Professional Documents
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The School Principals Role in Teacher Professional Development
The School Principals Role in Teacher Professional Development
To cite this article: Paul V. Bredeson (2000) The school principal's role in teacher professional development, Journal of In-
Service Education, 26:2, 385-401, DOI: 10.1080/13674580000200114
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Journal of In-Service Education, Volume 26, Number 2, 2000
PAUL V. BREDESON
University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
OLOF JOHANSSON
University of Umeå, Sweden
Introduction
Among educational policy makers, researchers and practitioners, there is
an emerging consensus that teacher professional development is vitally
important to educational reform as we aproach the next millennium. In
fact, it seems trite to assert that teacher professional development is
critically important to school improvement focused on enhanced student
learning outcomes. Nevertheless, there continues to be a need to
communicate the importance of continuous learning and development for
educators, individually and collectively, to people in and out of schools.
Without clearly articulated and documented evidence of its overall
contribution to school success, professional development can easily
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Background
Linking Professional Development,
Teaching Quality and Student Achievement
Even the casual reader of educational reform reports, legislative
mandates and contemporary educational literature would soon discover
one common theme: teacher professional development is critical to
systemic educational reform and school improvement focused on
enhancing learning outcomes for all children in public education. These
include calls to: create stable, high quality sources of professional
development for teachers (National Commission on Teaching and
America’s Future (NCTAF), 1996; Bredeson, 1999); incorporate teachers’
learning into the fabric of teachers’ daily life National Foundation for the
Improvement of Education (NFIE), 1996); establish professional
development as a central component of state and local educational
reform (Houghton & Goren, 1995; Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 1999;
Johansson & Bredeson, 1999); transform professional development to
meet urgent educational needs (Porter et al, 1994; Corcoran, 1995);
consider alternatives to traditional training models of staff development
(Little, 1993; Sparks, 1995); deal more directly with issues of racism and
inequity in schools (Weissglass, 1997); develop practices that support
new conceptions of teaching, learning, and schooling (Lieberman, 1995;
Loucks-Horsley et al, 1999); and break the mould to classroom practices
through new professional development practices (McLaughlin &
Oberman, 1996).
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Learning is what schools are all about and the school principal must
understand the ways in which teacher learning and growth is connected
to student learning and development. Principals work to embed life-long
learning into the everyday life of students and teachers knowing that, ‘it
enriches the ambience of the school and makes it into a place of
excitement, energy, and direction’ (Golde, 1998, p. 2). However, Golde
points out that traditional school structures and norms often mitigate
against the development of learning communities where all staff are
committed to continuous learning. Part of the principal’s role is to help
people inside and outside of the school unfreeze current values,
expectations, structures and processes so new ways of thinking about
teaching, learning, and schooling can be considered (Bredeson, 1999).
Within the school, principals understand that successful school change
and school improvement requires a focus on teacher professional
development (Hart & Bredeson, 1996; Krajewski, 1996). As Dufour &
Berkey (1995) suggest, ‘Focusing on people is the most effective way to
change any organisation. In fact, it can be argued that organisations do
not change, only individuals change’ (p. 2). They offer 10 suggestions for
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Encourage experimentation.
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development. We use these four areas of impact as the organisers for the
presentation and discussion of our findings.
80mm
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Stewards
Principals are stewards of learning who value learning and commit
themselves to it in their daily work. They understand the connections
among teacher professional development, student learning, and school
quality. Believing that teacher learning is an integral part of school
improvement, they communicate its value and purposes consistently to
staff, students, parents, school board members, and other policy makers.
Schools and the professionals who work in them are buffeted by various
political and social external forces. The focus on student learning can
easily become lost in a sea of organisational changes that focus more on
institutional responsiveness and meeting the needs of adults than
children’s learning. Without a clear sense of purpose and direction, a
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school can drift from its primary mission of serving the needs of children.
As stewards, principals help keep the focus and goals of teacher
professional development on student learning. Finally, principals serve
the needs of students and their school through their commitment to the
fair and ethical treatment of all learners recognising that equity and
justice require an understanding and responsiveness to diversity of
learner needs and styles.
Models
Scholars of organisational culture and leadership tell us that if you want
to know what’s important in a school, watch what the principal does.
Without a doubt, school principals have much more influence on the
beliefs and practices of their teachers as models of life-long learning than
as mere spokespersons. Principals who ‘walk-the-talk’ are enthusiastic,
hard-working learners. They establish learning as the core of their
practice and they set the tone, direction, and expectations for learning in
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the school by what they pay attention to, what they do, and what they
reward. Principals as learners set individual learning goals for
themselves. They also model what they espouse by participating actively
in staff development in their school. We emphasise the importance of
modeling by using a negative example. For instance, principals who
warmly welcome teachers to a staff development day and then quickly
excuse themselves to do more important administrator work undercut
teacher development and the learning culture of their school in several
ways. First, such cavalier administrator behaviour suggests that other
tasks in school are more important than the learning that will occur in
this session.
With this type of modeling, it should come as no surprise to
principals that teachers bring articles to grade and other work with them
to staff meetings, and in-service sessions. Second, this negative example
of modeling also underscores the traditional power differential between
teachers and principals, especially in the area of professional autonomy.
Teachers are required to attend, while principals can choose whether or
not the activity meet their needs. We are not arguing that principals
should participate in every teacher activity. Our point is a simple one –
principals as learners have significant influence on the attitudes and
behaviors of teachers as learners.
Expert
The ISLLC Standards for School Leaders (1996) indicate that successful
school leadership is anchored in professional expertise in teaching,
learning, and schooling. What principals know and can do establishes
their credibility as educational leaders. As experts, principals need
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Instructional Leader
Instructional leadership is a key responsibility for school principals.
