Using Common Planning Time to Foster Professional Learning

Abstract

Researchers examine how a team of middle school teachers use common planning time to cultivate professional learning opportunities.An example of what happens at a typical professional development session involves a group of teachers sitting together at a workshop convened by an administrator who chose a new skill or technique they will be learning. The session occurs after school, and some teachers can think of a million other places they would rather be, including their classrooms. At the front of the conference room stands the renowned expert (often unknown to the teachers), lecturing while failing to capture their attention. Some teachers covertly grade papers; others write notes back and forth, whisper to one another, or discreetly text and play games on their phones. The figure conspicuously absent is the administrator, who, after making the obligatory introductions and motivational comments, leftto attend to more pressing matters. At the end of the session, the teachers take their handouts and packets, return to their classrooms, close the doors, and resume the many roles they must play as teachers, never to discuss the day's topic again.Increased emphasis on meeting state standards, more stringent requirements for designation as highly qualified, and intensified accountability for student performance have foisted new expectations upon teachers and stimulated changes in professional development models in which the greater urgency is clearly to attend to the teacher's role as learner. Consequently, professional development must become more meaningful, effective, and applicable to daily practice; it must address the specific needs of each school, classroom, and teacher. A promising reform model, the professional learning community (PLC) is a means to change the paradigm of professional development. Implement PLCs in middle grades schools, using common planning time (CPT) during both interdisciplinary and content area team meetings has been proposed. Incorporating professional development into an already-established domain of a middle grades school allows teacher learning to take on a new form in an established framework and points to our primary research question: What does an embedded professional development model look like for both interdisciplinary and content teams using professional learning communities in one middle grades school?The literature of professional developmentMany factors have influenced the quality of professional development programs. Although researchers have tried to find the missing link in identifying which elements of professional development are most important in teacher learning and student outcomes, they have deemed no single identifier most significant (Flowers, Mertens, & Mulhall, 2003; Guskey, 2003; Hord, 1997; Thompson, Gregg, & Niska, 2004). Instead, researchers have agreed that many factors must be in place for professional growth to occur and for that growth to have an impact on student learning. Many agencies and organizations have listed characteristics of effective professional development; however, they vary, and most of the supporting evidence is inconsistent and contradictory (Guskey, 2003). Key components of successful professional development include type of activity, content of the activity, role of administration, environment in which the activity occurs, and collaboration during the activity. Thus, the literature shows that school administrators are moving away from professional development in which teachers passively receive knowledge to models in which they actively participate in job-embedded, collaborative learning. The latter type of professional development links teacher learning to immediate, real-world problems and allows for direct application, experimentation, and adaptation to each teacher's situation (Sparks & Hirsh, 1997).At the time of this writing, the PLC was one of the most widely discussed topics in professional development and education (Thompson et al. …