Dini - Jurnal Keseluruhan

626800
research-article2016
RERXXX10.3102/0034654315626800KennedyRole of Professional Development
Review of Educational Research

Month 201X, Vol. XX, No. X, pp. 1–36
DOI: 10.3102/0034654315626800
© 2016 AERA. http://rer.aera.net
How Does Professional Development

Improve Teaching?
Mary M. Kennedy
Michigan State University
Professional development programs are based on different theories of how

students learn and different theories of how teachers learn. Reviewers often
sort programs according to design features such as program duration, inten-
sity, or the use of specific techniques such as coaches or online lessons, but
these categories do not illuminate the programs’ underlying purpose or
premises about teaching and teacher learning. This review sorts programs
according to their underlying theories of action, which include (a) a main
idea that teachers should learn and (b) a strategy for helping teachers enact
that idea within their own ongoing systems of practice. Using rigorous
research design standards, the review identifies 28 studies. Because studies
differ in multiple ways, the review presents program effects graphically
rather than statistically. Visual patterns suggest that many popular design
features are not associated with program effectiveness. Furthermore, differ-
ent main ideas are not differentially effective. However, the pedagogies used
to facilitate enactment differ in their effectiveness. Finally, the review
addresses the question of research design for studies of professional develop-
ment and suggests that some widely favored research designs might adversely
affect study outcomes.
Keywords: professional development, teacher learning, research design,

teacher quality, educational improvement, teaching practice
The idea that professional development (PD) can foster improvements in

teaching is widely accepted. PD is required by virtually every teaching contract in
the country, and teachers participate in PD every year. Foundations and federal
agencies spend large sums on the design and implementation of PD programs. Yet
despite this widespread agreement about its importance, there is little consensus
about how PD works, that is, about what happens in PD, how it fosters teacher
learning, and how it is expected to alter teaching practice. The actual form and
substance of PD programs is tremendously various, raising questions about why
something so various is uniformly assumed to be a good thing. This article reviews
research on PD programs with an eye toward learning more about how different
approaches to PD actually foster learning. Taking up this project raises a host of
1
Downloaded from http://rer.aera.net at EMORY UNIV on February 26, 2016
Kennedy
related questions about what teachers need to learn, what kind of PD activities
foster learning, and about how learning in one context, such as a PD workshop,
affects behavior in another, such as a teachers’ own classroom.
Because PD programs are so various, reviewers generally try to sort them
according to similarities and differences in their visible features. Some reviewers
focus on differences in content. For instance, Sher and O’Reilly (2009) compared
programs that focused on subject matter with those that focused on pedagogy, and
Kennedy (1998) identified four substantive foci: generic teaching practices, sub-
ject-specific teaching practices, curriculum and pedagogy, and how students
learn. Other reviewers focus on features of program design. For instance, Blank
and de las Alas (2009) found that more effective programs have features such as
follow-up steps in teachers’ schools, active learning methods, collective participa-
tion, and substantive attention to how students learn specific content. Timperley,
Wilson, Barrar, and Fung (2007) categorized 84 design features of PD programs
including the content and process of the PD programs, the characteristics of the
teachers’ schools, and the social context of their work.
These lists of salient design features and operational mechanisms help simplify
the complex array of programs, but they have also been criticized. One group of
reviewers (Sztajn, Campbell, & Yoon, 2011) criticized these lists for shifting our
attention away from relevant conceptual and theoretical frameworks, and another
(Opfer & Pedder, 2011) criticized them for being based in process–product logic,
meaning that programs are defined by visible processes or features rather than by
the functions these processes serve.
One reason we rely on such lists is that there is no single, overarching theory
of teaching or of teacher learning. Teachers are characterized as managers, actors,
mediators, role models, salesmen, and so forth. With different conceptions of
teaching come different conceptions of how PD can improve teaching. But we
cannot learn from this body of research unless we find a way to distinguish among
these different conceptions of what teachers are actually doing and how we can
help them improve. Rather than considering the array of specific design features
PD programs rely on, this review seeks to define programs according to their
underlying theories of action, where a theory of action includes two important
parts. First, it identifies a central problem of practice that it aims to inform, and
second, it devises a pedagogy that will help teachers enact new ideas, translating
them into the context of their own practice.
What Problems of Practice Do Programs Aim to Inform?
Questions about what teachers need to know are typically prefaced by stipula-
tions about what teachers actually do. Ever since Charters and Waples (1929) first
tried to define teachers’ practices, researchers have struggled to find a common
language that could define teachers’ work and delineate the knowledge needed to
guide that work. A large body of research in the 1970s, commonly dubbed “pro-
cess–product” research, sought to distinguish relatively more and less successful
practices. This was followed in the 1980s by a surge of close-up studies of teacher
thinking, nicely summarized by Clark and Peterson (1986), designed to help us
understand how teachers reasoned about and made decisions about their practices.
From these studies, we learned that teachers are continuously balancing among
2
Role of Professional Development
multiple and conflicting goals and ideals, some self-imposed and some imposed
from outside. For example, as a society we expect teachers to treat all children
equally, yet respond to each child’s unique needs; to be strict yet forgiving; and to
be intellectually demanding yet leave no child behind.
Along with these widespread public ideals, teachers also commit to a variety
of personal ideals and visions of their ideal selves. They may strive to be fair, to
have a sense of humor, to maintain a quiet voice, to provide at least one encourag-
ing word to each student every day, or to make sure they give time to their most
needy students. Local districts also add demands, requiring teachers to add a cur-
riculum unit on the history of their town, or asking them to enforce a new hats-off
policy. Students, too, can place demands on teachers. A widely recognized phe-
nomenon in classrooms is students who bargain with teachers to reduce the intel-
lectual challenge of their assigned tasks (Metz, 1993; Sedlak, Wheeler, Pullin, &
Cusick, 1986).
Thus, from the teachers’ perspective, the education system is “noisy”: Teachers
are surrounded by multiple and conflicting messages about what is most impor-
tant to do. Furthermore, if they focus too much on any one of these important
ideals, they may compromise their effectiveness with another. For instance, meth-
ods used to contain student behavior can become so heavy-handed that they
reduce students’ motivation to participate in the lesson (McNeil, 1985), or meth-
ods used to make lessons more interesting or entertaining can inadvertently distort
the content itself (Doyle, 1986). In his classic study of American high schools,
Cusick (1983) argued that maintaining higher academic standards was only mar-
ginally important in high schools and that their foremost goal was to contain the
behaviors of students who did not want to be there. Similarly, Kennedy (2005)
found that, although elementary teachers wanted their students to be actively
engaged in learning, there was a limit to how much engagement they would toler-
ate, for too much engagement led to too much noise and classroom frenzy.
Because teachers’ work is inherently multifaceted and driven by a wide variety
of conflicting ideals and the ideas, any review of PD should attend to the particu-
lar ideas programs offer to teachers and the particular aspect of practice they hope
to improve. Later, in the “Method” section of this article, I identify four persistent
challenges of practice that I used to classify the goals of PD programs.
What Pedagogy Do Programs Use to Facilitate Enactment
of Their Ideas?
The second important feature of a PD theory of action has to do with how it
helps teachers translate new ideas into their own systems of practice. This is
important because PD programs typically meet with teachers outside of their
classrooms to talk about teaching, yet they expect their words to alter teachers’
behaviors inside the classroom. They are at risk for what Kennedy (1999) called
the problem of enactment, a phenomenon in which teachers can learn and espouse
one idea, yet continue enacting a different idea, out of habit, without even noticing
the contradiction. Furthermore, because PD providers work with practicing teach-
ers, they are by definition not merely offering a new idea but rather a different idea
from the one that has guided teachers in the past. Teachers participating in PD
have already developed their practice and they have already found ways to
3
Kennedy
balance among their many competing challenges and ideals. They are likely to
have formed habitual responses to students jumping out of their seats, to favor
certain methods of portraying particular curriculum content, to favor certain seat-
ing arrangements, bulletin board displays, and so forth. Thus, any new idea
offered by PD requires not merely adoption but also abandonment of a prior
approach. Later, in the “Method” section, I describe four methods of facilitating
enactment that I found in the studies reviewed here.
So this review characterizes PD theories of action by their main ideas and by
the way they help teachers enact those ideas. In addition, there is also an impor-
tant feature of PD research designs that is addressed in this review. A central
problem in PD research is ensuring that teachers in program and comparison
groups are actually comparable. When random assignment is not possible, a com-
mon method for identifying a comparison group for PD studies is to select teach-
ers whose teaching assignments match those of program teachers. Comparison
teachers teach the same grade levels, same subjects, and/or same types of stu-
dents. But this strategy fails to match teachers on their motivation to learn.
Typically, participating teachers chose to participate in PD, whereas comparison
teachers with similar teaching assignments did not. Hundreds of studies have been
done using comparison groups whose only similarity to the program teachers is
their teaching assignment. This review does not include such studies, on the
ground that researchers have not ensured comparable motivation to learn, and this
is the most important form of comparability when a study is about learning.
On the other side, there are also situations in which teachers are required to
participate in PD. When studies mandate teachers’ assignment to treatment and
comparison groups, they ensure that their two groups are comparable, but they do
so by ensuring that neither group is motivated to learn. Because the effects of any
PD program depends heavily on teachers’ motivation to learn and to change their
practice, studies using mandatory assignments may not have much effect on
learning. This is not to say that teachers will actively resist but rather that they will
forget about the program when they return to their classrooms. This review aims
to learn more about how PD programs and studies address these challenges and
whether their solutions make a difference to student learning. The next section
describes methods for searching the literature and analyzing studies.
Method
This review examines experimental studies of PD carried out in K-12 general
education within the United States and published since 1975. The restriction to
the United States acknowledges that teaching is inherently cultural and varies
across nations (Hiebert et al., 2003; Roth et al., 2006; Stigler & Perry, 1988) and
that the United States is somewhat unique in its lack of a national curriculum. The
1975 time limit reflects the history of this field: Few, if any, experimental studies
of PD were carried out prior to that time. The review focuses on K-12 teachers
teaching core academic subjects (language arts, mathematics, the sciences, and
the social sciences). It does not include studies conducted in special subjects such
as art, music, physical education, agriculture, and so on, where pedagogical
demands can be quite different.
4
Search for Studies
The topic of PD is very popular. There could be thousands of articles written
about it almost every year, but the vast bulk of these articles do not present experi-
mental evidence. Some simply describe programs. Some include teacher testi-
mony. Others rely on classroom observations and still others measure student
learning. Some include a comparison group; others do not. Many studies combine
PD with other supports such as new curriculum materials or new technology.
Because of the large volume of work that is relevant but not eligible for this
review, I did not undertake a database search. Such searches are far too labor-
intensive relative to their yield. Instead, I first sought candidates from other
reviews of PD, including Blank, de las Alas, and Smith (2008); Borko (2004);
Hirsh and Hord (2008); Kennedy (1998); Lampert (1988); Loucks-Horsley and
Matsumoto (1999); Mitchell and Cubey (2003); Opfer and Pedder (2011); Sher
and O’Reilly (2009); Timperley et al. (2007); Wei, Darling-Hammond, and
Adamson (2010); Wideen, Mayer-Smith, and Moon (1998); and Yoon, Duncan,
Lee, Scarloss, and Spapley (2007).
These reviews appeared to adequately capture research prior to 2000, when
formal studies of PD were relatively rare. To ensure coverage after 2000, I hand-
searched journals that cover teacher education–related topics. I examined all
issues published from 2000 to 2014 from the following journals: American
Educational Research Journal, Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of
Teacher Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Teachers College Record,
Peabody Journal of Education, American Journal of Education, The Elementary
School Journal, Journal of Research in Mathematics Education, Journal of
Research in Science Teaching, School Science and Mathematics, and Reading
Research Quarterly. Finally, I examined the reference lists in the articles that I
found. Even after eliminating studies using the criteria outlined below, this
approach yielded 28 studies. This is far more than two other best-evidence synthe-
ses, each of which yielded fewer than 10.
Criteria for Study Selection

To ensure that the studies offered valid, and comparable, inferences about PD,
I required them to meet five criteria. These are described below.
The Study Is About PD Only

One thing that makes a review of PD difficult is that researchers use PD to
study many things other than the PD itself. That is, a researcher may be interested
in a new curriculum, a new teaching technique, or new classroom tool, but must
provide PD to enable teachers to use their innovation. To learn about the benefit
of the PD, itself, researchers need to make sure that participation in PD is the only
difference between groups. For, as Slavin, Lake, Hanley, and Thurston (2014)
pointed out, if teachers in two different PD programs are also teaching two differ-
ent curricula, then the effects of the PD are confounded with the effects of the
curriculum, so that differences in student achievement may actually reflect the
different curricula, not the PD per se.
5
Kennedy
Using this criterion, I excluded, for instance, Newman et al.’s (2012) study of
the new Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative as well as studies in
which PD was used to test the merits of instructional tools such as Simcalc
(Roschelle et al., 2010) or the merits of a computerized student assessment system
(e.g., Fuchs, 1991). I did allow curriculum-oriented PD studies when a compari-
son group taught the same new curriculum without the benefit of the PD (e.g.,
Borman, Gamoran, & Bowdon, 2008; Penuel, Gallagher, & Moorthy, 2011; Saxe,
Gearhart, & Nasir, 2001).
The Study Includes Evidence of Student Achievement

I rejected studies that did not provide evidence of student achievement, even if
they provided other forms of evidence such as teacher testimony, interviews, sur-
veys, or classroom observations. There are two reasons for this. First, the ultimate
goal of PD is to improve student learning. Second, measures of student learning
are relatively more similar across studies than are classroom observations or
teacher interviews, which are often tailored to capture activities uniquely relevant
to a PD program. However, measures of student achievement can also differ.
Conventional standardized tests and state assessments tend to cover a broader
array of content and may be less sensitive to specific program purposes.
Consequently, some researchers develop measures that are intentionally designed
to capture unique program effects. In the language of Ruiz-Primo, Shavelson,
Hamilton, and Klein (2002), these tailored instruments are more proximal to the
program, whereas district or state assessments are more distal. This review
includes both types of measures, but, as others have done (e.g., Roschelle et al.,
2010), it presents conventional measures such as state assessments or standard-
ized test scores as “M1” outcomes and those created specifically for the PD pro-
gram as “M2” outcomes. M2 measures are more closely aligned with the program
goals and might therefore be expected to demonstrate greater program impact.
The Study Design Controls for Motivation to Learn

I included studies that used mandatory assignments to groups, even though
these might reduce motivation to learn, on the ground that the groups are nonethe-
less comparable in their motivation. The remainder of the studies used a variety of
approaches to ensure teacher motivation even though teachers would be partici-
pating in different programs. Some invited teachers to participate and told them in
advance that this was a study and they might not be assigned to the program they
preferred. Some randomly assign volunteers to cohorts, so that everyone eventu-
ally gets the program but some get it a year later. One study (Glazerman et al.,
2010) mandated school assignments and then offered the program to teachers in
treatment schools. This procedure could have biased the study outcome, but the
authors measured program impact on all teachers in the schools, whether or not
they availed themselves of the service. Yet another approach (used by Roth et al.,
2011) was to offer two different programs and let teachers to self-select between
them. This approach would likely be rejected by conventional research standards;
however, it does assure that both groups are equal in their motivation to learn that
particular program. All these variations are included here.
6
A Minimum Study Duration of 1 Year
An important and underemphasized question in research on PD is whether
PD produces enduring changes in practice rather than temporary compliance.
Several studies with appropriate comparison groups and outcome measures
were rejected because they followed teachers and their students for only a few
weeks or months (e.g., Siegle & McCoach, 2007).
However, in many cases, the PD itself also extended throughout an entire
school year, so that even year-long measures of student learning were still coter-
minous with the PD itself. Ideally, PD research should follow teachers for at least
a full year after the completion of the PD itself, to discover the extent to which
teachers are able to sustain the new practice after the PD support is gone.
However, such a requirement would reduce the population of eligible studies to
just a handful.
Researchers Follow Teachers, Rather Than Students, Over Time

Long-term studies present unique problems to educational researchers
because teachers and students are reallocated each year and there is some con-
fusion about whether researchers should follow the students or the teachers
during ensuing school years. In one study (Heller, Dahler, Wong, Shinohara, &
Miratrix, 2012), the researchers assessed long-term impact by following the
students over time to see whether they still recalled the content they had origi-
nally learned from the program teachers. This study design tests whether teach-
ers had an enduring impact on their students, but not whether the program had
an enduring impact on the teachers. In another study (Campbell & Rowan,
1995), researchers compared program impact on students who had been in the
program for 1, 2, or 3 years, rather than comparing teachers’ performance
when teachers had participated for 1, 2, or 3 years. The question of interest is
in a PD study should be whether teachers themselves can sustain their improved
practices in the ensuing years.
How These Rules Differ From What Works Clearinghouse