Complementing principals’ tasks focused on the design of teaching and
learning in the school, principals’ instructional leadership also influences
teacher professional development. In this capacity, principals use a
variety of activities to encourage and celebrate learning. These include
school mottos, symbols and other visual displays, media announcements,
awards ceremonies, first day of school rituals, celebrations for individual
and group accomplishment, and personal expressions of congratulations
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Communicator
Research indicates that school principals accomplish much of their daily
work through verbal interactions and interpersonal communications, that
is, talk (Peterson, 1978; Bredeson, 1988; Gronn, 1983; Hart & Bredeson,
1996). In their daily interactions with teachers, principals help create a
collective view of professional self-efficacy emphasising how teacher
learning and improved classroom practices affect student learning.
Principals set high expectations for learning and for professional
practices. Helping teachers individually and collectively believe in
themselves as professionals is particularly important in a reform era in
which the media, aggressive policy makers, and the public often portray
teachers as part of the problem in education, rather than the promise for
school improvement. Principals are in a unique organisational position
that provides multiple opportunities for them to articulate messages
about the purpose, structure, and impact of teacher professional
development to parents, students, school board members, and the
general public.
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Supporter
Providing support for teacher learning and growth is also a vital role for
school principals. Our respondents described a wide array of support.
Financial support for such things as conferences, travel, substitute
teachers, materials, tuition fees for graduate studies, programme budgets
and stipends for consultants, were among the types of financial support
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Manager
An important dimension of principals’ work includes a variety of
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or students.
Obviously, all teacher needs are not necessarily professional
development ones. Stressed out teachers, for example, may need a break
to recharge their personal and professional batteries. Principals are
sensitive to these needs because they ultimately affect teachers’ growth
and practice. Often operating outside the formal conditions of teacher
contracts, successful principals find time, money and ways to support
these individual teacher needs, even when not directly related to student
learning. Principals make investments in the physical and emotional well
being of teachers knowing that meeting these needs positively affects
students and the school.
Principals also help teachers become involved as decision makers in
their own learning. Because teachers have traditionally been passive
recipients of in-service training, the dominant professional development
activity, principals need to initiate creative and reflective dialogues
among teachers about the structure, process, and desired outcomes of
teacher learning. Bredeson (1999) indicates that these conversations are
opportunities for principals and teachers to rethink, restructure, and
reculture professional development in their school. These conversations
might raise the following questions about the delivery of professional
development. Do the professional development activities provide
multiple ways for teachers to participate and learn? Are there sufficient
resources of time, expertise, and money to meet goals of the professional
development design?
Collaborative planning, joint work, curriculum redesign, school-
based inquiry and deep conversations about teaching and learning
represent different delivery strategies for meeting teachers’ needs. Since
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Conclusions
There is little doubt that school principals exercise significant influence
on teacher professional development. Knowing that principals are busy
and often overloaded with administrative tasks in their daily work, we
believe it is important to identify specific and highly effective ways in
which they can maximise their impact on teacher professional
development. We identified four areas where principals have the
opportunity to have substantial impact on teacher learning in schools: (1)
the principal as an instructional leader and learner; (2) the creation of a
learning environment; (3) direct involvement in the design, delivery and
content of professional development; and (4) the assessment of
professional development outcomes. We realise many of the tasks and
responsibilities we described in the article overlap and are integral parts
of other key administrative responsibilities. Our listing of roles and tasks
for principals in the area of teacher professional is in no way meant to be
a prescriptive job description. We believe our findings and discussion are
most helpful when used as a framework to build understanding about the
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and initiate new ways of thinking and talking about teacher learning and
its connections to student learning and organisational success.
Professional development is also an important policy tool in the
educational reform and school improvement initiatives. We would offer
several cautionary notes. First, at times, policy decisions in the area of
professional development are done more for political expediency and
symbolic reasons than for sound pedagogical reasons (Johansson &
Bredeson, 1999). When, for example, school violence, racial conflicts and
falling test scores call for legislative action, teacher training is a quick and
ready solution. The reality is that teacher training is only one part of a
much larger approach to critical problems in education. Secondly, as
important as professional development is to school improvement, it
should not be considered a substitute for clear and measurable education
goals, adequate resources to meet children’s needs, and supportive
structures and affirming learning cultures.
Though our discussion centres primarily on the principal’s role in
teacher professional development, we do have several general
observations on professional development. First, professional
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Correspondence
Professor P. Bredeson, Department of Educational Administration,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1282 J Educational Sciences Building,
1025 West Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA
(bredeson@soemadison.wisc.edu).
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References
American Federation of Teachers (1995) Professional Development Guidelines.
Washington, DC: American Federation of Teachers.
Barth, R. S. (1996) The Principal Learner: work in progress. Cambridge, MA:
International Network for Principals’ Centres, Harvard Graduate School of
Education.
Bredeson, P. V. (1988) Communicating as a Measure of Leadership in Schools: a
portrait of school principals, The High School Journal, 71(4), pp. 174–186.
Bredeson, P. V. (1999) Negotiated Learning: unions contracts and teacher
professional development, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the
American Educational Research Association in Montreal, Canada, 20 April.
Corcoran, T. C. (1995) Transforming Professional Development for Teachers: a guide
for state policy makers. Washington, DC: National Governors’ Association.
Darling-Hammond, L. & Sykes, G. (1999) Teaching as the Learning Profession:
handbook of policy and practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
DuFour, R. & Berkey, T. (1995) The Principal as Staff Developer, Journal of Staff
Development, 16(4), pp. 2–6.
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