized author and international consultant in the areas of standardsbased assessment, systems thinking, professional learning communities, and program evaluation. Her current work focuses on the integration of learner-centered and culturally responsive practices. Follow her on Twitter at @GiselleLCI.
We acknowledge the contributions from MAPpers Barry DeSain (video), Jude Dietz, Karen Finter, Molly Fuller, Linda Law, Lindsay Porter, Jennifer Vibber, and Tracy Wyant.
Jeanette Adams-Price is a professional developer at Monroe 1 BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services) in Rochester, NY. She is a former elementary teacher and has been an instructional leader for almost twenty years. She currently leads initiatives on student-centered and formative assessment; standards-based learning, grading and reporting; and LGBTQ+ education. Follow her on Twitter @JAdamsPrice.
Have you ever attended a professional learning experience and wondered why you were there? Have you ever wondered how you would get enough support to implement what you were learning? We’ve all been there at some point in our careers, yet when done right it can lead to lasting improved teacher and student outcomes (Darling-Hammond, et al., 2017). When professional learning is structured as a concerted effort over time, wedding theory to practice and creating ownership of the experience because of the way it is personalized, it can be transformative. This was the case for the Monroe Assessment Project (M.A.P.), a five-year program focused on the curriculum-embedded use of formative assessments.
Over time, we gathered compelling evidence of ongoing, sustained and deep learning for participants that transferred to remote and hybrid learning environments. When the lines of time, space, and distance were blurred due to COVID-19, teachers who participated in M.A.P. were more readily able to pivot to the hybrid and remote learning environments. Five components comprise an impactful professional learning experience that enables teachers to transfer their learning to unfamiliar and challenging learning environments.
Components of the M.A.P. Program
M.A.P. was a multi-faceted program developed as a collaborative among 9 districts led by Jeanette Adams-Price, Professional Developer, from Monroe One BOCES in New York State and Dr. Giselle O. Martin-Kniep, President of LearnerCentered Initiatives, Ltd., in New York City. The design and facilitation of M.A.P. was a shared endeavor of these agencies and leaders. Additionally, three other professional development leaders with expertise in assessment design and technology served as program facilitators and coaches.
The overall structure of the program included the following components:
• Foundational shared blocks of learning for all participants and opportunities for personalized learning.
• Ongoing interactions and feedback among participants and facilitators.
• Classroom visitations with coaching (virtual or in-person).
• Longevity (multi-year process with a new cohort participating every year) that fostered deep community ties and commitment.
• Parallel learning experiences for leaders.
The collective power of these components created the right environment for continuous learning and skill development while building the confidence of teachers in their assessment design and implementation. Pittsford CSD ELA teacher, Jude Dietz, described the impact that the structure of M.A.P. had on her learning:
These components can be leveraged by district and school leaders.
What were the conditions that made M.A.P. work?
When MAPpers began their inaugural learning journeys as members of a newly formed cohort, they were worried about getting things right. As the program kicked off each summer, they pondered the power of embedded formative assessment and feedback practices. We invited them to consider the what and why of potential changes in their practices as well as how their practices affected student engagement. As facilitators, we did not expect them to incorporate anything in one specific way but rather encouraged them to maximize the practices of assessing for learning and assessment of learning to best support students.
Over time, participants interacted across cohorts to build more examples of ways to improve learning using formative assessment. These examples not only provided evidence of their journey and progress but also ameliorated concerns about doing it right. Models helped participants envision what success might look like for themselves. Less experienced MAPpers always had access to more experienced MAPpers for informal peer support and coaching. Learning comes from the continuous efforts of professionals on the same level but with differing levels of experience to experiment, appropriate and share practices that made sense to them. Teachers became each other’s teachers and sources of inspiration.
The following were key questions asked:
• How can we remind teachers that learning is about experimenting and trying and not about getting it right?
• How can we allow teachers the freedom to pursue their own lines of inquiry?
• How might we capture examples of teachers’ learning so that more teachers can use them as inspiration to create new versions and examples?
Conditions that made it possible, not only for this situation, but also to transfer to other challenging learning environments were:
• Participants grounding their design work in their inquiry.