The criteria described above are intended to yield strong-inference studies of
PD but they differ in important ways from those used by the What Works
Clearinghouse (WWC). For instance, the WWC’s 2007 review of PD literature
(Yoon et al., 2007) included only nine studies, four of which would have been
rejected using the criteria listed above. One of theirs (Duffy et al., 1986) was
rejected from this review because the study duration was only 6 months. Another
(McCutchen, Abbott, Green, & Beretvas, 2002) was rejected because even though
the authors claimed to randomly assign teachers to treatment and comparison con-
ditions, they also said that they gave certain schools preferential access to the
treatment condition, a decision that could bias the study outcome. Two others
(Marek & Methven, 1991; Tienken & Achilles, 2003) were rejected because they
selected a comparison group by matching comparison teachers to the treatment
teachers, a practice that fails to equate groups on their motivation to learn. On the
other side, this review includes studies that might have been rejected by the WWC
because of their unconventional assignment processes.
7
Estimating Individual Program Effects
The first step in analysis was to compute effect sizes for each student-learning
outcome in each study. Computations depended on the original approach to data
analysis. Most of the older studies used analysis of variance or covariance, but
some used student-level data; others used classroom-level data. More recent stud-
ies typically relied on hierarchical linear models. These different approaches yield
very different error terms, and hence different estimates of effect sizes. Below are
my methods of establishing effect sizes from the different kinds of data.
Student-Level Data
The first group of studies used student-level data, analyzed with analysis of
variance (ANOVA), analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), or t tests. Following
WWC (2013), I used Hedge’s g to calculate effect sizes, where
X G1 − X G 2
ES =
spooled
and
s12 ( n1 − 1) + s22 ( n2 − 1)
spooled = .
n1 + n2 − 2
This estimate tends to be upwardly biased for small samples, however, and
many of these older studies used relatively small samples. There is a correction
for small samples, which multiplies effect size estimates by
1 − 3 / ( 4 N − 9 )  .
This correction is not sufficient, however, when the researcher is interested in

teachers, for even though these studies had small samples of teachers, they had
much larger samples of students, so that corrections for small samples have neg-
ligible effects. Yet some correction is needed because students within each class-
room are not independent units and the researchers have not accounted for
dependencies within each classroom. To correct for these likely upwardly biased
estimates, I based Hedge’s correction on the number of teachers rather than the
number of students. This correction is conceptually appropriate, even if not statis-
tically customary.
Classroom-Level Data
The second group of studies also relied heavily on ANOVA or ANCOVA, but
used classrooms as their units of analysis. This analytic approach is conceptually
correct, because the unit being “treated” is the teacher; however, variations among
classrooms are much smaller than variations among individual students and so
effect sizes tended to be very large, often more than full standard deviation above
their comparison groups. None of these authors provided enough data to enable an
8
estimate of student-level standard deviations. I therefore devised an ad hoc
approximation by dividing each effect size by four. My reasoning was as follows.
First, variance decomposition studies (see, e.g., Rowan, Correnti, & Miller, 2002)
suggest that variance among classrooms is roughly 15% to 20% of total variance,
whereas variance among students is roughly 60% to 70%. Roughly, then, class-
room variance is about a quarter the size of student variance. Second, within the
sample of studies included in this review, the average effect size based on class-
room units was .8 whereas the average effect based on student units was .19,
roughly one fourth of the classroom effect size. After correcting all estimates for
small samples and then dividing each class-level effect by 4, the average class-
level effect was .17, and the average student level effect was .18.
Hierarchical Data
The third and largest group of studies used hierarchical models and these also
varied considerably. Sometimes, individual teachers were allocated to treatments,
sometimes, whole schools were, and sometimes, learning communities within
schools were. The analytic approaches used for these studies were more complex
than those in the first two groups and many were idiosyncratic to the studies. In
most cases, I accepted the effect size estimates that authors offered. However,
when studies yielded effects that appeared to be outliers, I contacted the authors
to clarify the basis for their estimates and revised them if needed.
Within-Study Synthesis
Within each study, I calculated effects for every subgroup of students and/or
every outcome measure and then averaged these to yield a single average outcome
for each study. However, I retained distinctions between M1 and M2 measures so
that readers can see differences in effect across these types of outcomes, and I
retained distinctions across program years so that readers can see the differences
between immediate and delayed program effects.
Comparisons Across Programs

The programs reviewed here are too various to benefit from a formal meta-
analysis. Aggregating by any one dimension introduces important confounding on
another dimension and renders interpretations difficult. I rely instead on visual
displays that enable readers to see the unique effects of each program and to com-
pare them individually with one another.
Characterizing PD Programs
To articulate similarities and differences among PD programs, I sought a clas-
sification system that would sort programs according to the two central aspects of
their theories of action. Specifically, I categorized the content of the ideas they
provided and their method for facilitating enactment of those ideas.
Program Content
I sorted program content according to the type of teaching problems they
addressed, using a framework devised by Kennedy (2016). These are challenges
that virtually every teacher must address, as they are inherent in the work of
9
Kennedy
teaching, and most PD programs are designed to address one of them. The first of
these, and the one of most interest to observers, is portraying curriculum content
in a way that enables naïve minds to comprehend it. If students could learn cur-
riculum content simply by reading textbooks there would be no need for teachers.
But they need help making sense of new content. Thus, we see teachers provide
demonstrations, pictures, movies, hypothetical problems, walked-through exam-
ples, and so forth, and we see them devising learning activities for students to
engage in on their own. For many observers of teaching, these activities are the
essence of teaching, and we cannot say that someone is teaching if they are not
portraying content to students.
The second persistent challenge is to contain student behavior. Students are
energetic, excitable, boisterous, and easily distracted by one another. Teachers
need to contain their behavior in part as a matter of safety but also to ensure that
students are not distracting each other, or the teacher, from the lesson. The need
to contain student behavior is acknowledged in virtually every school district
performance assessment, where one or more items have to do with classroom
management.
The third persistent challenge facing teachers is to enlist student participation.
Teachers face a captive audience, and sometimes a resistant audience. The prob-
lem here is that school attendance is compulsory but learning is not. And as learn-
ing theorists remind us (see, e.g., Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999) learning
cannot occur without active intellectual engagement. This situation creates a pre-
dicament for teachers, for, as Cohen (2011) argued, teachers cannot claim to be
teaching if students are not learning, yet students will not learn unless they them-
selves choose to actively participate in their lessons.
Finally, teachers must find ways to expose their students’ thinking. This fourth
persistent challenge may seem less obvious to observers than the first three, but
without knowing what students understand at any given moment, teachers cannot
know what to repeat, what to elaborate, or when to move on. Thus, we see teach-
ers asking students to solve problems, share their findings, respond to one anoth-
er’s ideas, read aloud, show their work, turn in assigned projects for review, and
so forth. Most school districts try to help teachers address this problem by provid-
ing them with formal assessment data, but the most useful knowledge for teachers
is the knowledge they have in the moment, for this knowledge can guide their
actions in the moment.
Thousands of hours have been spent arguing about the relative importance of
these persistent teaching challenges, but all are fundamental to teaching, and
teaching success depends on all four. Teachers cannot be said to be teaching
unless students are learning and students cannot learn unless teachers portray con-
tent in a way that is comprehensible to naïve thinkers, enlist student participation
in the lessons, contain distracting behavior among students, and expose student
thinking so that they can adjust their lessons accordingly.
Notice, too, that these problems must be addressed simultaneously and con-
tinuously. Each new student, each new group of students, and each new topic to
be taught requires teachers to think anew about how they will contain student
behavior in this new situation, how they will enlist participation in this new situ-
ation, how they will portray curriculum content in this new situation, and how
10
they will expose their students’ thinking in this new situation. These four persis-
tent challenges provide a useful framework for characterizing PD programs. They
are broad enough to contain a wide variety of program ideas, yet different enough
to allow meaningful comparisons. Most program content fell easily into one or
another of these categories.
Facilitating Enactment
The second part of a PD theory of action consists of a strategy for helping
teachers enact new ideas within their own ongoing systems of practice. We have
always confronted philosophical questions about how knowledge influences
behavior, of course, but the question is further complicated in the case of teaching
because teachers have already developed systems of practice that they believe
optimally resolve the various challenges they face. For teachers, enacting a new
idea is not a matter of simple adoption but rather a matter of figuring out whether,
when, and how to incorporate that new idea into an ongoing system of practice
which is already satisfactory, and may also be largely habitual. I identified four
methods used by PD programs to facilitate enactment of their ideas.
The oldest and still most widespread method is prescription. Here, PD pro-
grams explicitly describe or demonstrate what they believe is the best way for
teachers to address a particular teaching problem. From the PD provider’s per-
spective, prescriptions reduce the amount of individual discretion or judgement
that is needed, thus ensuring that teachers do things exactly as the provider
intends. Furthermore, teachers are accustomed to receiving prescriptions. They
routinely receive prescriptive guidance in the form of new laws, new school orga-
nizational mechanisms, new curricula, schedules, discipline policies, assessment
systems, and record-keeping systems. Many popular and widely used commercial
PD programs are also heavily prescriptive. Prescriptions are typically presented
as universal, reducing the amount of flexibility or personal judgement teachers
will need to enact the idea. But prescriptions can backfire if they address only one
of the challenges teachers face, for in so doing they may exacerbate others.
Another way of facilitating enactment is through strategies. Strategies are dis-
tinctive in that they define their goals. Typically, PD programs convey a specific
goal that teachers should strive for and then provide a collection of illustrative prac-
tices that will achieve that goal. The practices themselves can be just as procedurally
detailed as prescriptions, but they differ in that they are accompanied by a rationale
that helps teachers understand when and why they should implement these strate-
gies. The challenge for PD is to make sure teachers understand the ultimate goal
well enough that they can decide independently when they will use each strategy.
The third way to facilitate enactment is through insight. By definition, insights
arise from self-generated “aha!” moments, but programs can foster new insights
by raising provocative questions that force teachers to reexamine familiar events
and come to see them differently. To understand how insights influence behavior,
imagine gaining a new insight into a colleague that makes you more suspicious of
him. As a result, you become more guarded in your future interactions with him,
more careful about revealing personal information, or perhaps more reluctant to
spend time with him. The insight alters your behavior in ways that could not be
prescribed by someone else. In fact, if someone else had warned you about this
11
Kennedy
colleague, you might not have changed your behavior at all because you might not
have fully grasped the practical implications of that person’s advice. PD programs
that rely on insights recognize the importance of teachers’ in-the-moment deci-
sions and hope to alter those decisions by changing the way teachers interpret
classroom situations in the moment and thus, how they respond to them.
Notice that these three methods of facilitating enactment lie along a continuum
in which enactment increasingly depends on teachers’ independent judgments.
Prescriptions tend to offer universal guidance, allowing teachers very little discre-
tionary judgment. Strategies are also procedurally detailed but their procedures
are defined as serving specific purposes and encourage professional judgements
as to when they should be used. Insights encourage even more professional judge-
ment, helping teachers learn to “see” situations differently and to make their own
decisions about how to respond.
There is yet a fourth approach that moves an additional step further toward
teacher autonomy. In this final approach, the PD presents a body of knowledge
that may not explicitly imply any particular action. By a body of knowledge, I
mean knowledge that is organized into a coherent body of interrelated concepts
and principles and that can be summarized in books, diagrams, and lectures. PD
programs that provide bodies of knowledge often look like traditional university
courses with textbooks and syllabi. Bodies of knowledge are inherently passive,
and we know very little about how such knowledge rises above its passive “body”
status to stimulate any particular teaching action. Thus, when PD offers teachers
a body of knowledge, it gives them maximum discretion regarding whether or
how teachers would do anything with that knowledge.
I used the frameworks above to define each program’s main ideas and methods
for facilitating enactment. I developed a set of criteria for connecting program con-
tent to the four persistent challenges of teaching and for connecting program peda-
gogies to each method of facilitating enactment. For example, prescriptions tend to
be procedural and universal; strategies also tend to be procedural but they include a
purpose and have a multiple-choice quality, in which teachers can select the proce-
dure that seems most appropriate in a given situation. Insights are less explicit and
tend to be “discovered” through study groups and discussions rather than didacti-
cally. Bodies of knowledge are often defined just as college courses are. When
research articles did not provide adequate information about the programs them-
selves, I went on line and sought further literature about the programs.
I also categorized details of research method, especially with respect to how
teachers were allocated to particular groups. When reports were not clear, I con-
tacted authors directly and sought out clarification. With respect to how teachers
were assigned to groups, I made a summary judgement as to whether the compari-
sons ensured comparable motivation to learn and rejected studies that did not.
Results and Interpretation

Distribution of Studies
Table 1 shows the distribution of PD research effort addressing different teach-
ing challenges and different methods of facilitating enactment. Many cells have
very few studies within them. Furthermore, studies within a given cell can also
12
Table 1
Distribution of programs across teaching problems and methods of facilitating
enactment
Enactment facilitated by
Teaching problem Prescription Strategy Insight Knowledge Total

Portraying curricular content 5 4 3 3 15
Containing behavior 2 0 0 0 2
Enlisting participation 0 4 1 0 5
Exposing student thinking 1 2 3 0 6
Total 8 10 7 3 28
differ in duration (1 year vs. 2 or 3 years), outcome measures (M1 or M2), and
study design (volunteer vs. mandatory assignment). Because each of these varia-
tions also has an impact on estimates of program effects, I do not aggregate stud-
ies in any way, but instead present their outcomes graphically. This enables readers
to consider each potential competing hypothesis when interpreting differences in
program effects. I begin with the largest group, which includes programs offering
ideas to help teachers portray curriculum content.
Portraying Curriculum Content
Table 2 lists 15 studies whose programs offer ideas about portraying curriculum
content, and Figure 1 graphically displays their effects on student achievement.
Figure 1 includes a lot of information and requires close inspection. Take a moment
to study it. Each icon represents a particular program. They are arrayed along a
vertical scale that represents the size of their effects on student achievement. The
simplest reading is this: Programs at the top of the graph were more effective than
those at the bottom. However, the icons also carry information about the programs
themselves, thus allowing for other kinds of comparisons. Larger icons represent
larger samples of teacher participants (hence perhaps more reliable estimates), and
darker icons indicate more time spent with teachers, with time being a proxy for
program intensity. The pattern of light and dark icons invites hypotheses about the
relationship between program intensity and program outcomes. In addition, round
icons represent M1 outcome measures and square icons represent M2 measures so
that readers can compare findings on either type of outcome. Finally, when studies
provide findings from both M1 and M2 measures, or provide findings from mul-
tiple years, their icons are grouped together or are connected by a line so that read-
ers can see that they come from the same program.
Consider first the vertical arrangement of the icons. Most reside between
roughly .00 and .20. This finding may surprise some readers; it has become popu-
lar to define effect sizes with terms like small or large, and effects in the area of
.2 or .3 are generally considered small. Using this tradition, almost all PD pro-
grams had small effects, regardless of the ideas they offered, how much time they
spent with teachers, or how they facilitated enactment of their ideas. But do not
13
14
Table 2
Programs helping teachers portray curricular content
PD contact Study Number of
Citation Main idea Facilitated by Comparison hours duration teachers M1 outcomes M2 outcomes
Cole (1992) Mississippi Prescription No program 24 hours 1 year 12 el SAT reading

Competencies SAT mathematics
SAT language. arts
Sloan (1993) Direct Instruction Prescription No program 5 hours 1 year 10 el CTBS reading
CTBS math
CTBS science
CTBS social studies
Glazerman Comprehensive Prescription, Regular 51 hours/ 3 years 517 Reading
et al. (2008); Induction some strategy induction year Writing
Glazerman et al.
(2010); Isenberg
et al. (2009)
Borman et al. Science Immersion Prescription Curriculum 30 hours 1 year 272 el District unit science
(2008) materials alone tests
Garet et al. (2008) LETRS Coaching Prescription plus Business as usual 48 hours 2 years 270, 250 el District reading tests
knowledge
Penuel et al. ESBD (Earth Science Strategy Curriculum 84 hours 1 year 53 sec Content

(2011) by Design) materials only standards
Matsumura, Questioning the Strategy Regular literacy 72 hours 2 years 167 State assessment,
Garnier, Junker, Author coaching reading
Resnick, &
Bickel (2009)
(continued)
Table 2 (continued)
PD contact Study Number of

Citation Main idea Facilitated by Comparison hours duration teachers M1 outcomes M2 outcomes
Matsumura, Questioning the Strategy Regular literacy 36 hours 1 year 73 State assessment,
Garnier, Author coaching reading
Correnti, Junker,
and Bickel
(2010)
Campbell and School Math Coaches Strategy No program 30 hours 3 years 418 State math assessment
Malkus (2011)
Supovitz (2012) Linking Feedback Insight Test data alone 3 hours 1 year 64 District unit tests in
math
Gersten, Dimino, Research Study Insight Other reading 20 hours 1 year 81 el Oral vocabulary
Jayanthi, Kim, Group first PD Reading vocabulary
and Santoro Passage comprehension
(2010)
Santagata, Lesson Analysis Insight 54 hours 1 year 51 el Selected
Kersting, items from
Givven, and district test
Stigler. (2010)
Garet et al. (2010); Rational Numbers Knowledge Business as usual 67 hours 2 years 195 mid, Math knowledge
Garet et al. Year 1 Year 1

