Targeting Core Practices for Enactment in Professional Development

• In Event: Understanding and Supporting Teaching Practice: Multiple Perspectives

Abstract

The decomposition of practice is an essential component of planning pedagogies of enactment in teacher education and professional development. One venue in which teaching practice is decomposed into its constituent parts is the creation of observation protocols that are currently being developed to measure the quality of teacher practice. This paper will describe a research effort to use an observation protocol for English/Language Arts classroom as the basis for professional development.
Our theory of change draws on key design principles that build on several distinct bodies of literature. The first design principle focuses on the importance of the representation, decomposition, and approximation of practice in efforts to teach or improve practice (Grossman et al. 2009). In order to learn a new practice, professionals need opportunities to see examples of the practice and develop ways of distinguishing stronger and weaker versions of a practice (Goodwin, 1994; Little, 2003; Stevens & Hall, 1998). For this reason, videos of classroom practice become a resource for teacher learning (c.f. Lampert & Ball, 1998; Sherin & Han, 2004).
To develop such understanding, complex practices may need to need to be decomposed into constituent parts. For example leading a discussion is a complex practice that includes setting up classroom norms and expectations, routines for participation, high quality uptake of ideas, etc. (see Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald, 2009 for further examples). Learning to enact complex practice requires the ability to see and understand these components.
Observation tools essentially decompose the practice of teaching into discrete elements. Each element is further decomposed into indicators that identify very specific classroom moves that constitute the broader element. For these reasons, observation tools can be useful not just for measurement purposes but also in the teaching of practice. In our proposed innovation, we use a specific observation protocol, the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation (PLATO) as the basis for professional development. In its decomposition of English teaching into 12 different elements of instruction, the protocol provides a common set of lenses with which to view
practice, as well as a common language for instructional improvement.
Our model of professional development, however, goes one step farther. In addition to professional development around the PLATO elements and opportunities to receive targeted feedback on practice, we plan to provide multiple opportunities to try out new classroom moves and strategies in what we’ve termed “approximations of practice.” Classrooms represent high stakes environments for initial experimentation with new instructional moves. Learning a new practice requires opportunities to enact and practice new moves and approaches in circumstances that provide conditions for safe experimentation and allow for targeted feedback and “replays” (Grossman et al, 2009;
Horn, 2005; Rose, 1999). Our model of professional development is predicated on the importance of providing teachers with time for deliberate practice of new classroom
moves that are aligned with PLATO elements. Research suggests that this kind of deliberate and repeated practice of difficult elements of complex practice is essential for the development of expertise (Ericcson, 2002).

Author

• Pamela L. Grossman, Stanford University