• A laser-like focus on the role of students as constructors of meaning and owners of their learning embodied by facilitators and the processes used to support teachers’ learning.
• Opportunities for whole group, small group, and individualized learning best practices, coupled with feedback and engagement with mentor texts.
• Participants sharing their learning with others and learning from it (both formally and informally) in a community built on mutual trust and shared commitment to the work and to one another.
Participant-driven inquiry
Magical things happened when participants examined their assumptions and practices, asked questions based on this examination, and pursued this inquiry supported by good coaching and feedback. Linda Law from Webster CSD states,
Relevance and meaning helped define the entry points and design paths forward in M.A.P. Every participant was able to find a relevant entry point for his/her design work. Over 5 years, we learned to help educators become proficient users and advocates of student-centered assessment practices while honoring the many ways of demonstrating such proficiency. The products of MAPpers were as unique and different as the participants themselves. They included units, lessons, self-reflective processes and protocols, assessment tools, grading schemes, portfolios, professional development modules, and observation protocols. Here’s an example of West Irondequoit CSD MAPper, Lindsay’s Porter’s, year-long work.
Inquiry is deeply enhanced when it is supported by the following components:
• Sound research grounded in best practice.
• Mentor texts (e.g., Embedding Formative Assessment by Dylan Wiliam; How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading by Susan Brookhart; and Grading from the Inside Out by Tom Schimmer), to guide the work throughout the year.
• Assignments and reflective protocols completed online and discussed during in-person sessions to unpack the readings.
The texts selected illustrated exemplary embedded formative assessment and feedback practices, while the protocols supported a deep analysis of these practices, inquiry, and design work. As a result, participants became confident enough to carry this work out beyond the scope of their classrooms.
A laser-like focus on the role of students as constructors of meaning and owners of their learning
We modeled protocols (Peer Review process; Target Tracker) for engaging in learning, design processes, and subsequent reflective and analysis processes because if participants experienced these as learners, they would be better equipped to apply them in their work. Linda Law speaks to this directly, “Overall, what we experienced is what we want students to experience in the classroom: the feelings of being heard, supported, challenged, and growing individually as well as collectively.”
Throughout the program, educators sought to create classrooms in which students have greater autonomy over their learning. They articulated the most important outcomes for their students, reviewed and analyzed multiple student-driven examples, discussed literature on best assessment practices, and experimented with assessment design elements that placed students at the center of learning. Molly Fuller’s work, a second-grade teacher from Penfield CSD , shows how she enabled her students to track their progress as readers.
We realized that enabling teachers to articulate valued student outcomes and scaffolding their learning with powerful student-driven curriculum and assessment examples, along with modeling for teachers what we were asking them to do with their students, accelerated the transfer of what they learned into their own classrooms.
Whole group, small group, and individualized learning
Each MAPper received two classroom visits with immediate feedback (Classroom Visit Feedback Form; Formative Assessment and Feedback Continuum) from a program facilitator.
MAPpers experienced multiple rounds of feedback from peers across cohorts as well as program facilitators. Jennifer Vibber of Penfield CSD reflected on the impact of multiple feedback sources, “There’s a prevailing idea that HS and Elementary grades can’t share ideas. The input of the other teachers in MAP had me reevaluating my ideas about students and teaching every time we met.”
We discovered that professional programs that center on teacher-driven inquiry demand differentiated and collaborative learning experiences with their peers and with other teachers, along with opportunities to learn in different settings and access to multiple rounds of feedback.
A shared commitment to learning within a community
At the heart of MAP’s success was a community built on trust with a shared commitment to learning. “We’re in this together” is a mantra ingrained in being a MAPper. As teachers got to know one another—as colleagues, friends, parents, neighbors, and fellow citizens, their bond and commitment to one another strengthened. The norms established for discussion and feedback became a way of being, thinking, questioning, and problem-solving. The language we invented as “MAPpers,” the milestones (Video of End of year MAP Formative Assessment Forum) we celebrated, the challenges that we faced, the MAP stickers we granted after a full year or more of participation, the sayings we adopted such as “once a MAPper, always a MApper,” became a part of the lexicon of the program—they defined who we are as a community.