(2011) 46 hours 92 Year 2
Year 2
Niess (2005) Oregon Math– Knowledge Business as usual 60 1 year 46 el-mid State math assessment
Science Partnership
Note. el = elementary school; sec = secondary school; mid = middle school; CTBS = Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills; PD = professional development; LETRS = Language
Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling.
15
Figure 1. Effectiveness of programs helping teachers portray curricular content.
Note. Each icon represents a study. The size of the icon is proportional to the number of participating
teachers and the darkness is proportional to the amount of time the PD spent with teachers, so that
both size and color are indicators of the program’s level of effort. When a study followed teachers
beyond the treatment year, the later years are represented by hollow icons. Round icons represent
M1 measures and square icons represent M2 measures. Small dots layered over an icon mean that
the program’s effect size was divided by 4 to adjust for class-level units of analysis.
forget that the conventional model of PD is a three-step process: PD alters teach-

ers’ knowledge, which in turn alters their practices, which in turn alters student
learning. If there is slippage in any one of these steps, we might expect effects to
be diminished. Furthermore, when programs use coaches or other intermediaries
to work with teachers, they are essentially adding yet another step to this process:
They train the coaches, who then work with teachers. The nature of PD, therefore,
is such that we cannot rely on conventional definitions of small or large. Indeed,
Figure 1 suggests that, for studies of PD, an effect size of .2 could itself be con-
sidered rather large, especially when the outcome is a generalized M1 achieve-
ment test rather than a more closely aligned M2 test.
Another pattern revealed in Figure 1 has to do with study duration. When pro-
grams extend over 2 or more years, multiple icons are displayed, labeled “Y1”
and “Y2,” to represent effects at the end of each year. When studies follow teach-
ers for a year beyond the PD year, their follow-up years are depicted with a white
icon, indicating that teachers had no contact with the program during that year, so
that we are observing a delayed effect from the treatment. Notice that, in most
studies that included such a follow-up year, student achievement was higher at the
end of the follow-up year than at the end of the program year. This pattern is con-
sistent with other research suggesting that teachers improve their practices incre-
mentally over time (e.g., Horn, 2010; Huberman, 1994), so that the ultimate
effects of PD are likely not completely visible at the end of the program year.
The next pattern revealed in Figure 1 is that the most intensive programs
(darker icons) tended to have relatively weaker effects on student learning. Many
large, dark circles rest near or even below the baseline of Figure 1. This is a sur-
prising outcome, for these studies represent state-of-the-art research designs.
They include larger samples, randomized assignments, and more intensive inter-
ventions. But many of these studies also differ from others in that they mandated
16
participation, a practice that disregards teachers’ motivation to learn. Thus, we
cannot separate the effect of assignment from the effect of program intensity.
Finally, with respect to the relative merits of different approaches to facilitating
enactment, notice that the icons arrayed in Figure 1 form an inverted “U” shape, such
that those in the middle of the figure, which relied on strategies or insights to facili-
tate enactment, had greater effects on student learning relative to those that offered
prescriptions or bodies of knowledge. Let us now review the programs individually.
Enactment via Prescription
The leftmost section of Figure 1 presents findings from five programs that
relied on prescriptions to facilitate enactment.
•• Mississippi’s Competencies (Cole, 1992) introduced teachers to 14 compe-

tencies deemed essential in the early 1990s.
•• Direct Instruction (Sloan, 1993) introduced teachers to Madeline Hunter’s
model of instruction, also popular in the early 1990s.
•• Comprehensive Induction (Glazerman et al., 2008, Glazerman et al., 2010;
Isenberg et al., 2009) provided local coaches who observed and guided
novice teachers to comply with a rubric-defined set of practices. The
researchers examined both a 1-year version and a 2-year version of the
program, and in each case followed teachers through a third year.
•• LETRS, or Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling
(Garet et al., 2008) shared research-based findings outlined in a National
Reading Panel (2000) report. The program provided seminars (called insti-
tutes) alone, as well as seminars with coaches who helped teachers imple-
ment seminar recommendations. The icon shown in the prescription section
of Figure 1 represents the version with coaches.
•• Science Immersion (Borman et al., 2008) prescribed methods for implement-
ing a new science immersion curriculum in the Los Angeles school system.
These programs differed substantially in the amount of time they spent with
teachers. For his Direct Instruction program, Sloan (1993) held one meeting with
teachers to lay out Hunter’s eight elements of a good lesson and to list the specific
skills and procedures needed to achieve each element. He then quizzed teachers
on what they had learned and provided a second session in which he retaught
some of the skills. Even with a second meeting, the total contact time was still just
5 hours. In contrast, the LETRS program provided 48 hours of seminar time and
an additional 60 hours of coaching time distributed throughout the year.
To see what highly detailed prescriptive messages look like, consider a sample
manual from the Science Immersion program. This manual is 206 pages and
describes a single fourth-grade unit (“Rot it right,” 2006). The manual reminds
teachers, in preparation for the unit, to
ask students to start collecting bottles 4–6 weeks in advance to ensure that you have
plenty of bottles to work with. Terraqua Columns require 2-liter plastic bottles.
Decomposition Columns require 16 oz. plastic bottles. Make sure that a few extra
bottles are available for student groups that encounter a problem while constructing
the columns and need to start over. (p. 17)
17
Kennedy
Each lesson description begins with an enumeration of the steps that need to
occur, like this:
1. To set the tone for this investigation as an exploration, generate a class discussion
and class list about what plants need for growth and development.
2. Use the Think Aloud technique to model how to refine a wondering into a good
scientific investigation. From the students’ list about what plants need, form the
question—What effect does sunlight have on radish plant growth and development?
3. Continue the Think Aloud to model assembling the Terraqua Columns using
proper experimental procedures, and designing an experiment that has only one
factor that is varied.
4. Have students record and explain their predictions for each set of columns for
later reference.
5. . . . (p. 21)
As this example illustrates, prescriptions are very direct and often very detailed,
but Figure 1 suggests that they are not the best way to facilitate enactment of new
ideas. However, the three largest studies in this group also relied on mandatory
assignments, thus perhaps reducing program effectiveness by removing teachers’
motivation to learn.
Enactment via Strategy

The second batch of programs shown in Figure 1 depicts three programs, each
of which addressed a different school subject.
•• ESBD, or Earth Science by Design (Penuel et al., 2011), is based on the

broader Understanding by Design system (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).
The authors gave teachers a highly scripted step-by step lesson-planning
strategy that guided them from long-term goals to specific classroom
events, in the hope of helping them become more strategic in their lesson
planning.
•• School Math Coaches (Campbell & Malkus, 2011) provided coaches who
collaborated with teachers over a three-year period as they designed their
mathematics lessons, thus helping them learn to think more strategically.
•• Questioning the Author (Matsumura et al., 2010; Matsumura et al., 2013;
Matsumura, Garnier, Junker, Resnick, & Bickel 2009) provided coaches to
help teachers learn an approach to classroom discussion that might improve
students’ reading comprehension.
Notice that the Earth Science by Design program is represented with a square
icon, reminding us that the outcome is an M2 measure rather than an M1 measure.
Because M2 measures are more closely aligned with program goals, they often
yield larger effects. But all three programs had a greater impact on student
18
learning than did any of the more prescriptive programs. Notice, too, that two
programs in this group have multiple icons because they were both multiyear
programs. In both cases, their darker icons depicting later years reflect that the
total accumulated time teachers spent across all years of participation.
These two multiyear programs illustrate the problem of focusing on PD design
features. Both relied on coaches, as did two programs in the prescriptive group, but
these two programs were far more effective than the first two. The concept of coach-
ing is very popular today, and is often recommended as a PD design feature. But
coaches in the prescriptive programs used standardized templates to observe and eval-
uate teachers’ practices and to demonstrate recommended practices, whereas coaches
in the strategic programs adopted a collaborative, joint problem-solving approach
designed to help teachers develop a more strategic approach to their lessons.
Enactment via Insight

Turning to the third section of Figure 1, we see two programs designed to help
teachers gain new insights into teaching. There is a third study that also belongs
in this group but is not displayed because its report did not provide sufficient
information to compute comparable effect sizes.
•• The Research Study Group (Gersten et al., 2010) introduced teachers to

research-based reading strategies, content very similar to that provided by
the LETRS program, but it relied on study groups who collectively exam-
ined the findings and made their own decisions about how they might
design forthcoming lessons in light of these findings.
•• Linking Feedback (Supovitz, 2012) was designed to add (and link)
classroom observation feedback to an already-existing district-wide
formative assessment feedback system. In this case, the district had
already introduced the assessment system and had formed professional
learning communities to examine their data. The only thing the PD pro-
gram did was add observation feedback in the hope that the linked com-
bination would help teachers generate more or better ideas about what
to do next.
•• The third program, Video Lesson Analysis (Santagata et al., 2010) guided
teachers through a process of examining videotaped lessons, conjecturing
about how the lesson could have been improved, and ultimately designing
and implemented their own lessons for that same content. The program
effect could not be calculated in the same metric as the others and so is not
displayed in Figure 1. However, its effect was resoundingly negative, mak-
ing it differ substantially from the others in this group.
All three of these programs relied on some form of professional learning commu-
nities, or PLCs, to help teachers gain new insights. Like coaches, PLCs are popular
today as a means of engaging teachers in productive discussions about teaching. Yet
these three examples of PLC-based PD differed substantially in their effectiveness.
One important difference among these programs had to do with the content
they examined. In the most effective program, teachers read research articles
about effective practice and discussed the implications of these findings together.
19
Kennedy
In the middle one, they examined factual information about their own teaching
with no suggestions about how to make sense of that feedback. In the third, not
shown here, teachers viewed videotapes individually and responded to computer-
ized questions before discussing the videos with colleagues, so their participation
may have been relatively more passive. Furthermore, their participation was man-
datory, so they might have been less motivated to learn.
Enactment via Bodies of Knowledge

The fourth and rightmost section of Figure 1 displays outcomes from three
programs which provided teachers with bodies of knowledge. In these programs,
content was presented more didactically, with relatively less attention to implica-
tions for enactment.
•• LETRS (Garet et al., 2008) institutes provided the same content that LETRS
coaches did. In this case, teachers attended a series of day-long institutes
interspersed throughout the school year, each covering a single research-
based topic (e.g., phonemes, phonemic awareness, etc.), and each accom-
panied by a textbook on that topic. However, teachers in this program did
not receive additional guidance from coaches.
•• Rational Numbers (Garet et al., 2010; Garet et al., 2011) provided intermit-
tent institutes in a format very similar to the LETRS program. Each insti-
tute included lectures and overheads interspersed with opportunities for
teachers to solve mathematical problems, explain how they solved prob-
lems, discuss student misconceptions about these topics, and plan lessons
that they would teach later on. The program also included a modest supple-
mental component to help teachers apply their new knowledge to their
classroom instruction.
•• The Oregon MSP, or Mathematics and Science Partnership (Niess, 2005),
used NTCM standards as its organizing framework and offered a 2-week
summer institute followed by three semester-length courses in probability
and statistics, geometry and measurement, number sense and algebra. There
was also an online discussion forum designed to keep teachers’ attention
focused on this content and to facilitate their use of this new knowledge.
In this section of Figure 1, the two less effective programs also used mandatory
assignments, whereas the Oregon MSP study randomly assigned volunteers.
Figure 1 as a Whole
We can now use Figure 1 to compare over a dozen programs that are addressing
the same fundamental challenge of teaching, that is, portraying curriculum content
in a way that makes it comprehensible to naïve thinkers. But these programs facili-
tated enactment in different ways. In fact it is now possible to contrast programs that
not only addressed the same problem but that also provided the same specific con-
tent. Three different programs provided teachers with knowledge about research-
based practices for teaching reading and spelling, but they facilitated enactment in
different ways. One, the LETRS coaching program, provided prescriptive guidance
20
inside the classroom. Another, the LETRS institutes, provided a body of knowledge
via seminars and textbooks. The third, the Research Study Group, gave each group
research reports to think about and discuss as they devised their own lessons. The
greater success of this third approach suggests the importance of giving teachers the
time and opportunity to make their own sense of new ideas.
But there is another important finding here as well: Notice that the two ver-
sions of LETRS also differed in their effectiveness, and that LETRS institutes
were more effective alone than when they were combined with the coaching com-
ponent. The prevailing wisdom about PD, based on salient design features, sug-
gests that more is better, but these findings raise questions about when “more”
might actually be detrimental. One hypothesis is that prescriptions themselves are
inherently less effective, so much so that they have diminished the effect of the
institutes by themselves. Another is that the negative effect of mandatory assign-
ments becomes stronger as programs become more intensive. That is, teachers
who did not choose to be there in the first place become less and less willing to
comply over time.
The pattern of program outcomes depicted in Figure 1 invites at least two kinds
of hypotheses for how PD influences practice. One has to do with how programs
facilitate enactment of their ideas, the other with how program-assignment meth-
ods affect program outcomes. Among all 15 studies displayed in Figure 1, pro-
gram effectiveness averaged .10, but when studies using mandatory assignments
are excluded, the average effect increases to .16.
Addressing Other Persistent Challenges of Teaching
I now turn to PD programs that address other persistent challenges of teaching.
These programs are listed in Table 3 and depicted in Figure 2. Figure 2 sorts pro-
grams according to which challenge they address, rather than according to how
they facilitate enactment of their ideas. In the rightmost section are programs
already displayed in Figure 1, but now only studies relying on voluntary assign-
ments are included, so that the studies are more comparable with other studies
presented here.
Containing Student Behavior

Two programs offered teachers ideas about containing student behavior.
•• PPA-1, or Process–Product Admonitions (Anderson et al., 1979), con-

sisted of a single 3-hour meeting with teachers in which the authors
describing 22 recommended practices and gave teachers a manual. Then
the authors visited half of the participants during the year to document
implementation. In essence, they created two treatments groups, one con-
sisting only of PD, and the other consisting of PD combined with obser-
vation (but only observation, no feedback). The two versions are
connected with a line in Figure 2.
•• PPA-2 (Coladarci & Gage, 1984) provided the same content as the above
program but instead of meeting with teachers to review their admonitions,
these authors simply mailed them the manual.
21
Table 3
Programs helping teachers contain behavior, enlist participation, or expose student thinking
22
Total PD Number
Enactment Content contact Study of
Citation Main idea facilitated by domain Comparison hours duration teachers M1 outcomes M2 outcomes
Containing Behavior
Anderson, PPA-1, Process– Prescription Language arts No program 3 hours 1 year 27 el Reading
Evertson, and product readiness
Brophy (1979) admonitions Reading
achievement
Coladarci and PPA-2, Process– Prescription Generic No program 0 hours 1 year 28 el CTBS reading
Gage (1984) product CTBS
admonitions mathematics
Enlisting Participation
Freiberg, CMCD Strategy Math Math 27 hours 1 year 21 (est) State
Connell, and program assessment
Lorentz (2001) alone mathematics
Sailors and Price Reading Coach Strategy Language arts Summer 17 hours 1 year 44 el- Standardized
(2010) institute mid reading test
alone
Greenleaf et al. Reading in Strategy Science Business as 46 hours/ 2 years 105 sec State
(2011) Science usual year assessments
in reading,
language arts,
and biology

McGill-Franzen, Using Books in Strategy Language arts Books alone 38 hours 1 year 18 el PPVT Concepts about print
Allington, Kindergarten Ohio Word Hearing sounds in words
Yokoi, and Recognition Letter Identification
Brooks (1999) Writing vocabulary
Allen, Pianta, CLASS Insight Generic Videotaped 22 hours 2 years 78 sec State
Gregory, lessons, no assessment
Mikami, and feedback in teacher’s
Lun (2011) subject
(continued)
Table 3 (continued)
Total PD Number
Enactment Content contact Study of
Citation Main idea facilitated by domain Comparison hours duration teachers M1 outcomes M2 outcomes
Exposing Student Thinking

Roth et al. (2011) Science Story Strategy and Science Science 64 hours 1 year 48 el Photosynthesis
Lines insight content Water cycle
alone Electricity
Food webs
Roth, Taylor, Science Story Strategy and Science Science 54 hours 1 year 75 el Food webs
Wilson, and Lines insight content
Landes (2013) alone Water cycle
Saxe et al. IMA (Integrated Strategy Math Curriculum 56 hours 1 year 17 el Math Math concepts
(2001) Mathematics alone; computation
Assessment) study group
alone
Carpenter, CGI (Cognitively Insight Math No program 80 hours 1 year 39 el ITBS number Interview
Fennema, Guided facts,
Peterson, Instruction) computation
Chiang, and simple
Loef (1989) problems,
complex
problems,

advanced
problems
Jacobs, Franke, Algebraic Insight Math Business as 35 hours 1 year 103 Relational thinking
Carpenter, Reasoning usual
Levi, and
Battey (2007)
Mazzie (2008) Formative Knowledge Science No program 38 hours 1 year 21 el State science
Assessment assessment
23
Note. el = elementary school; sec = secondary school; mid = middle school; PD = professional development; CTBS = Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills; CMCD = Consistency
Management and Cooperative Discipline; PPVT= Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test; ITBS = Iowa Test of Basic skills.
Figure 2. Effectiveness of programs addressing other persistent problems of practice.
Note. Each icon represents a study. The size of the icon is proportional to the number of participating
teachers, and its darkness is proportional to the amount of time the PD spent with teachers, so that
both size and color are indicators of the program’s level of effort. When a study followed teachers
beyond the treatment year, the later years are represented by hollow icons. Round icons represent
M1 measures and square icons represent M2 measures. Small dots layered over an icon mean that
the program’s effect size was divided by 4 to adjust for class-level units of analysis.
Both programs were prescriptive and both built on early “process–product”

research, in which researchers sought relationships between observed teaching
practices and student learning. Examples of their prescriptions include “The
teacher should use a standard and predictable signal to get the children’s atten-
tion,” or “When call-outs occur, the teacher should remind the child that everyone
gets a turn and he must wait his turn to answer.”
Notice how different these programs were in their effectiveness, given that their
content is exactly the same, and given that all participants were volunteers. These dif-
ferences introduce the possibility that teachers’ participation might also reflect a social
motivation. When the first authors (Anderson et al., 1979) solicited teachers, they
made it clear that they were researchers and that they wanted to test the findings from
process–product research. Thus, teachers who agreed to participate did so in order to
help the researcher, not because they necessarily believed that they needed to change
their own practice or learn anything new. But the social motivation would have been
diminished when teachers were observed, and would have disappeared altogether
when the admonitions were mailed to them. That this same content could have such
different effects across methods of presentation raises important questions for pro-
gram developers today, when programs are more likely to be mandated, and when
multiple programs, rules, and regulations compete for teachers’ attention.
Enlisting Participation
Five programs were designed to help teachers enlist student participation. Four
of them used strategies to represent their ideas, the fifth relied on insights.
•• CMCD, or Consistency Management and Cooperative Discipline (Freiberg

et al., 2001), emphasized strategies for encouraging sharing, mutual
24
responsibility, self-discipline, and participation in the formation of class-
room rules.
•• Using Books (McGill-Franzen et al., 1999) offered strategies for kindergar-
ten teachers to engage children with books even though the children could
not read, as a way of increasing their motivation to learn. Strategies
involved the physical design of the classroom, the use of displays, reading
aloud, sorting books into “collections” based on themes, and incorporating
literacy activities during play.
•• Reading Coaches (Sailors & Price, 2010) taught teachers to help children
make self-conscious inferences while reading, as a way to foster intellec-
tual engagement. Coaches cotaught some lessons with the teachers, pro-
vided demonstration lessons, and provided feedback on the teachers’ own
practices. Comparison teachers received a common institute but no coach-
ing assistance.
•• Reading in Science (Greenleaf et al., 2011) introduced secondary biology
teachers to the kind of cognitive strategies that are often used by language
arts teachers, as a way to help ELL (English-language learners) students
who often have difficulty reading science textbooks. The study is unusual
in that no data were collected during the program year. So even though the
program was very intensive, its icons are white, reflecting the fact that no
program activities occurred during the year of data collection.
•• CLASS (Allen et al., 2011) provided long-distance consultations based on
concepts embedded in the Classroom Assessment Scoring System. In the
PD, teachers videotaped sample lessons approximately every 2 weeks and
sent their tapes to an online “teaching partner.” Then the two would talk
about the lesson.
The first four of these programs relied on strategies to facilitate enactment.

