The compelling rationale behind school-based teacher professional development is that this is where and how teachers’ continuous professional learning takes place. No teacher can improve student learning without a habitual practice of teaching improvement.116 In all education systems, including developed ones, continuous professional development is essential for quality.117
Effective continuous professional development requires teachers to have the capacity and resources to:
> critically analyse their teaching compared to their students’ learning needs and progress > identify how to improve their skills and students’ learning, with guidance from their principal. The school or cluster is not the only input here. Teachers may also take part in university programs or system professional development.
The central principle is integration, where … knowledge is applied, shared and reflected upon at classroom and school levels.118
In poor systems, many untrained teachers only ever get professional development from their peers.119
Although continuous professional development is indispensable, it is difficult to make it sustainable in developing contexts. School effectiveness research has shown that it depends on these conditions:
1. a school principal with capacity and motivation to improve teachers’ practice and performance120
3. a network, cluster or other enabling system to facilitate peer learning and support between school staff121
4. technical oversight and support from a sub-district or district supervisor.122
These conditions align with SABER’s teacher policy domains, especially instructional leadership and professional development. Australia’s program experience further highlights what to focus on for effective school-based teacher improvement, as outlined in the next section.
Features of quality school-based professional development practice*
Instructional leadership: Leading teachers with strong principals There are three main policy requirements for principals.
The first is a system of recruitment that selects principals for instructional leadership. This involves principals with leadership skills, educational expertise and experience, capacity to mentor, and understanding of the role classroom assessment plays in improving learning.123 Institutionalising recruitment is a major challenge in partner countries because the
appointment of principals is often politically driven.
The second is that appraisal of principals should take the school’s learning performance into account. This includes monitoring teachers and student results. Frequent classroom assessments of school learning are needed so data can be aggregated against grade-level benchmarks in school reporting as a system indicator of performance.
Results-based school and principal performance requires systemic school monitoring data to be recorded in school information systems and learning outcomes to be prioritised in system performance.
The third is that principals need to be empowered to effectively manage teacher performance. As outlined in earlier chapters, embedding competencies in the teacher appraisal system is central to school support for professional development. But a 2013 national baseline study of principals and supervisor competencies undertaken for the Indonesia Education Sector Support Program found that the teaching observation and supervision role was one principals felt least able to do. Peer appraisal and self-appraisal (‘Lesson study’ below) are also good routes to teacher reflection and they help principals make honest judgments in what can be pressured local situations.
Professional development: Supporting teachers to improve instruction
DFAT’s experience highlights three distinct policy requirements for effectively supporting professional development of teachers in schools.
First, school grants as operational revenue need to specify professional development costs as eligible expenditure. Typically this could be transport for teachers and principals to attend cluster meetings. Cluster meetings are rarely funded from district budgets and teachers do not attend if they have to pay out of their own pockets.
* This section provides an overview of DFAT’s school-based teacher development experience compared to the SABER teacher policy domains of: ‘Instructional leadership: Leading teachers with strong principals’ and ‘Professional
development: Supporting teachers to improve instruction’, and, where relevant, ODE’s Supporting Teacher Development: Literature Review.
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Second, districts need to recruit supervisors with educational leadership and management experience to support and monitor schools. An operational budget for supervisors to visit schools is also necessary.
Third, supervisors’ job descriptions need to include oversight of a local professional
development activity. Ideally a supervisor should take the lead in organising and monitoring a cluster program, in collaboration with cluster principals.
Lesson study
The kind of professional development provided through the school or cluster usually depends on the capacity of teachers and principals. This is often a weakness. However, selected programs have performed well in helping teachers analyse and learn from classroom experience, which is the best source of applied knowledge if appropriately supported. Lesson study is an acclaimed model of effective peer development in a cluster or school. It comprises peer examination of a teaching issue by a community of teachers, collaborative development of a teaching approach to it, and observed implementation of lessons learned. During teaching, observers focus on what students are doing—an outcome-focused way of appraising effective teaching. The session concludes with a structured conversation among teachers on lessons learned and implications for everyone’s practice. While this requires particular training, lesson study has strong appeal to education ministries in some of Australia’s partner countries, such as Indonesia and Laos, and to ministries of APEC member countries.124