Job Embedded Professional Learning

As an active stakeholder in the development of Michigan’s Professional Learning Standards and Policy, Learning Forward MI (LFM) stays committed to ensuring that every Michigan educator engages in effective professional learning every day. Learning Forward Michigan is the state affiliate of the international organization Learning Forward (formerly the National Staff Development Council). Our mission is to build the capacity of leaders, (both teachers and administrators) to establish and sustain highly effective professional learning.

Why is Learning Forward Michigan so passionate about improving the professional learning in Michigan? Today’s initiatives such as college- and career-ready standards, new student assessments, and educator effectiveness measures demand professional learning that drives teaching and leadership for deeper student learning. We believe that when professional learning is standards-based, it is much more likely to change what educators know, can do and are like. When educators’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions change, they increase their repertoire of effective strategies and are more able to adapt their practices to meet performance expectations and student learning needs. When educator practice improves, students have a greater likelihood of achieving results.

As elements and conditions of professional learning are identified and better understood, educators are recognizing the potential impact of job-embedded professional learning. Job-embedded professional learning (JEPL) is grounded in day-to-day practice and is designed to enhance content-specific practices with the intent to improve student learning. It is the foundation for sustainable change and full implementation of the standards and all other state, district, and school initiatives.

In other words, JEPL is school or classroom based, and it engages educators in cycles of continuous improvement to engage in inquiry, action research, data analysis, planning, implementation, reflection and evaluation. Educators learn when they are studying relevant and immediate problems of practice.

Most districts have some components of a professional learning system in place, yet few are comprehensive systems. Rather than continue to address new initiatives with fragmented professional learning systems, education leaders need to review, remodel, revise, or replace them so they accomplish the intended results.

Over the last few years Learning Forward Michigan has worked diligently to engage classroom teachers and administrators in collaborative inquiry, a highly effective approach to JEPL. LFM defines collaborative inquiry as a collaborative process of continuous improvement in which evidence and data are used to assess needs, pose questions, define learning goals, design learning opportunities, and evaluate the effectiveness of educators’ professional learning in achieving identified learning goals for themselves and their students. This approach places professional learning at the very center of school improvement in a manner that empowers educators to address immediate and relevant problems of practice to more effectively facilitate student learning.           

LFM also developed the Leading From the Classroom program. The purpose of this program is to build teacher leaders’ capacity to design, implement and evaluate standards- based professional learning. Throughout the program the teacher leaders apply what they are learning by facilitating collaborative inquiry with their colleagues.

Initial findings from an external program evaluation funded by the Learning Forward Foundation are very promising. According to the participating teachers, collaborative inquiry has helped to quickly build a school culture of continuous improvement; collective responsibility for educator and student learning; high expectations for student learning; and increased educator effectiveness and results for all students.

(Adapted from the April 14, 2015 State Board of Education public comment period.)

 

Amy B. Colton, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Learning Forward Michigan
Senior Consultant, Learning Forward