They each provided clear procedural recommendations to teachers but they also
provided a clear purpose for their recommendations along with guidance regard-
ing when these strategies would be most appropriate. The fifth program facilitated
enactment through insights. Teaching partners were far less directive in their con-
versations with teachers, and instead used “prompts” to help teachers notice dif-
ferent things in their videotapes. For instance, a “nice work” prompt might say,
“You do a nice job letting the students talk. It seems like they are really feeling
involved. Why do you think this worked?” A “consider this” prompt might look
like this:
One aspect of Teacher Sensitivity is when you consistently monitor students for cues
and when you notice they need extra support or assistance. In this clip, what does the
boy in the front row do that shows you that he needs your support at this moment?
What criteria did you use to gauge when to move on?
Notice that the teaching partner was not suggesting any specific procedures to
teachers, nor explicitly outlining a new strategic goal. Instead, the partner posed
questions that might help teachers gain new insights into their own everyday
experiences in the classroom.
25
Kennedy
The three white icons in this group are also worth discussion. All three repre-
sent program effects that appeared the year after the program was completed. We
can see, for instance, that teachers participating in the CLASS program improved
substantially after the program was completed. The Reading in Science icons also
represent a follow-up year, but these authors presented no initial-year findings.
The Reading in Science program is a model of the kind of PD that experts have
been advocating, in that it spent a long time (45 hours) with teachers, sought to
ensure that they were actively engaged, and used a lot of classroom artifacts such
as videos and examples of student work. Yet it was less effective in its follow-up
year than the CLASS program, which spent only about 15 hours with teachers.
Once again, these comparisons raise questions about the efficacy of any discrete
program design feature.
Exposing Student Thinking

Moving to the third section of Figure 2, we find four studies focused on expos-
ing student thinking.
•• Formative Assessment (Mazzie, 2008) provided teachers with a 3-credit