Tracy Wyant of Webster Spry Middle School summed up these sentiments well when she said,
Leaders played a central role in MAP. In addition to witnessing their teachers’ learning, they engaged in their own professional exploration about the role of formative assessments in their own practice and in developing robust school cultures. Karen Finter, Administrator at West Irondequoit CSD shared that,
Considerations for leaders
Here are some questions which could help leaders incorporate the attributes of lasting professional development:
Building a school culture
• How do you, as a leader, develop a culture of shared ownership and commitment?
• What rituals and traditions are unique to your setting that communicate a shared identity?
• What rites of passage do the adults and students in your setting aspire to meet?
• How do you ensure that the culture you are creating is inclusive of every adult and child in your setting?
Keeping students at the center
• How might you structure learnercentered PLCs so that participants are learning by doing, discussing ideas, pondering alternatives to inform decision-making, or creating something together?
• How could you administer and analyze data from students and parents about their experiences?
• How might you work with groups of teachers to develop strategies for addressing student learning gaps?
• In what ways could you brainstorm strategies with staff about embedding SEL and CRP into teachers’ lessons and assessments?
Cross-pollination of learning
• How might you encourage teachers’ learning beyond their grade level, school, or district so they can benefit from a collective expertise?
• How could you develop processes and structures for visiting teachers’ classrooms to learn about their practice, understand the conditions of their work, and support their continued learning?
• How might you strengthen the alignment of new and prior professional learning in your school so that teachers experience that learning as an ongoing journey and not a series of events?
• What might you need to participate so that you can be a learner along with your teachers?
Promoting teachers’ agency
• As a leader, what choices could you offer teachers about what to learn, where to learn, with whom to learn, and how to demonstrate their learning?
• Are there structures such as lunch and learns, book studies, asynchronous learning experiences that could provide teachers with meaningful and manageable learning opportunities?
• In what ways could you create structures that allow for the ongoing provision of feedback to teachers by yourself and others?
Concluding thoughts
One could argue that M.A.P. is an initiative difficult to replicate, especially when one considers its scope (129 teachers and 50 administrators from 9 districts across 5 cohorts) and duration (5 years). Yet we believe that its components are transportable and useful, especially as we consider the increased use and reliance of remote and blended learning environments. COVID-19 put this to the test. MAPpers agree and credit their participation in M.A.P. to being better able to pivot to remote learning for three main reasons:
• Their experience in providing students with targeted, specific, and actionable feedback enabled their students in a remote environment to become assessment-capable learners and use feedback to grow.
• As MAPpers, they had already defined and articulated the most important aspects of the what and why of their teaching, helping them prioritize remote learning outcomes.
• Shifting grading practices to a standardsbased approach was natural and welcomed as MAPpers were experienced in assessing for learning, which was emphasized remotely over the traditional number and letter grades.
M.A.P. has demonstrated that when adult learning experiences embody what learning should look like in the classroom, and when teachers and leaders learn together, the outcome is increased student agency and engagement, which leads to enhanced learning.
We can turn this time of uncertainty into an opportunity and provide safe and continuous spaces for adults to reflect upon, learn, and improve upon their practice. We can leverage the benefits that remote learning provides for adults as well as children because of its ability to transcend the limitations of physical access. Time will tell if we have the will to do so.
REFERENCES
Bush, R.N. (1984). Effective staff development in making schools more effective: Proceedings of three state conferences. San Francisco, CA: Far West Laboratory.
Darling-Hammond, L., Chung Wei, R., Andree, A., & Richardson, N. (2009). Professional learning in the learning profession: A status report on teacher development in the United States and abroad. Oxford, OH: National Staff Development Council.
The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth About Our Quest for Teacher Development. TNTP. Heather C. Hill. September 30, 2015.
Yoon, K. S., Garet, M., Birman, B., & Jacobson, R. (2007). Examining the effects of mathematics and science professional development on teachers’ instructional practice: Using professional development activity log. Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Officers