course on standards-based formative assessment practices. The course cov-
ered topics such as performance rubrics, multiple-choice tests, and portfo-
lio assessment but no content about interpreting test scores or revising
instruction in response to the scores.
•• IMA, or Integrated Mathematics Assessment (Saxe et al., 2001), was
the only program to provide strategies for teachers. Based on a new
mathematics curriculum, the program examined the content of each
unit, how children thought about that content, and children’s motiva-
tion to learn that content, and then offered strategies for exposing stu-
dent thinking during routine classroom activities such as whole-class
discussions.
•• Science Story Lines (Roth et al., 2011; Roth et al., 2013) gave teachers both
strategies and insights. The program relied heavily on videotapes of sci-
ence lessons, encouraging teachers to attend to story lines they saw. One
story line had to do with how the scientific ideas were connected across
lesson segments; the other with how student thinking changed as the lesson
progressed. The program also offered clear strategies to help teachers
improve their own science lesson story lines and to get better at exposing
their students’ thinking.
•• CGI, or Cognitively Guided Instruction (Carpenter et al., 1989), also
sought to foster new insights in teachers. Teachers watched videotaped
interviews in which children talked about mathematical ideas, so that they
could see the students’ thought processes. Then they discussed questions
such as “How should instruction build on the counting strategies children
use to solve simple word problems?” and “How should symbols be linked
to children’s informal knowledge of addition and subtraction? The authors
never suggested any particular procedures or strategies for teaching stu-
dents, but instead used these conversations to help teachers develop their
own ideas.
26
•• Algebraic Reasoning (Jacobs et al., 2007) also worked with elementary
mathematics teachers, helping them learn about the algebraic relationships
that underlay computational arithmetic and to attend to how students
understood these relationships. Teachers generated their own lessons but
the program encouraged them to pose different kinds of problems to their
students and to then bring student responses back to the PD group for
examination.
Figure 2 as a Whole
The remainder of Figure 2 displays programs already presented in Figure 1, but
it excludes studies that relied on mandated assignments. Figure 2 suggests that
guidance about any of these four persistent challenges is equally likely to increase
student achievement. This in itself is useful information, in that there is a ten-
dency for critics of education to press for PD that addresses primarily, or only,
subject matter knowledge. The pattern displayed in Figure 2 does not suggest that
any one problem domain is more likely to help teachers than any other is. On the
contrary, helping teachers with any of these persistent problems can lead to gains
in student achievement.
Discussion
Most reviews of PD seek to define a list of critical program design features
such as program duration, topic, number of contact hours, or types of learning
activities (e.g., Blank & de las Alas, 2009; Kennedy, 1998; Sher & O’Reilly,
2009; Timperley et al., 2007). The prevalence of these reviews has led the field as
a whole to embrace a set of specific program design features that are presumed to
define high-quality PD. Desimone (2009) provided an excellent review of this
literature and used it to generate a framework for defining important aspects of
PD. Her work was cited by many authors reviewed here, and many authors
reviewed here assured readers that their PD programs met these widely advocated
design features. Yet this review suggests that program design features may be
unreliable predictors of program success.
Probably the most widely referenced requirement for PD is that it should focus
on content knowledge (Blank et al., 2008; Desimone, 2009; Yoon et al., 2007).
Many authors of PD studies reviewed here (e.g., Greenleaf et al., 2011; Heller
et al., 2012; Niess, 2005) cite the importance of content knowledge as a rationale
for their programs. Yet the findings presented here suggest that programs address-
ing any of the four persistent problems of teaching can improve teachers’ effec-
tiveness, and, in fact, programs that focused exclusively on content knowledge
tended to have less effect on student learning. When programs offering content
knowledge were successful, the content was subsumed under a broader goal, such
as helping teachers learn to expose student thinking.
Another widely recognized design feature is collective participation (e.g.,
Blank et al., 2008; Desimone, Garet, Birman, Porter, & Yoon, 2003; Loucks-
Horsley & Matsumoto, 1999; Yoon et al., 2007), and some authors whose studies
are reviewed here emphasized the importance of professional learning communi-
ties, or PLCs, as a rationale for their PD designs. But learning communities also
varied in their effectiveness and one of them, using video-based lesson analysis,
27
Kennedy
had a negative impact on student learning. Furthermore, at least one study in this
review (Saxe et al., 2001) used professional learning communities as the com-
parison group against which to test its own approach to PD. One reason for these
surprising findings is that different versions of PLCs differed in important, but
less often noticed, ways. In the most effective PLCs, the Research Study Groups
(Gersten et al., 2010), teachers were given research findings to think about, and
each group had a discussion leader to pose questions and keep conversations on
target. In contrast, teachers in the linking study were given factual information
about their students’ achievement and about their own classroom practices, but
were left to their own devices to make sense of that information. The third pro-
gram using PLCs relied on analysis of videotaped lessons, but much of the teach-
ers’ work was done individually as they responded to a series of programmed
questions. As researchers, we need to move past the concept of learning commu-
nities per se and begin examining the content such groups discuss and the nature
of intellectual work they are engaged in.
Another widely mentioned program design feature is program intensity, which
sometimes refers to the total amount of contact hours with teachers, sometimes to the
total span of time over which these hours are distributed, and sometimes to the vol-
ume of information transmitted. At least one set of authors reviewed here (Greenleaf
et al., 2011) mentioned a long span of time as a rationale for their program design;
many others mentioned the relevance of a large number of contact hours. But a
glance at the Figures 1 and 2 suggests that more intense programs—those with the
darkest icons—were not necessarily more likely to rise to the top of the graphs. Dark
icons seem to appear at the bottom of these figures as often, or even more often, than
at the top. But other variables, not discussed in the literature, are relevant here.
Program intensity appears to be less effective when combined with prescriptive mes-
sages, for instance, but more effective when messages provide strategies or insights.
Finally, another widely recognized program design feature is the use of
coaches, and again this review shows that coaches vary in their value. But again,
the value of coaches seems to depend on how they try to facilitate enactment.
Coaches in the LETRS and Comprehensive Induction programs tended to observe
and evaluate teachers for how well they complied with an observation rubric,
whereas coaches in more effective programs collaborated with teachers on lesson
planning, providing a model of strategic planning.
The limitations in popular lists of design features is nowhere more evident than
in the results of the earliest study reviewed (Anderson et al., 1979), in which the
authors spent only 3 hours with teachers describing a list of process–product
research findings. The program is among the most effective displayed in Figure 2.
Yet it made no mention of subject matter knowledge, spent very little time with
teachers, did not actively engage teachers in any learning activities, did not embed
its ideas in the curriculum, school settings or classroom settings, and did not invite
collective participation. Teachers participated individually rather than in groups,
and were simply given a list of general guidelines for their practice. Yet the pro-
gram yielded strong effects on student learning. One reason for this surprising
outcome may have to do with the study context. In 1979, PD was not nearly as
ubiquitous as it now is. The program likely offered a unique experience for par-
ticipating teachers and it did not compete with other initiatives for their attention.
28
But another important distinction is that the authors treated the teachers more as
colleagues whose role was to help the researchers test this new model of instruc-
tion, rather than as teachers whose practices needed improvement. Thus, partici-
pation was in part socially motivated.
Education research is at a stage in which we have strong theories of student
learning, but we do not have well-developed ideas about teacher learning, nor
about how to help teachers incorporate new ideas into their ongoing systems of
practice. This disjuncture yields programs such as the Los Angeles Science
Immersion program which aims to actively immerse students in scientific activi-
ties but at the same time inundates teachers with volumes of prescriptive details
about how they should immerse their students in science. Why would we expect
these detailed prescriptions to work for teachers if we do not believe that they
work for students?
We also need to pay more attention to the people who provide PD. We have an
extensive literature on the kind of knowledge teachers need for teaching, includ-
ing constructs such as with-it-ness (Kounin, 1970), pedagogical content knowl-
edge (Shulman, 1987), and mathematical knowledge for teaching (Hill, Rowan, &
Ball, 2005) but we do not examine the knowledge needed by professional devel-
opers, nor do we have a language with which to characterize the environments of
their PD “classrooms.” Many of the more effective programs reviewed here were
offered by individuals or groups who had long histories of working with teachers,
were very familiar with teachers and with the problems they face, and based their
programs on their own personal experience and expertise. Many of the less effec-
tive programs were large-scale programs that relied on intermediaries—coaches
or small group facilitators who were hired specifically for the study, and whose
familiarity with teaching, or more importantly, with teacher learning, may have
been limited. There is little discussion in the literature about the nature of PD
expertise, how PD providers are selected, how they are prepared for their work, or
how their efficacy is assessed. These topics need to become part of our discussion
as we generate and test our PD theories of action.
With respect to research design, this review introduces new questions about the
role of motivation in PD. Mandated PD creates a problem for PD developers,
which is analogous to the problem teachers face: Attendance is mandatory but
learning is not. Among the entire array of studies reviewed here, the average
effect from studies that assigned volunteers was .16 on M1 measures, whereas the
average effect among studies using mandated assignments was .03. Studies that
scrupulously comply with the WWC assign teachers who have not indicated any
interest in PD. These studies cannot benefit from teachers’ motivation to learn and
are not good tests of the potential of the PD programs.
In addition to acknowledging the role of motivation in learning, we also need
research designs that acknowledge the slow and incremental way in which teach-
ers incorporate new ideas into their ongoing practices (see, e.g., Huberman, 1994).
Studies that are coterminous with the PD itself cannot tell us whether teachers
merely comply with program recommendations as long as they have to, whether
they continue building on the program’s ideas over time, or whether, perhaps, they
revise the advice so severely that its original meaning is lost. The differences we
see here between program effects at the end of the PD versus program effects a
29
Kennedy
year later provide a strong argument for researchers to follow teachers beyond the
end of the PD, and I would urge researchers to monitoring student learning for 1
or 2 years beyond the close of the PD itself.
Finally, we need to ask hard questions about programs that have negative
effects on teachers. It is certainly possible for a program to fail, but failure should
yield a null effect, not a negative effect. After looking closely at the programs
reviewed here, I suspect that negative effects arise from negative emotional
responses—perhaps resistance or resentment toward the program’s demands.
If we can tie our research designs and our PD models more closely to underly-
ing theories of teacher motivation and teacher learning, we will learn more from
our studies. We need to replace our current conception of “good” PD as comprising
a collection of particular design features with a conception that is based on more
nuanced understanding of what teachers do, what motivates them, and how they
learn and grow. We also need to reconceptualize teachers as people with their own
motivations and interests. The differences shown here among PD methods of facil-
itating enactment strongly suggest the importance of intellectually engaging teach-
ers with PD content, rather than simply presenting prescriptions or presenting
bodies of knowledge. Furthermore, the differences in program effectiveness when
studies compared groups of volunteers as opposed to groups of nonvolunteers
remind us of the role of teachers’ own volition in improving their practices. Future
research should attend more to how PD programs motivate teachers, how they
intellectually engage teachers, and to whether programs are meaningful to teachers
themselves. This is especially important in an era in which teachers receive numer-
ous messages about what they should be doing and in which these messages com-
pete for teachers’ attention. We need to ensure that PD promotes real learning
rather than merely adding more noise to their working environment.
Note
The author wishes to acknowledge helpful feedback from many colleagues. They
are obviously not responsible for the article as it currently stands but were all generous,
thoughtful, and constructive in their responses to earlier drafts. These colleagues include
Laura Desimone, University of Pennsylvania; Michael Garet, American Institutes for
Research; Catherine Lewis, Mills College; Kathy Roth, BSCS, Colorado Springs; Tanya
Wright, Michigan State University; and Meng-Jia Wu, Loyola University of Chicago.
References
References marked with an asterisk indicate studies included in the meta-analysis.
*Allen, J. P., Pianta, R. C., Gregory, A., Mikami, A. Y., & Lun, J. (2011). An interac-
tion-based approach to enhancing secondary school instruction and student achieve-
ment. Science, 333, 1034–1037. doi:10.1126/science.1207998
*Anderson, L. M., Evertson, C. M., & Brophy, J. E. (1979). An experimental study of
effective teaching in first-grade reading groups. Elementary School Journal, 79,
193–223. doi:10.1086/461151
Blank, R. K., & de las Alas, N. (2009, June). Effects of teacher professional develop-
ment on gains in student achievement: How meta-analysis provides scientific evi-
dence useful to educational leaders. Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School
30
Officers. Retrieved from http://www.ccsso.org/Documents/2009/Effects_of_
Teacher_Professional_2009.pdf
Blank, R. K., de las Alas, N., & Smith, C. (2008, January). Does teacher professional devel-
opment have effects on teaching and learning? Evaluation findings from programs in 14
states. Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Officers. Retrieved from http://
www.ccsso.org/Resources/Publications/Does_Teacher_Professional_Development_
Have_Effects_on_Teaching_and_Learning_Analysis_of_Evaluation_Findings_from_
Programs_for_Mathematics_and_Science_Teachers_in_14_States.html
Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain.
Educational Researcher, 33, 3–15.
*Borman, G. D., Gamoran, A., & Bowdon, J. (2008). A randomized trial of teacher
development in elementary science: First-year achievement effects. Journal of
Research on Educational Effectiveness, 1, 237–264. doi:10.1080/19345740802328273
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn: Brain,
mind, experience, and school. Washington DC: National Academy Press.
*Campbell, P. F., & Malkus, N. N. (2011). The impact of elementary mathematics
coaches on student achievement. Elementary School Journal, 111, 430–454.
doi:10.1086/657654
Campbell, P. F., & Rowan, T. E. (1995). Project IMPACT: Increasing the mathematical
power of all children and teachers. College Park: University of Maryland.
*Carpenter, T. P., Fennema, E., Peterson, P. L., Chiang, C.-P., & Loef, M. (1989). Using
knowledge of children’s mathematics thinking in classroom teaching: An experi-
mental study. American Educational Research Journal, 26, 499–531.
doi:10.3102/00028312026004499
Charters, W. W., & Waples, D. (1929). Commonwealth teacher training study. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Clark, C. M., & Peterson, P. L. (1986). Teachers’ thought processes. In M. C. Wittrock
(Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 255–296). New York, NY:
Macmillan.
Cohen, D. K. (2011). Teaching and its predicaments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
*Coladarci, T., & Gage, N. L. (1984). Effects of a minimal intervention on teacher
behavior and student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 21,
539-555. doi:10.3102/00028312021003539
*Cole, D. C. (1992). The effects of a one-year staff development program on the
achievement of fourth-grade students (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from
University of Mississippi Database. (UMI No. 9232258)
Cusick, P. A. (1983). The egalitarian ideal and the American high school: Studies of
three schools. New York, NY: Longman.
Desimone, L. M. (2009). Improving impact studies of teachers’ professional develop-
ment: Toward better conceptualizations and measures. Educational Researcher, 38,
181–199. doi:10.3102/0013189X08331140
Desimone, L. M., Garet, M. S., Birman, B. F., Porter, A., & Yoon, K. S. (2003).
Improving teachers’ in-service professional development in mathematics and sci-
ence: The role of postsecondary institutions. Education Policy, 17, 613–649.
doi:10.1177/0895904803256791
Doyle, W. (1986). Content representation in teachers’ definitions of academic work.
Journal of Curriculum Studies, 18, 365–379. doi:10.1080/0022027860180402
31
Kennedy
*Duffy, G. G., Roehler, L. R., Meloth, M. S., Vavrus, L. G., Book, C., Putnam, J., &
Wesselman, R. (1986). The relationship between explicit verbal explanations during
reading skill instruction and student awareness and achievement: A study of reading
teacher effects. Reading Research Quarterly, 21, 237–252. doi:10.2307/747707
*Freiberg, H. J., Connell, M. L., & Lorentz, J. (2001). Effects of consistency manage-
ment on student mathematics achievement in seven Chapter I elementary schools.
Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 6, 249–270. doi:10.1207/
S15327671ESPR0603_6
Fuchs, L. S. (1991). Effects of curriculum-based measurement and consultation on
teacher planning and student achievement in mathematics operations. American
Educational Research Journal, 28, 617–641. doi:10.3102/00028312028003617
*Garet, M. S., Cronen, S., Eaton, M., Kurki, A., Ludwig, M., Jones, W., . . . Sztejnberg,
L. (2008). The impact of two professional development interventions on early read-
ing instruction and achievement. Washington, DC: National Center for Educational
Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved from
http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pdf/20084030.pdf
*Garet, M. S., Wayne, A. J., Stancavage, F., Taylor, J., Eaton, M., Walters, K., . . .Doolittle,
F. (2011). Middle school mathematics professional development impact study:
Findings after the second year of implementation. Washington, DC: U.S. Department
of Education. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.
asp?pubid=NCEE20114024
*Garet, M. S., Wayne, A. J., Stancavage, F., Taylor, J., Walters, K., Song, M., . . .Hurlburt,
S. (2010). Middle school mathematics professional development impact study:
Findings after the first year of implementation. Washington, DC: U.S. Department
of Education. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20104009/
*Gersten, R., Dimino, J., Jayanthi, M., Kim, J. S., & Santoro, L. E. (2010). Teacher
study group: Impact of the professional development model on reading instruction
and student outcomes in first grade classrooms. American Educational Research
Journal, 47, 694–739. doi:10.3102/0002831209361208
*Glazerman, S., Dolfin, S., Bleeker, M., Johnson, A., Isenberg, E., Lugo-Gil, J., . . . Britton,
E. (2008, October). Impacts of comprehensive teacher induction: Results from the first
year of a randomized controlled study (NCEE 2009-4035). Washington, DC: Institute
for Education Sciences. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pdf/20094035.pdf
*Glazerman, S., Isenberg, E., Dolfin, S., Bleeker, M., Johnson, A., Grider, M., &
Jacobus, M. (2010, June). Impacts of comprehensive teacher induction: Final results
from a randomized controlled study. Washington, DC: National Center for Education
Evaluation. Retrieved from https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20104027/
*Greenleaf, C. L., Litman, C., Hanson, T. L., Rosen, R., Boscardin, C. K., Herman, J.,
. . . Jones, B. (2011). Integrating literacy and science in biology: Teaching and learn-
ing impacts of Reading Apprenticeship professional development. American
Educational Research Journal, 48, 647–717. doi:10.3102/0002831210384839
Heller, J. I., Dahler, K. R., Wong, N., Shinohara, M., & Miratrix, L. W. (2012).
Differential effects of three professional development models on teacher knowledge
and student achievement in elementary science. Journal of Research in Science
Teaching, 49, 333–362. doi:10.1002/tea.21004
Hiebert, J., Gallimore, R., Garnier, H., Givvin, K., Hollingsworth, H., Jacobs, J., . . .Stigler,
J. (2003). Teaching mathematics in seven countries: TIMSS 1999 video study.
Washington, DC: National Center for Educational Statistics. Retrieved from http://
timssvideo.com/timss-video-study
32
Hill, H. C., Rowan, B., & Ball, D. L. (2005). Effects of teachers’ mathematical knowl-
edge for teaching on student achievement. American Educational Research Journal,
42, 371–406. doi:10.3102/00028312042002371
Hirsh, S. A., & Hord, S. M. (2008). Role of professional learning in advanced quality
teaching and student learning. In T. L. Good (Ed.), 21st century eEducation: A refer-
ence handbook (Vol. 2, pp. 337–347). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Horn, I. S. (2010). Teaching replays, teaching rehearsals, and re-visions of practice:
Learning from colleagues in a mathematics teacher community. Teachers College
Record, 112, 225–259.
Huberman, M. (1994). The lives of teachers. New York, NY: Teachers College
Press.
*Isenberg, E., Glazerman, S., Bleeker, M., Johnson, A., Lugo-Gil, J., Grider, M., &
Dolfin, S. (2009, August). Impacts of comprehensive teacher induction: Results from
the second year of a randomized controlled study. Washington, DC: Institute for
Education Sciences. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20094072/
pdf/20094072.pdf
*Jacobs, V. R., Franke, M. L., Carpenter, T., Levi, L., & Battey, D. (2007). Professional
development focused on children’s algebraic reasoning in elementary school.
Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 38, 258–288.
Kennedy, M. M. (1998). Form and substance in inservice teacher education. Madison:
University of Wisconsin National Institute for Science Education. Retrieved from
https://www.msu.edu/~mkennedy/publications/valuePD.html
Kennedy, M. M. (1999). The role of preservice teacher education. In L. Darling-
Hammond & G. Sykes (Eds.), Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of
policy and practice (pp. 54–85). San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.
Kennedy, M. M. (2005). Inside teaching: How classroom life undermines reform.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kennedy, M. M. (2016). Parsing the practice of teaching. Journal of Teacher Education
67, 6-17. doi:10.1177/0022487115614617
Kounin, J. (1970). Discipline and group management in classrooms. New York, NY:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Lampert, M. (1988). What can research on teacher education tell us about improving
the quality of mathematics education? Teaching and Teacher Education, 4, 157–170.
doi:10.1016/0742-051X(88)90015-7
Loucks-Horsley, S., & Matsumoto, C. (1999). Research on professional development
for teachers of mathematics and science: The state of the scene. School Science and
Mathematics, 99, 258–271. doi:10.1111/j.1949-8594.1999.tb17484.x
Marek, E. A., & Methven, S. B. (1991). Effects of the learning cycle upon student
and classroom teacher performance. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 28,
41–53. doi:10.1002/tea.3660280105
*Matsumura, L. C., Garnier, H. E., Correnti, R., Junker, B., & Bickel, D. D. (2010).
Investigating the effectiveness of a comprehensive literacy coaching program in
schools with high teacher mobility. Elementary School Journal, 111, 35–62.
doi:10.1086/653469
*Matsumura, L. C., Garnier, H. E., Junker, B., Resnick, L., & Bickel, D. B. (2009,
March). The influence of Content-Focused Coaching® on reading comprehension
instruction and student achievement. Paper presented at the Society for Research on
Educational Effectiveness, Washington, DC.
33
Kennedy
Matsumura, L. C., Garnier, H. E., & Spybrook, J. (2013). Literacy coaching to improve
student reading achievement: A multi-level mediation model. Learning and
Instruction, 25, 35–48. doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2012.11.001
*Mazzie, D. D. (2008). The effects of professional development related to classroom
assessment on student achievement in science (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved
from University of South Carolina database. (UMI No. 3321420)
McCutchen, D., Abbott, R. D., Green, L. B., & Beretvas, S. N. (2002). Beginning lit-
eracy: Links among teacher knowledge, teacher practice, and student learning.
Journal of Learning Disabilities, 35, 69–86. doi:10.1177/002221940203500106
*McGill-Franzen, A., Allington, R. L., Yokoi, L., & Brooks, G. (1999). Putting books
in the classroom seems necessary but not sufficient. Journal of Educational
Research, 93, 67–74. doi:10.1080/00220679909597631
McNeil, L. M. (1985). Contradictions of control: School structure and school knowl-
edge. London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Metz, M. (1993). Teachers’ ultimate dependence on their students. In J. Little & M.
McLaughlin (Eds.), Teachers’ work: Individuals, colleagues and context (pp. 104–136).
New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Mitchell, L., & Cubey, P. (2003). Characteristics of professional development linked
to enhanced pedagogy and children’s learning in early childhood settings.
Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education.
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence based assess-
ment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading
instruction: Reports of the subgroups. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development. Retrieved from https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publi-
cations/pubs/nrp/documents/report.pdf
Newman, D., Finney, P. B., Bell, S., Turner, H., Jaciw, A., Zacamy, J. L., & Gould,
L. F. (2012). Evaluation of the effectiveness of the Alabama Math, Science, and
Technology Initiative (AMSTI). Washington, DC: Institute for Education
Sciences.
*Niess, M. (2005). Oregon ESEA Title IIB MSP. Corvallis: Central Oregon Consortium.
Opfer, D., & Pedder, D. (2011). Conceptualizing teacher professional learning. Review
of Educational Research, 81, 376–407. doi:10.3102/0034654311413609
*Penuel, W. R., Gallagher, L. P., & Moorthy, S. (2011). Preparing teachers to design
sequences of instruction in earth science: A comparison of three professional devel-
opment programs. American Educational Research Journal, 48, 996–1025.
doi:10.3102/0002831211410864
Roschelle, J., Shechtman, N., Tatar, D., Hegedus, S., Hopkins, B., Empson, S., . . .Gallagher,
L. P. (2010). Integration of technology, curriculum, and professional development for
advancing middle school mathematics: Three large-scale studies. American Educational
Research Journal, 47, 833–878. doi:10.3102/0002831210367426
*Rot it right: The cycling of matter and the transfer of energy. 4th Grade Science
Immersion Unit. (2006, September). System Wide Change for All Learners and
Educators (SCALE) Report. Madison: University of Wisconsin–Madison. Retrieved
from www.scalemsp.org
Roth, K. J., Druker, S. L., Garnier, H. E., Lemmens, M., Chen, C., Kawanaka, T., . . .
Gallimore, R. (2006). Teaching science in five countries: Results from the TIMSS
1999 video study. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education National Center
for Education Statistics. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/2006011.pdf
34
*Roth, K. J., Garnier, H. E., Chen, C., Lemmens, M., Schwille, K., & Wickler, N. I. Z.
(2011). Video-based lesson analysis: Effective science PD for teacher and student learn-
ing. Journal for Research in Science Teaching, 48, 117–148. doi:10.1002/tea.20408
*Roth, K. J., Taylor, J., Wilson, C., & Landes, N. M. (2013, April 9). Scale-up study of
a videocase-based lesson analysis PD program: Teacher and student science con-
tent learning. Paper presented at the National Association of Research on Science
Teaching, Rio Grande, Puerto Rico.
Rowan, B., Correnti, R., & Miller, R. J. (2002). What large-scale survey research tells
us about teacher effects on student achievement: Insights from the Prospects Study
of elementary schools. Teachers College Record, 104, 1525–1567.
Ruiz-Primo, M. A., Shavelson, R. J., Hamilton, L., & Klein, S. P. (2002). On the eval-
uation of systemic science education reform: Searching for instructional sensitivity.
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 39, 369–393. doi:10.1002/tea.10027
*Sailors, M., & Price, L. R. (2010). Professional development that supports the teaching
of cognitive reading strategy instruction. Elementary School Journal, 110, 301–322.
doi:10.1086/648980
*Santagata, R., Kersting, N., Givven, K. B., & Stigler, J. W. (2010). Problem imple-
mentation as a lever for change: An experimental study of the effects of a profes-
sional development program on students’ mathematics learning. Journal of Research
on Educational Effectiveness, 4, 1–24. doi:10.1080/19345747.2010.498562
*Saxe, G. B., Gearhart, M., & Nasir, N. I. S. (2001). Enhancing students’ understand-
ing of mathematics: A study of three contrasting approaches to professional support.
Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 4, 55–79. doi:10.1023/A:1009935100676
Sedlak, M., Wheeler, C., Pullin, D. C., & Cusick, P. A. (1986). Selling students short:
Classroom bargains and academic reform in the American high school. New York,
NY: Teachers College Press.
Sher, L., & O’Reilly, F. E. (2009). Professional development for K-12 math and science
teachers: What do we really know? Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness,
2, 209–249. doi:10.1080/19345740802641527
Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform.
Harvard Educational Review, 57, 1–22.
Siegle, D., & McCoach, D. B. (2007). Self-efficacy through teacher training. Journal
of Advanced Academics, 18, 278–312.
Slavin, R. E., Lake, C., Hanley, P., & Thurston, A. (2014). Experimental evaluations of
elementary science programs: A best-evidence synthesis. Journal of Research in
Science Teaching, 51, 870–901. doi:10.1080/10824669.2013.862095
*Sloan, H. A. (1993). Direct instruction in fourth and fifth-grade classrooms (Doctoral
dissertation). Retrieved from Purdue University database. (UMI No. 9334424)
Stigler, J. W., & Perry, M. (1988). Mathematics learning in Japanese, Chinese, and
American classrooms. In G. B. Saxe & M. Gearhart (Eds.), Children’s mathematics:
New directions for child development (No. 41, pp. 27–54). San Francisco, CA:
Jossey Bass.
*Supovitz, J. (2012). The Linking Study—First year results: A report of the first year
effects of an experimental study of the impact of feedback to teachers on teaching
and learning. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Center for Policy
Research in Education. Retrieved from http://www.cpre.org/linking-study-first-
year-results
Sztajn, P., Campbell, M. P., & Yoon, K. S. (2011). Conceptualizing professional devel-
opment in mathematics: Elements of a model. PNA, 5(3), 83–92.
35
Kennedy
Tienken, C. H., & Achilles, C. M. (2003). Changing teacher behavior and improving
student writing achievement. Planning and Change, 34, 153–168.
Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H., & Fung, I. (2007). Teacher professional learning
and development: Best evidence synthesis iteration (BES). Auckland, New Zealand:
University of Auckland. Retrieved from http://educationcounts.edcentre.govt.nz/
goto/BES
Wei, R. C., Darling-Hammond, L., & Adamson, F. (2010). Professional development
in the United States: Trends and challenges. Dallas, TX: National Staff Development
Council. Retrieved from http://learningforward.org/docs/pdf/nsdcstudytechnicalre-
port2010.pdf?sfvrsn=0
What Works Clearinghouse. (2013). Procedures and standards handbook (Version
3.0). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://ies.
ed.gov/ncee/wwc/documentsum.aspx?sid=19
Wideen, M., Mayer-Smith, J., & Moon, B. (1998). A critical analysis of the research
on learning to teach: Making the case for an ecological perspective on inquiry.
Review of Educational Research, 68, 130–178. doi:10.3102/00346543068002130
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA:
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Yoon, K. S., Duncan, T., Lee, S. W.-Y., Scarloss, B., & Spapley, K. L. (2007). Reviewing
the evidence on how teacher professional development affects student achievement.
Washington, DC: Institute for Education Sciences. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/
ncee/wwc/documentsum.aspx?sid=19
Author
MARY M. KENNEDY (Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University,
708 Applegate Lane, East Lansing, MI 48823; e-mail: mkennedy@msu.edu) has a long
history of scholarship focused on defining teaching quality and identifying the factors
that most influence teaching quality. She is a fellow in the American Educational
Research Association. Her book Inside Teaching: How Classroom Life Undermines
Reform (2005) addresses the influence of school context on the quality of teaching
practices and shows how local circumstances make it difficult for teachers to live up to
reform expectations.
36
School Effectiveness and School Improvement
An International Journal of Research, Policy and Practice
ISSN: 0924-3453 (Print) 1744-5124 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/nses20
Identifying the characteristics of effective teacher

professional development: a critical review
Sam Sims & Harry Fletcher-Wood
To cite this article: Sam Sims & Harry Fletcher-Wood (2020): Identifying the characteristics of
effective teacher professional development: a critical review, School Effectiveness and School
Improvement, DOI: 10.1080/09243453.2020.1772841
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2020.1772841
Published online: 28 May 2020.
Submit your article to this journal
View related articles
View Crossmark data
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=nses20
SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2020.1772841
Identifying the characteristics of effective teacher professional

development: a critical review
a b
Sam Sims and Harry Fletcher-Wood
a
UCL Institute of Education, London, UK; bAmbition Institute, London, UK
ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Several influential reviews and two meta-reviews have converged Received 16 August 2019
on the position that teacher professional development (PD) is Accepted 14 May 2020
more effective when it is sustained, collaborative, subject specific,
KEYWORDS
draws on external expertise, has buy-in from teachers, and is Professional development;
practice based. This consensus view has now been incorporated teacher education; reviews
in government policy and official guidance in several countries.
This paper reassesses the evidence underpinning the consensus,
arguing that the reviews on which it is based have important
methodological weaknesses, in that they employ inappropriate
inclusion criteria and depend on an invalid inference method. The
consensus view is therefore likely to be inaccurate. It is argued
that researchers would make more progress identifying
characteristics of effective professional development by looking
for alignment between evidence from basic research on human
skill acquisition and features of rigorously evaluated PD
interventions.
Introduction
International surveys suggest that teachers spend, on average, 10.5 days per year engaged
in courses, workshops, conferences, seminars, observation visits, or in-service training
(Sellen, 2016). The motivation for this substantial investment in professional development
(PD) is clear: Improved pupil attainment is associated with improvements in income, hap-
piness, and health (Chetty et al., 2014; Hanushek, 2011; Lochner, 2011). How this PD should
be designed is, however, somewhat less clear. While research has identified some pro-
grammes or interventions for which there is persuasive evidence of impact on pupil attain-
ment (e.g., Allen et al., 2011, 2015), most schools do not have access to these programmes,
due to either cost or location. School leaders and teacher educators need instead to know
which characteristics of professional development matter to help them design or commis-
sion effective PD (Hill et al., 2013).
Scholarly attempts to identify the characteristics of professional development which
improve pupil attainment stretch back to 1995 (Corcoran, 1995). Despite much research
in the following years, there was little consensus among researchers (Guskey, 2003a).
More recently, however, several reviews have converged on the position that PD is
more likely to improve pupil attainment if it is sustained, collaborative, has teacher buy-
CONTACT Sam Sims s.sims@ucl.ac.uk UCL Institute of Education, London, UK

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 S. SIMS AND H. FLETCHER-WOOD
in, is subject specific, draws on external expertise, and is practice based (Desimone, 2009;
Timperley et al., 2007; Walter & Briggs, 2012; Wei et al., 2009). These reviews have been
summarised in two meta-reviews, which further endorse these principles (Cordingley
et al., 2015; Dunst et al., 2015).
Indeed, this convergence of opinion is marked enough that it is often explicitly referred
to as a consensus (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Desimone, 2009; Hill et al., 2013; van
Driel et al., 2012; Wei et al., 2009). Moreover, it has now influenced policy in several
countries (Caena, 2011; Department for Education [DfE], 2016; Desimone, 2009). This
notable level of agreement motivates the research question addressed in this paper: Is
the consensus warranted by the existing evidence?
The paper begins by setting out the consensus view and the ways in which it is influen-
cing research, policy, and practice. It then proceeds to describe our methods for scrutinis-
ing the relevant literature, before setting out the findings from our detailed investigation
of the underpinning evidence. Having identified methodological weaknesses in existing
research, we then move on to ask: How can we validly identify the characteristics of
effective professional development? In the penultimate section, we argue that this
requires combining evidence that a PD programme has a causal impact on pupil attain-
ment, with independent evidence of mechanism explaining how a characteristic of that
programme has an impact. Our proposed approach is then illustrated with reference to
the literature on instructional coaching. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion
of implications for policy, practice, and research.
Of course, ours is not the first study to engage critically with this literature. Guskey
(2003a) pointed out that many early review papers included poorly designed studies
and failed to rigorously investigate the relationship between specific characteristics of
PD and pupil learning. Kennedy (2016) then built on Guskey’s criticisms by showing
that excluding less rigorous studies from reviews leads to conclusions that diverge from
the consensus view. In addition, Kennedy (2016), Opfer and Pedder (2011), and Sztjan
et al. (2011) have all called for better use of theory to help identify the characteristics of
effective PD, though each in quite different ways.
The present study extends the literature on three fronts. First, we argue that recent
studies using more rigorous inclusion criteria are still likely to lead to erroneous con-
clusions because they cannot distinguish the active ingredients of rigorously evaluated
interventions from the causally redundant components. Second, we respond to the calls
for better use of theory by explicating precisely how theory combines with empirical evi-
dence to help isolate characteristics of effective professional development. Third, and
relatedly, this allows us to identify parts of the consensus view that are not supported
by the existing evidence, as well as those which should be retained or adapted. The
article therefore makes a number of novel contributions, as well as having implications
for policy and practice.
Background and motivation

Several different literature reviews concur that PD is more effective if it incorporates six
characteristics, which they conceptualise as necessary or sufficient conditions (e.g., Cor-
dingley et al., 2015), critical features (e.g., Desimone, 2009), or simply as being important
(e.g., Timperley et al., 2007). Despite disagreement at the margins and pervasive
SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT 3
differences in terminology, the underlying claims are highly consistent, as illustrated by a

recent meta-synthesis (Dunst et al., 2015). The six characteristics are discussed in turn
below.
First, PD is claimed to be more effective if it is sustained over time (Blank & de las Alas,
2009; Cordingley et al., 2015; Desimone, 2009; Dunst et al., 2015; Timperley et al., 2007;
Walter & Briggs, 2012; Wei et al., 2009). Some of the reviews develop this point further
by claiming that PD should be organised in a cycle or rhythm in which the content is
revisited or iteratively developed. The justification for this is usually that it takes time
for teachers to assimilate new knowledge. By contrast, single, one-day sessions are
often cited as being particularly ineffective.
Second, PD is argued to be more effective if teachers take part as a group (Cordingley
et al., 2015; Desimone, 2009; Dunst et al., 2015; Timperley et al., 2007; Walter & Briggs, 2012;
Wei et al., 2009). Most often the requirement for collaboration is formulated as the need to
work with multiple peers or a “community of practice”. The justification for this is usually
that it gives teachers the chance to challenge each other and clarify misunderstandings.
The transfer of information directly from a course leader to an individual participant is
often contrasted as being particularly ineffective.
Third, PD is said to be more effective if teachers identify with and endorse taking part in
it (Cordingley et al., 2015; Timperley et al., 2007; Walter & Briggs, 2012). This is often framed
as the claim that voluntary PD is more effective than obligatory PD. However, some
researchers make the more nuanced point that there can be strong buy-in for obligatory
PD if the purpose and benefits of the PD are clearly explained to participants, so that they
can see the value of taking part (Dunst et al., 2015; Timperley et al., 2007).
Fourth, PD is claimed to be more effective when it involves training in subject knowl-
edge (Blank & de las Alas, 2009; Cordingley et al., 2015; Desimone, 2009; Dunst et al.,
2015; Wei et al., 2009). This is often contrasted with PD that only involves training in
general pedagogical techniques, divorced from the content that they would be used to
deliver. Indeed, it is often argued that the two are complementary and PD is therefore
most effective when both training on subject knowledge and general pedagogical tech-
niques are delivered together.
Fifth, PD is said to be more effective when it involves outside expertise (Cordingley
et al., 2015; Dunst et al., 2015; Timperley et al., 2007; Walter & Briggs, 2012; Wei et al.,
2009). In general, this means input from people that do not work in the same school.
The justification for this is generally that this is needed to provide challenge or fresh
input, as opposed to recycling existing expertise from inside the school, with which tea-
chers may already be familiar.
Sixth, PD is argued to be more effective when it involves opportunities to use, practise,
or apply what has been learned (Blank & de las Alas, 2009; Cordingley et al., 2015; Desi-
mone, 2009; Dunst et al., 2015; Timperley et al., 2007; Walter & Briggs, 2012; Wei et al.,
2009). Again, the justification for this is often that it helps teachers apply what they
have learned in real classroom situations. This approach is often contrasted with lectures
in which teachers receive new information passively but do not apply it.
Importantly, the consensus is now influencing research, policy, and the design of pro-
fessional development. Indeed, the consensus view has become embedded in official gui-
dance in the UK (DfE, 2016), the EU (Caena, 2011), and the US (see Desimone, 2009). In the
UK, it has directly informed the development of the Standards for Teacher Professional
Development, which aim to provide guidance on effective PD based on the “best available
research” (DfE, 2016, p. 4). The consensus has also influenced policy in the US through the
Every Student Succeeds Act, which requires professional development to be sustained,
collaborative, and practice based in order to attract federal funding (see Combs & Silver-
man, 2016). Furthermore, checklists have been created so that teacher educators can
identify whether their PD sessions conform to the consensus view (Main & Pendergast,
2015; Wei et al., 2009), and questionnaire instruments have also begun to reflect it (e.g.,
Rutkowski et al., 2013). Finally, in influencing programme designs, some researchers expli-
citly refer to the consensus view and its characteristics in explaining their design choices
(e.g., Jacob et al., 2017; Nugent et al., 2016), or map the approach their programmes take to
these characteristics (e.g., Greenleaf et al., 2011; Penuel et al., 2011). While we acknowl-
edge that there are some who disagree with the consensus (e.g., Kennedy, 2016), it is
clearly influencing practice – and thus warrants critical scrutiny.
Interestingly, several recent evaluations of PD interventions which include all of the
consensus view characteristics have not found a positive impact. For example, Garet
et al. (2016) evaluated a programme that provided sustained, collaborative PD for volun-
teers focused on teachers’ mathematical knowledge, led by outside experts, including
active learning. The study was implemented as intended, but students in the treatment
group showed weaker achievement on state tests than the control group. Similarly,
Garet et al. (2011) evaluated a programme that offered 2 years’ active, collaborative, PD
focused on mathematics, with long-run follow-up, delivered by outside experts. The pro-
gramme was implemented as intended, but led to no observable improvements in
student achievement. Further, Jacob et al. (2017) studied the Maths Solutions programme
“because it meets the criteria articulated in Desimone’s (2009) description of effective pro-
fessional development program features” (p. 380), but the programme led to no improve-
ment in student achievement. These findings further motivate this paper.
Methods
The present research examines the evidence supporting the consensus view of effective
PD. It is therefore a methodological review, which aims to expose a strand of the literature
to critical scrutiny (Grant & Booth, 2009). Consequently, we employed ancestry searching
(Conn et al., 2003; Cooper, 2010) to trace backwards from policy documents, to the meta-
reviews and reviews they cited, and then back a step further to the original studies that
they cited. This allowed us to identify the research underpinning the consensus view,
yielding a web of policy documents (Caena, 2011; DfE, 2016), supporting meta-reviews
(Cordingley et al., 2015; Dunst et al., 2015), underpinning literature reviews (Desimone,
2009; Timperley et al., 2007; Walter & Briggs, 2012; Wei et al., 2009) and foundational orig-
inal research articles, all of which have been cited in support of the consensus view. It is
important to note here that our objectives stand in contrast to those of an aggregative
review, which aims to identify and compile studies that provide a representative picture
of the current evidence base (Gough, Thomas, & Oliver, 2012). While the searches used
have been extensive, methodological reviews like ours do not require exhaustive searches
of the literature (Gough, Oliver, & Thomas, 2012).
This approach was combined with further searches using combinations of the terms
“teacher”, “professional development”, or “continuing professional development” with
“characteristics of” or “features of”. References of the articles recovered were also searched.
The articles identified using this search method provided important context and perspec-
tive on those identified through ancestry searching. In particular, this approach identified a
number of reviews which did not endorse the consensus view (e.g., Kennedy, 2016; Kraft
et al., 2018; Lynch et al., 2019; Yoon et al., 2007), as well as a wide range of relevant original
research papers.
An important part of our approach in this article is to focus exclusively on studies which
use pupil achievement as an outcome measure. Our justification for this is based on
Guskey’s (2003b) argument that to “gain authentic evidence and make serious improve-
ments” research on PD must focus on “professional development’s ultimate goal: improve-
ments in student learning outcomes” (p. 750). Of course, professional development
programmes may achieve other desirable outcomes for teachers and schools. For
example, studies have investigated intermediate outcomes including teacher self-
efficacy (Nugent et al., 2016) and confidence (Kitmitto et al., 2018). However, the ultimate
justification for professional development, and the time and taxpayer money invested in, is
the impact on student learning.
Results
Our literature review revealed that the review articles underpinning the consensus view
follow a set of common steps:
(1) Researchers have searched the literature to form a longlist of articles which have eval-
uated specific PD interventions.
(2) They have used inclusion criteria to remove articles deemed to be of limited relevance
or quality.
(3) Researchers have sorted these articles into those that find the intervention they evalu-
ate has had a positive impact, and those that did not.
(4) They have looked for characteristics of PD which are (in some way) related to the effec-
tiveness of the evaluated PD interventions.
We structure our discussion of our findings around two important parts of this logical
sequence. In the next subsection, we focus on the criteria used to include or exclude
studies in Step 2 above. In the following subsection, we discuss the inference process
used in Step 4.
Appropriateness of inclusion criteria

The selection criteria employed by a literature review affect its conclusions (McDonagh
et al., 2013) for at least two reasons. First, they determine the articles reviewed: Missing
important studies will give a partial and potentially inaccurate picture of the evidence.
Second, the criteria must exclude studies that do not employ a research design capable
of answering the research question posed by the review. In seeking to identify character-
istics of effective PD, included studies must identify which PD interventions are effective in
raising and attainment and which are not. The findings of the review will therefore be
compromised if the studies included are incomplete or the methods employed in the
studies are inappropriate for answering the questions. Hence, the PRISMA standards for
reporting systematic reviews (Moher et al., 2009) state that “Knowledge of the eligibility
criteria is essential in appraising the validity, applicability, and comprehensiveness of a
review” (p. 5).
We now consider the inclusion criteria in the meta-reviews and reviews on which the
consensus view rest. Recall that ancestry searching involves beginning with a specific
document and working back through the references cited to identify the underpinning
evidence. We chose to begin with the meta-review by Cordingley et al. (2015), since it sum-
marises several reviews and has directly influenced policy. This meta-review found 980
reviews which were rated on a 3-point scale stretching from 1 (methodology and weighting
of evidence clear), to 2 (methodology clear but no weighting of evidence), to 3 (methodology
unclear). All Level 1 and Level 2 reviews were retained. No further details were given on
how clarity of methodology or weighting were judged for each review. However, Cording-
ley et al. (2015) do rank the reviews that they use in their meta-review in terms of quality.
The review which they give the highest score to is Timperley et al. (2007), which they
describe as “the only fully consistent and rigorous review”, which they emphasise as “a cor-
nerstone for the umbrella review” that they conduct (Cordingley et al., 2015, p. 4).
Given the weight accorded to it, we now consider the inclusion criteria used by Timper-
ley et al. (2007). This review judged quantitative studies on a 3-point scale in three areas:
sampling methods, control groups, and validity and reliability of test instruments. Qualitat-
ive studies were also judged on a 3-point scale in three areas: depth of data collection and
analysis, validity and reliability of assessment, and method of triangulation. Study inclusion
was also based on impact: Studies which demonstrated “medium to high impact” were
designated core studies, while studies with “low, no, or negative impact” were designated
supplementary studies, the results of which were used to support conclusions from the
core studies (Timperley et al., 2007, p. 23), a practice which is contrary to the norms of
meta-analysis (Basma & Savage, 2017, p. 5).
Table 10.2 in Timperley et al. (2007) lists 12 studies relevant to the characteristics of
effective PD in secondary schools that were rated highly enough to be included (there
is no equivalent section for primary schools). We identified these original studies and
reviewed the research methods that they employed:
. Adey (1999) employed a simple research design in which participants were matched to
controls based on age and ability.
. Anderson (1992) employed an experimental design but only had a sample size of 20,
which dropped to 16 through attrition.
. Bishop et al. (2005), Confrey et al. (2000), and D’Oria (2004) employed no control vari-
ables at all, relying instead on unadjusted comparisons of outcomes.
. Huffman et al. (2003) matched six comparison teachers to eight novices and seven
experts, based on teaching experience and student demographics.
. Moxon (2003), Ross (1994), and Ross et al. (1999) employed before and after designs but
neither conducted any covariate adjustment.
. Schober (1984) did employ regression analysis but only adjusted for degree subject,
urban location, and average income.
. Tasker (2001) only reported qualitative findings.
. Vontz et al. (2000) employed analysis of variance methods to compare group means.
By What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) standards, all but one of the studies mentioned
above would be graded “Does Not Meet Evidence Screens” because they do not establish
baseline equivalence of treatment and control groups. This is essential to establish the
impact of a PD programme, because without baseline equivalence, any differences in
post-participation outcomes between treatment and control groups may just reflect
unmeasured differences in pre-treatment characteristics of these two groups (Mill,
1884). The one experimental study may qualify for WWC “Meets Evidence Standards
Without Reservation”, but the high rate of attrition (missing follow-up data) means it
would likely be disqualified altogether, because where attrition is correlated with treat-
ment assignment, this undermines the baseline equivalence originally established by
the randomisation (Shadish et al., 2002).
Thus, the most highly rated review in Cordingley et al. (2015) uses weak inclusion cri-
teria which admit studies employing designs unable to establish whether the PD interven-
tions were effective or not. Crucially, the validity of Step 4 (set out above) depends on
identifying interventions which are, and are not, effective (Step 3). Since Step 3 uses
studies which do not establish equivalent control groups, this casts doubt on the validity
of the conclusions reached in Step 4.
How do the inclusion criteria in other reviews in the literature compare? For space
reasons, we limit ourselves here to cross-subject reviews that look across different types
of PD. Wei et al. (2009) explicitly allow studies using any methodologies including qualitat-
ive and case study methods, though they note that “the inferences that can be drawn from
such research should be treated as suggestive rather than conclusive” (p. 3). Desimone
(2009) and Walter and Briggs (2012) do not employ any explicit inclusion criteria, but
both include case study research. Yoon et al. (2007) use the more rigorous What Works
Clearing House standards to screen the papers in their review but conclude that
“Because of the lack of variability in form and the great variability in duration and intensity
across the nine studies, discerning any pattern in these characteristics and their effects on
student achievement is difficult” (p. 3). Kennedy (2016) allows only experimental studies
but finds no clear patterns between programme design features and pupil outcomes. In
summary, many of the reviews which espoused the consensus view did not employ appro-
priate inclusion criteria; while those that did employ appropriate inclusion criteria tended
not to endorse the consensus view.
Validity of inference methods

Even if it were the case these reviews had employed appropriate inclusion criteria, it is
unclear that the inferences in Step 4 of the process would yield accurate conclusions
about the characteristics of effective PD.
All four of the consensus-view, cross-subject reviews that conducted Step 4 of the
review process (Desimone 2009; Timperley et al., 2007; Walter & Briggs, 2012; Wei et al.,
2009) used a thematic approach to identify the characteristics of effective PD, seeking
to identify features that recurred among interventions that were found to be effective.
For example, Timperley et al. (2007) noted that all of their “core studies” involve teachers
working in structured professional groups. The authors interpreted any counterexamples
as evidence that collaboration is necessary but not sufficient for effective PD. Desimone
(2009) also looked for recurring features of successful interventions, adding that such
regularities are more persuasive when they come from studies using a range of different
research designs. Walter and Briggs (2012) and Wei et al. (2009) also looked for recurring
themes among effective interventions. The meta-reviews by Cordingley et al. (2015) and
Dunst et al. (2015) then analysed the claims made across the various reviews and
looked for agreement among them. For example, Cordingley et al. (2015) highlighted
agreement among the reviews that prolonged PD is more effective than short PD. This
is accompanied by a caveat, citing Timperley et al. (2007), that not all prolonged PD pro-
grammes are effective and the claim that what distinguishes effective prolonged PD is
what the additional time is used for.
The overall inference method described in the preceding paragraph is logically flawed.
The regular occurrence of specific features of PD in effective interventions does not, in
itself, warrant any inference about the effect of that feature of the intervention. The risk
is that, in the terminology of Mackie (1974), effective interventions include causally redun-
dant components. Put another way, consensus view characteristics could occur frequently
in effective PD interventions for reasons other than their contribution to the effectiveness
of that PD. Take collaboration: Schools have limited budgets, and collective PD will be
cheaper to provide than one-to-one PD. Collaboration is therefore likely to occur in PD,
even if it is causally redundant. Alternatively, consider buy-in: Teachers may be enthusias-
tic about an effective PD programme because they notice its impact, rather than the pro-
gramme being effective because teachers have bought into it (Guskey, 2002). Teacher
enthusiasm may therefore occur in effective PD, even if it does not causally contribute
to it effectiveness. We do not claim here that collaboration or buy-in are undesirable fea-
tures of PD; only that – contra to the consensus view – compelling evidence of their con-
tribution is currently lacking.
Alternative methods for identifying the characteristics of effective PD

Philosophical basis
We began by arguing that school leaders need to be able to identify characteristics of
effective PD if they are to design or commission such interventions. Since these charac-
teristics will always come as part of a package, a different research approach may be
needed. Russo and Williamson (2007) and Clarke et al. (2014) have revived the argu-
ments of Bradford Hill (1965) and Mackie (1974) to show how this can be done. Their
approach to identifying causally non-redundant characteristics involves combining
two types of evidence.
The first is evidence of correlation, which they define as probabilistic dependence
between two phenomena. For example, certain types of PD might be highly correlated
with pupil learning gains in rigorous evaluations. It is important to note that, although
Clarke et al. (2014) use the term evidence of correlation to refer to this broad category
of evidence, they still privilege the subset of correlational evidence which is causal in
nature, for example, from randomised trials. The second type is evidence of mechanism,
which is defined as activities organised in such a way that they are responsible for the
phenomenon. In social science, evidence of mechanism might come from basic research
describing fundamental characteristics of human motivation or learning, which hold
across diverse contexts (see the following subsection for an example).
Clarke et al. (2014) argue that these two types of evidence “integrate in a special way”
(p. 19) to become more than the sum of their parts. Evidence of (causal) correlation
between a PD intervention and pupil outcomes provides evidence that an intervention
as a whole is effective. However, correlational evidence alone cannot distinguish causally
redundant from causally non-redundant characteristics of interventions. For example, if a
PD programme with a collaborative component affects pupil attainment, this does not
demonstrate that collaboration played a causal role; an adapted version of the interven-
tion might have been just as effective if teachers had worked individually. Conversely, evi-
dence of mechanism can help identify non-redundant components of a cause, but cannot
determine whether a component will have a causal effect when implemented as part of an
intervention. For example, knowing that collaboration is useful in several settings does not
guarantee that any PD intervention incorporating collaboration will improve pupil attain-
ment. When both types of evidence converge, however, we can be more confident that a
non-redundant characteristic of a collectively sufficient causal condition has been ident-
ified. That is, if we found a PD intervention incorporating characteristic X which had
been shown to be effective and there was evidence that X is effective in bringing about
learning or behaviour change in a range of settings, there is far stronger evidential
warrant that X is genuinely characteristic of effective PD.
Illustrative example: instructional coaching

We now illustrate the approach outlined in the previous section, using instructional coach-
ing as an example. Our aim is not to provide an exhaustive account or definitive argument
but to illustrate how this approach could be employed in the social sciences.
PD interventions based on instructional coaching – an observation, feedback, practice
cycle in which individual teachers receive guidance from an expert mentor – show consist-
ently positive correlations with pupil achievement.1 Indeed, a recent meta-analysis ident-
ified 44 evaluations of instructional coaching programmes, with an average impact on
pupil learning of 0.15 standard deviations (Kraft et al., 2018).2 The inclusion criteria for
the meta-analysis required studies to employ either difference-in-difference, regression
discontinuity or randomised controlled trial designs. Such designs are able to account
for differences between the treatment and control groups that are not recorded in the
data, which enables them to credibly identify the causal impact of the coaching pro-
grammes on pupil learning (Rosenbaum, 2017). The empirical evidence for instructional
coaching also includes replicated randomised controlled trials (Allen et al., 2011, 2015)
and evidence from A/B testing (Albornoz et al., 2017; Cohen et al., 2020). An important
limitation of the existing evidence is that many of the studies focus on literacy outcomes
and are targeted at younger pupils. Nevertheless, taken together, this research provides
good evidence of (causal) correlation between instructional coaching and pupil
achievement.
As set out above, however, it is necessary to combine this with evidence of specific
mechanisms in order to persuasively identify the causal characteristics of instructional
coaching. One example of evidence of mechanism for coaching comes from research
on how and when people change their practice. PD programmes often fail to bring
about intended changes in teacher practice (Copur-Gencturk & Papakonstantinou,
2016), and meta-analysis of causal studies in a range of settings suggests that habits –
behaviours cued automatically by environmental stimuli – are the most important reason
that people fail to change their actions in this way (Webb & Sheeran, 2006). This is because
repetition in the presence of specific environmental cues causes behaviour to become
automatic (Lally et al., 2009). Indeed, research has shown that certain teaching practices
become more habitual over the early years of teachers careers (Sims et al., in press).
Research in a very wide range of settings – car use, recycling, blood donation, voting –
has shown that people maintain these habitual behaviours, even if their goals change
(Wood & Neal, 2007). Neuroscientists have also shown how behaviours which are repeated
many times become governed by different regions of the brain, making them more resist-
ant to change (Seger & Spiering, 2011). The evidence of mechanism reviewed here also has
limitations. For example, there is a lack of studies in similar public service settings, such as
among doctors or police. Despite this, the range of methods by which, and contexts in
which, habits have been shown to influence behaviour suggests that they constitute an
important potential mechanism in changing teachers’ practice.
Coaching incorporates characteristics which are known to promote habit change. Most
notably, coaching programmes require teachers to repeatedly practise new skills in their
own classrooms. For example, teachers enrolled in the My Teaching Partner programme
submit fortnightly videos of themselves practising specific skills in their own lessons,
which they then review along with their coach (Allen et al., 2011). Experimental and obser-
vational research in a range of contexts, as well as evidence from neuroscientific research,
shows that it is necessary to repeatedly practise new behaviours before they become auto-
matic (see Wood & Neal, 2007). Moreover, meta-analysis suggests that repeatedly practis-
ing the new techniques in the environment where you aim to reproduce them in future
(i.e., the classroom) helps replace old habits by overwriting the established cue–response
relationships (Webb & Sheeran, 2006). The repeated review and feedback incorporated in
coaching models helps strengthen these new cue–response relationships even further.
This evidence of mechanism for repeating a new technique in the target environment
to help ingrain new practices – combined with evidence of correlation between coaching
and pupil attainment – suggests that this type of practice is a characteristic of effective PD.
Discussion
Several reviews and two meta-reviews have established a consensus around the charac-
teristics of effective PD. In this article, we have argued that the underpinning research
does not support this consensus because it employs inappropriate inclusion criteria and
a flawed inference method.
Some parts of the consensus view, such as collaboration, currently lack evidential
warrant. Our argument here is primarily negative, highlighting an absence of evidence
that this is characteristic of effective PD. Certainly, the (meta-)reviews on which this
claim is often based have not established this. Inappropriate inclusion criteria mean
these reviews likely do not identify effective PD interventions, let alone their common
characteristics. Even if they had identified effective interventions, collaboration may be
causally redundant, rather than an active ingredient. Similar arguments apply to the
claim that effective PD should be subject specific. Again, existing research does not
warrant these claims: There is currently an absence of evidence.
The claim that PD should be sustained may require revision. In this case, in addition to
this absence of evidence, there is also evidence of absence. Moderator analysis from two
meta-analyses show that, among interventions which include repeated practice of specific
skills, the overall duration (length of time) of the PD programme shows no relationship
with the impact on pupil attainment (Basma & Savage, 2017; Kraft et al., 2018). In line
with this, evidence reviewed in the previous section suggests that it may be repeated prac-
tice that matters, rather than PD being sustained. The difference between these two points
is substantively significant. For example, a sustained PD programme might provide fort-
nightly sessions for 2 years, but if each part of the curriculum is covered only once,
then the intervention does not incorporate repeated practice and is less likely to
change teachers’ practice. Crucially, it is the combination of evidence of correlation and
evidence of mechanism which makes the evidential warrant for repeated practice more
compelling than that for PD being sustained.
More generally, we conclude that there are reasons to be sceptical about the methods
employed by researchers in developing the consensus view. In particular, our research
highlights the dangers involved in meta-reviews (or reviews of reviews) which are often
employed to summarise the evidence from a field in a short space of time, in order to
inform policy (Thomas et al., 2013). As we have seen, however, this approach is proble-
matic because the quality of the preceding reviews cannot be fully assessed without a
detailed investigating of the underpinning primary research. Ironically, this obviates the
time/cost benefits of conducting rapid meta-reviews in the first place (Caird et al., 2015;
Whitlock et al., 2008). Our study illustrates how, absent this level of scrutiny, reviews of
reviews can lead to the propagation of weakly warranted findings through the hierarchy
of reviews and onward into public policy, practice, and research.
Limitations
These findings should, of course, be interpreted with regard to the limitations of this study.
One such limitation is that this paper has focused solely on studies using student attain-
ment as a criterion for effective PD. While we believe this to be justified, we cannot rule out
that an alternative approach that used intermediate, non-attainment outcomes could
have come to differing conclusions. Relatedly, most of the studies we have discussed
focus on English and maths attainment. This reflects the current state of the literature
but a broader evidence base on effective PD in the humanities and creative subjects
might allow a more nuanced set of conclusions to be reached. In addition, our discussion
has focused exclusively on investigating the evidence base underpinning the consensus
view. Readers looking to gain a representative picture of the literature on PD should there-
fore consult alternative studies such as those by Basma and Savage (2017), Kraft et al.
(2018), and Lynch et al. (2019). Finally, we would like to emphasise again that the
example of our proposed methods given in the previous section is intended to be illustra-
tive rather than definitive.
Implications
Despite these limitations, our paper has implications for the field. In particular, we believe
that researchers looking to identify the characteristics of effective PD should seek
alignment between evidence of mechanism and evaluations of specific PD interventions

which include these mechanisms. For example, a careful consideration of the literature on
near and far transfer of skills may provide relevant evidence of mechanism to support the
claim that subject-specific professional development is more effective. In combination
with, for example, meta-analytic evidence on the effect of subject-specific professional
development, this would provide stronger warrant for the claim that subject specificity
is characteristic of effective PD. This may require inter-disciplinary collaboration
between psychologists engaged in basic research about how people learn and acquire
skills with applied researchers evaluating PD programmes. Recently developed taxo-
nomies of mechanisms provide a good starting point for researchers looking to pursue
this approach (Michie et al., 2013).
Our findings also have direct implications for policy and practice. In the US, the Every
Student Succeeds Act currently requires PD to be both sustained and collaborative in
order to qualify for federal funding. Policymakers should consider dropping the collabora-
tive criteria and revising the sustained criteria, as discussed above. In England, the Stan-
dards for Teachers’ Professional Development also recommend that PD should be
collaborative. Policymakers should also consider revising this guidance. This is necessary
in order to avoid spending scarce resources on programmes that may not be effective
and to avoid teacher educators designing existing programmes in line with the consensus
view. Policymakers, school leaders, and teacher educators should focus instead on com-
missioning and designing PD with characteristics for which there is strong evidence of
both (causal) correlation and mechanism. Funders should also resist calls to organise
research on teacher PD around the consensus view (Desimone, 2009).
Notes
1. It should be noted that, in line with the argument given in the previous two subsections, any
apparent similarity between the features of instructional coaching and the consensus view is
not, in and of itself, evidence that consensus view is correct.
2. We note that this meta-analysis was published after the meta-reviews by Cordingley et al.
(2015) and Dunst et al. (2015). However, many of the original studies cited in Kraft et al.
(2018) were published by 2015.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This research did not receive grants from any funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-
profit sectors.
Notes on contributors
Sam Sims is a postdoctoral researcher in the Centre for Education Improvement Science at UCL Insti-
tute of Education, UK. He researches education policy and has a particular interest in how teachers’
working environments affect their development and retention in the profession. You can find him on
Twitter @DrSamSims.
Harry Fletcher-Wood is an Associate Dean at Ambition Institute, where he trains teacher trainers. He
researches pedagogy and professional development and is the author of the book Responsive Teach-
ing: Cognitive Science and Formative Assessment in Practice. You can find him on Twitter
@HfletcherWood.
ORCID
Sam Sims http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5585-8202
Harry Fletcher-Wood http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7016-8704
References
Adey, P. (1999). The science of thinking, and science for thinking: A description of Cognitive Acceleration
through Science Education (CASE). International Bureau of Education.
Albornoz, F., Anauati, M. V., Furman, M., Luzuriaga, M., Podestá, M. E., & Tayor, I. (2017). Training to
teach science: Experimental evidence from Argentina (CREDIT Research Paper No. 17/08). https://
www.nottingham.ac.uk/credit/documents/papers/2017/17-08.pdf
Allen, J. P., Hafen, C. A., Gregory, A. C., Mikami, A. Y., & Pianta, R. (2015). Enhancing secondary school
instruction and student achievement: Replication and extension of the My Teaching Partner-
Secondary intervention. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 8(4), 475–489. https://
doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2015.1017680
Allen, J. P., Pianta, R. C., Gregory, A., Mikami, A. Y., & Lun, J. (2011, August 19). An interaction-based
approach to enhancing secondary school instruction and student achievement. Science, 333(6045)
1034–1037. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1207998
Anderson, V. (1992). A teacher development project in transactional strategy instruction for teachers
of severely reading-disabled adolescents. Teaching and Teacher Education, 8(4), 391–403. https://
doi.org/10.1016/0742-051X(92)90064-A
Basma, B., & Savage, R. (2017). Teacher professional development and student literacy growth: A sys-
tematic review and meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 30(2), 457–481. https://doi.org/
10.1007/s10648-017-9416-4
Bishop, R., Berryman, M., Powell, A., & Teddy, L. (2005). Te Kotahitanga: Improving the educational
achievement of Maori students in mainstream education. Ministry of Education.
Blank, R. K., & de las Alas, N. (2009). Effects of teacher professional development on gains in student
achievement: How meta analysis provides scientific evidence useful to education leaders. The
Council of Chief State School Officers.
Bradford Hill, A. (1965). The environment and disease: Association or causation? Proceedings of the
Royal Society of Medicine, 58(5), 295–300.
Caena, F. (2011). Literature review: teachers’ core competences: requirements and development.
European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/assets/eac/education/experts-groups/2011-2013/
teacher/teacher-competences_en.pdf
Caird, J., Sutcliffe, K., Kwan, I., Dickson, K., & Thomas, J. (2015). Mediating policy-relevant evidence at speed:
Are systematic reviews of systematic reviews a useful approach? Evidence & Policy: A Journal of
Research, Debate and Practice, 11(1), 81–97. https://doi.org/10.1332/174426514X13988609036850
Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., & Rockoff, J. E. (2014). Measuring the impacts of teachers I: Evaluating bias
in teacher value-added estimates. American Economic Review, 104(9), 2593–2632.
Clarke, B., Gillies, D., Illari, P., Russo, F., & Williamson, J. (2014). Mechanisms and the evidence hierar-
chy. Topoi, 33(2), 339–360. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9220-9
Cohen, J., Wong, V., Krishnamachari, A., & Berlin, R. (2020). Teacher coaching in a simulated environ-
ment. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 42(2), 208–231. https://doi.org/10.3102/
0162373720906217
Combs, E., & Silverman, S. (2016). Bridging the gap: Paving the pathway from current practice to exemp-
lary professional learning. Frontline Research & Learning Institute. https://www.frontlineeducation.
com/uploads/2018/01/ESSA_Bridging_the_Gap.pdf
Confrey, J., Castro-Filho, J., & Wilhelm, J. (2000). Implementation research as a means of linking sys-
temic reform and applied psychology in mathematics education. Educational Psychologist, 35(3),
179–191. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326985EP3503_4
Conn, V. S., Isaramalai, S., Rath, S., Jantarakupt, P., Wadhawan, R., & Dash, Y. (2003). Beyond MEDLINE
for literature searches. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 35(2), 177–182. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.
1547-5069.2003.00177.x
Cooper, H. (2010). Research synthesis and meta-analysis: A step-by-step approach (4th ed.). SAGE.
Copur-Gencturk, Y., & Papakonstantinou, A. (2016). Sustainable changes in teacher practices: A longi-
tudinal analysis of the classroom practices of high school mathematics teachers. Journal of
Mathematics Teacher Education, 19(6), 575–594. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-015-9310-2
Corcoran, T. C. (1995). Transforming professional development for teachers: A guide for state policy-
makers. National Governors’ Association.
Cordingley, P., Higgins, S., Greany, T., Buckler, N., Coles-Jordan, D., Crisp, B., Saunders, L., & Coe, R.
(2015). Developing great teaching: Lessons from the international reviews into effective professional
development. Teacher Development Trust. https://tdtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/DGT-
Full-report.pdf
Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., & Gardner, M. (with Espinoza, D.). (2017). Effective teacher pro-
fessional development. Learning Policy Institute.
Department for Education. (2016). Standard for teachers’ professional development: Implementation
guidance for school leaders, teachers, and organisations that offer professional development for tea-
chers. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_
data/file/537031/160712_-_PD_Expert_Group_Guidance.pdf
Desimone, L. M. (2009). Improving impact studies of teachers’ professional development: Toward
better conceptualizations and measures. Educational Researcher, 38(3), 181–199. https://doi.org/
10.3102/0013189X08331140
D’Oria, T. (2004). How I improved my teaching practice in Grade 9 boys’ physical education to increase
students’ participation and enjoyment [Unpublished master’s thesis]. Nipissing University,
Canada.
Dunst, C. J., Bruder, M. B., & Hamby, D. W. (2015). Metasynthesis of in-service professional develop-
ment research: Features associated with positive educator and student outcomes. Educational
Research and Reviews, 10(12), 1731–1744. https://doi.org/10.5897/ERR2015.2306
Garet, M. S., Heppen, J. B., Walters, K., Parkinson, J., Smith, T. M., Song, M., Garrett, R., Yang, R., &
Borman, G. D. (2016). Focusing on mathematical knowledge: The impact of content-intensive
teacher professional development (NCEE 2016-4010). National Center for Education Evaluation
and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. https://
ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20164010/pdf/20164010.pdf
Garet, M. S., Wayne, A. J., Stancavage, F., Taylor, J., Eaton, M., Walters, K., Song, M., Brown, S., Hurlburt,
S., Zhu, P., Sepanik, S., & Doolittle, F. (2011). Middle School Mathematics Professional Development
Impact Study: Findings after the second year of implementation (NCEE 2011-4024). National Center
for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department
of Education. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20114024/pdf/20114024.pdf
Gough, D., Oliver, S., & Thomas, J. (2012). An introduction to systematic reviews. SAGE.
Gough, D., Thomas, J., & Oliver, S. (2012). Clarifying differences between review designs and methods.
Systematic Reviews, 1(1), Article 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/2046-4053-1-28
Grant, M. J., & Booth, A. (2009). A typology of reviews: An analysis of 14 review types and associated
methodologies. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 26(2), 91–108. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.
1471-1842.2009.00848.x
Greenleaf, C. L., Litman, C., Hanson, T. L., Rosen, R., Boscardin, C. K., Herman, J., Schneider, S. A.,
Madden, S., & Jones, B. (2011). Integrating literacy and science in biology: Teaching and learning
impacts of Reading Apprenticeship professional development. American Educational Research
Journal, 48(3), 647–717. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831210384839
Guskey, T. R. (2002). Professional development and teacher change. Teachers and Teaching: Theory
and Practice, 8(3) 381–391. https://doi.org/10.1080/135406002100000512
Guskey, T. R. (2003a). Analyzing lists of the characteristics of effective professional development to

promote visionary leadership. NASSP Bulletin, 87(637), 4–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/
019263650308763702
Guskey, T. R. (2003b). What makes professional development effective? Phi Delta Kappan, 84(10),
748–750. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170308401007
Hanushek, E. A. (2011). The economic value of higher teacher quality. Economics of Education Review,
30(3), 466–479. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2010.12.006
Hill, H. C., Beisiegel, M., & Jacob, R. (2013). Professional development research: Consensus, crossroads,
and challenges. Educational Researcher, 42(9), 476–487. https://doi.org/10.3102/
0013189X13512674
Huffman, D., Goldberg, F., & Michelin, M. (2003). Using computers to create constructivist learning
environments: Impact on pedagogy and achievement. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and
Science Teaching, 22(2), 151–168.
Jacob, R., Hill, H., & Corey, D. (2017). The impact of a professional development program on teachers’
mathematical knowledge for teaching, instruction, and student achievement. Journal of Research
on Educational Effectiveness, 10(2), 379–407. https://doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2016.1273411
Kennedy, M. M. (2016). How does professional development improve teaching? Review of Educational
Research, 86(4), 945–980. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654315626800
Kitmitto, S., González, R., Mezzanote, J., & Chen, Y. (2018). Thinking, Doing, Talking Science: Evaluation
report and executive summary. Education Endowment Foundation. https://
educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Projects/Evaluation_Reports/TDTS.pdf
Kraft, M. A., Blazar, D., & Hogan, D. (2018). The effect of teaching coaching on instruction and achieve-
ment: A meta-analysis of the causal evidence. Review of Educational Research, 88(4), 547–588.
https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654318759268
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2009). How are habits formed: Modelling
habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009. https://
doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674
Lochner, L. (2011). Nonproduction benefits of education: Crime, health, and good citizenship. In E. A.
Hanushek, S. Machin, & L. Woessman (Eds.), Handbook of the economics of education (pp. 183–282).
North-Holland.
Lynch, K., Hill, H. C., Gonzalez, K. E., & Pollard, C. (2019). Strengthening the research base that informs
STEM instructional improvement efforts: A meta-analysis. Educational Evaluation and Policy
Analysis, 41(3), 260–293. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373719849044
Mackie, J. L. (1974). The cement of the universe: A study of causation. Oxford University Press.
Main, K., & Pendergast, D. (2015). Core features of effective continuing professional development for
the middle years: A tool for reflection. RMLE Online, 38(10), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/
19404476.2015.11658177
McDonagh, M., Peterson, K., Raina, P., Chang, S., & Shekelle, P. (2013). Avoiding bias in selecting studies.
Methods guide for effectiveness and comparative effectiveness reviews [Internet]. https://www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK47095/
Michie, S., Richardson, M., Johnston, M., Abraham, C., Francis, J., Hardeman, W., Eccles, M. P., Cane, J., &
Wood, C. E. (2013). The behavior change technique taxonomy (v1) of 93 hierarchically clustered
techniques: Building an international consensus for the reporting of behavior change interven-
tions. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 46(1), 81–95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-013-9486-6
Mill, J. S. (1884). A system of logic, ratiocinative and inductive: Being a connected view of the principles of
evidence and the methods of scientific investigation (Vol. 1). Longmans, Green, and Co.
Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., Altman, D. G., & Prisma Group. (2009). Preferred reporting items for
systematic reviews and meta-analyses: The PRISMA statement. PLoS Medicine, 6(7), Article
e1000097. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097
Moxon, J. (2003). A study of the impact of the Restorative Thinking Programme within the context of a
large multi-cultural New Zealand secondary school [Unpublished MA thesis]. University of Aukland,
New Zealand.
Nugent, G., Kunz, G., Houston, J., Kalutskaya, I., Wu, C., Pedersen, J., Lee, S., DeChenne, S. E., Luo, L., &
Berry, B. (2016). The effectiveness of technology-delivered science instructional coaching in middle
and high school. National Center for Research on Rural Education, Institute of Educational Sciences,
U.S. Department of Education.
Opfer, V. D., & Pedder, D. (2011). Conceptualizing teacher professional learning. Review of Educational
Research, 81(3), 376–407. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311413609
Penuel, W. R., Gallagher, L. P., & Moorthy, S. (2011). Preparing teachers to design sequences of
instruction in earth science: A comparison of three professional development programs.
American Educational Research Journal, 48(4), 996–1025. https://doi.org/10.3102/
0002831211410864
Rosenbaum, P. R. (2017). Observation and experiment: An introduction to causal inference. Harvard
University Press.
Ross, J. A. (1994). The impact of an inservice to promote cooperative learning on the stability of
teacher efficacy. Teaching and Teacher Education, 10(4), 381–394. https://doi.org/10.1016/0742-
051X(94)90020-5
Ross, J. A., Roleiser, C., & Hogaboam-Gray, A. (1999). Effects of collaborative action research on the
knowledge of five Canadian teacher-researchers. The Elementary School Journal, 99(3), 255–274.
https://doi.org/10.1086/461926
Russo, F., & Williamson, J. (2007). Interpreting causality in the health sciences. International Studies in
the Philosophy of Science, 21(2), 157–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/02698590701498084
Rutkowski, S., Rutkowski, L., Bélanger, J., Knoll, S., Weatherby, K., & Prusinski, E. (2013). Teaching and
Learning International Survey TALIS 2013: Conceptual framework. OECD Publishing.
Schober, H. M. (1984). The effects of inservice training on participating teachers and students in their
economics classes. The Journal of Economic Education, 15(4), 282–295. https://doi.org/10.1080/
00220485.1984.10845087
Seger, C. A., & Spiering, B. J. (2011). A critical review of habit learning and the basal ganglia. Frontiers
in Systems Neuroscience, 5, Article 66. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2011.00066
Sellen, P. (2016). Teacher workload and professional development in England’s secondary schools:
Insights from TALIS. Education Policy Institute.
Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (2002). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for
generalized causal inference. Houghton Mifflin.
Sims, S., Hobbiss, M., & Allen, B. (in press). Habit formation limits growth in teacher effectiveness: A
review of converging evidence from neuroscience and social science. Review of Education.
Sztjan, P., Campbell, M. P., & Yoon, K. S. (2011). Conceptualizing professional development in math-
ematics: Elements of a model. PNA, 5(3), 83–92.
Tasker, G. (2001). Students’ experience in an HIV/AIDS-sexuality education programme: What they learnt
and the implications for teaching and learning in health education [Unpublished doctoral thesis].
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Thomas, J., Newman, M., & Oliver, S. (2013). Rapid evidence assessments of research to inform social
policy: Taking stock and moving forward. Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and
Practice, 9(1), 5–27. https://doi.org/10.1332/174426413X662572
Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H., & Fung, I. (2007). Teacher professional learning and development:
Best evidence synthesis iteration (BES). New Zealand Ministry of Education.
van Driel, J. H., Meirink, J. A., van Veen, K., & Zwart, R. C. (2012). Current trends and missing links in
studies on teacher professional development in science education: A review of design features
and quality of research. Studies in Science Education, 48(2), 129–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/
03057267.2012.738020
Vontz, T. S., Metcalf, K. K., & Patrick, J. J. (2000). “Project Citizen” and the civic development of adolescent
students in Indiana, Latvia, and Lithuania. ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/Social Science
Education. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED447047.pdf
Walter, C., & Briggs, J. (2012). What professional development makes the most difference to teachers.
Oxford University Press. https://clie.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Walter_Briggs_2012.pdf
Webb, T. L., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Does changing behavioral intentions engender behavior change? A
meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 132(2), 249–268. https://doi.
org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.2.249.
Wei, R. C., Darling-Hammond, L., Andree, A., Richardson, N., & Orphanos, S. (2009). Professional learn-
ing in the learning profession: A status report on teacher development in the United States and
abroad. National Staff Development Council.
Whitlock, E. P., Lin, J. S., Chou, R., Shekelle, P., & Robinson, K. A. (2008). Using existing systematic
reviews in complex systematic reviews. Annals of Internal Medicine, 148(10), 776–782. https://
doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-148-10-200805200-00010
Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2007). A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. Psychological Review,
114(4), 843–863. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.843.
Yoon, K. S., Duncan, T., Lee, S. W.-Y., Scarloss, B., & Shapley, K. L. (2007). Reviewing the evidence on how
teacher professional development affects student achievement (Issues & Answers Report, REL 2007–
No. 033). Institute of Education Sciences. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/southwest/pdf/
REL_2007033.pdf
Kompetensi Profesional Guru dalam Meningkatkan Mutu Pendidikan 258
Kompetensi Profesional Guru dalam Meningkatkan Mutu

Pendidikan
Sulastri1, Happy Fitria2, Alfroki Martha3
(1) Sekolah Menengah Pertama Negeri 8 Prabumulih
(2) Universitas PGRI Palembang
 Corresponding author
[sulastrijihan2@gmail.com]
Abstrak
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis kompetensi profesional guru dalam meningkatkan mutu
pendidikan di SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif etnografi dan fenomenologis.
Penelitian menggunakan sampel populasi yakni sampel penelitian sama dengan jumlah populasi yakni 62
orang guru dan pegawai. Teknis analisis data yang digunakan adalah deskriptif naratif yang diterapkan
dengan tiga jalur yaitu reduksi data, penyajian data dan penarikan kesimpulan/verifikasi. Berdasarkan hasil
penelitian dapat ditarik kesimpulan bahwa: 1) kompetensi Guru SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih relatif baik; 2)
upaya-upaya yang dilakukan oleh kepala sekolah dan guru dalam mengembangkan kompetensi professional
dengan mengikuti diklat, pelatihan penataran, workshop, dan kelompok kerja guru, dan 3) kendala yang
dihadapi diantaranya penguasaan ilmu dan teknologi yang masih kurang, kurang kreatifitas guru, guru yang
mengajar bukan dibidangnya.
Kata Kunci: Kompetensi; Profesional Guru; Mutu Pendidikan
Abstract
This study aims to analyze the professional competence of teachers in improving the quality of education at
SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih using qualitative ethnographic and phenomenological approaches. The study
used a population sample, namely the research sample equal to the total population, namely 62 teachers
and employees. The data analysis technique used is descriptive narrative which is applied in three ways,
namely data reduction, data presentation and conclusion drawing / verification. Based on the results of the
study, it can be concluded that: 1) the competence of SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih teachers is relat ively good;
2) the efforts made by school principals and teachers in developing professional competence by following
training, upgrading training, workshops, and Teacher Working Groups, and 3) obstacles faced include lack
of compassionate mastery of science and technology, lack of creativity of teachers, teachers who teach not
in their field.
Keyword: Principal Leadership; Work Motivation; Employee Performance
PENDAHULUAN
Pendidikan adalah usaha sadar untuk menyiapkan peserta didik melalui kegiatan bimbingan,
pengajaran, atau latihan bagi peranannya di masa datang. Pendidikan merupakan suatu upaya yang dirancang
pemerintah untuk mecerdaskan dan memajukan bangsa. Suatu negara dapat dikatakan maju jika negara
tersebut mengedepankan pendidikan, karena tanpa pendidikan suatu bangsa tidak akan memiliki kemampuan
untuk mengelolah kekayaan alam, bahkan jika putra putri Indonesia tidak mempunyai skill yang memadai,
dikhawatirkan akan menjadi penghambat pembangunan nasional. Hal ini perkuat oleh fakta bahwa sebagian
Negara-negara maju berkembang dengan pesat bukan karena memiliki sumber alam yang melimpah ruah akan
tetapi ditunjang pula dengan intelektualitas, disiplin, etos kerja rakyatnya. Education is the most important
indicator of a country's progress. Quality education is certainly capable of producing quality human resources
too (Asvio et al, 2019). Education itself is very useful for forming skilled and skilled development workers and
can improve productivity, work quality, and work efficiency. In realizing the goals of national education,
education personnel are potential human resources who play an important role. The government has made
efforts to improve the quality of educational human resources. Improving the quality of educational staff or
human resources of school education aims to empower teaching staff effectively and efficiently to achieve
optimal results, but still in pleasant conditions (Rusdiana, 2014). Education management cannot be separated
from the model or style of leadership adopted by the principal in carrying out his role as a leader. The
leadership style adopted by the principal will be related to the results and effectiveness of the principal in
leading and carrying out the educational process in the school (Astuti et al, 2020). Education is the spearhead
Journal of Education Research, 1(3), 2020, Pages 258-264

in order to improve the quality of human resources in order to be able to compete in the midst of competition
for increasingly advanced and modern national life. Education is a long-term investment and is the key to a
better future in the life of the nation and state. Without adequate and quality education, the Indonesian
people will be increasingly left behind with other nations (Hartiwi et al, 2020).
Pendidikan juga merupakan usaha sadar dan terencana untuk mewujudkan suasaa belajar dan proses
pembelajaran agar peserta didik secara aktif mengembangkan potensi dirinya untuk memiliki pengendalian,
kepribadian, kecerdasan, akhlak mulia, serta keterampilan. Dengan demikian, pendidikan sebagai salah satu
instrumen utama dalam pengembangan sumber daya manusia yang penyelenggaraannya dapat dilakukan
secara demokratis dan berkeadilan serta tidak diskriminatif. Education is one of the most important and
strategic aspects in the development and improvement of development in all fields, including in the regions,
so that the decentralization of education in the context of regional autonomy cannot be negotiated in order
to improve the quality of education and human resources (Rohma et al, 2020).
Subjek utama dalam proses pengembangan itu dilakukan oleh tenaga kependidikan yang berasal dari
anggota masyarakat yang mengabdikan diri dan diangkat untuk menunjang penyelenggaraan pendidikan
dengan sasaran untuk mengembangkan kemampuan dan membentuk watak serta peradaban bangsa yang
bermartabat dalam rangka mencerdaskan kehidupan bangsa.
Maka kualitas manusia yang diinginkan oleh bangsa Indonesia pada masa yang akan datang adalah
yang mampu menghadapi persaingan yang semakin ketat dengan bangsa lain di dunia. Kualitas manusia
Indonesia tersebut dihasilkan melalui penyelenggaraan pendidikan yang bermutu. Oleh sebab itu, guru
mempunyai fungsi, peran, dan kedudukan yang sangat penting. Itulah sebabnya, guru harus senantiasa
mengembangkan kemampuan dirinya. Guru perlu memiliki standar profesi dengan menguasai materi serta
strategi pembelajaran dan dapat mendorong siswanya untuk belajar sungguh-sungguh.
Menurut Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia Nomor 14 Tahun 2005 tentang Guru dan Dosen Pasal
2 ayat 1 menegaskan bahwa guru mempunyai kedudukan sebagai tenaga profesional pada jenjang pendidikan
dasar, pendidikan menengah, dan pendidikan anak usia dini pada jalur pendidikan formal yang diangkat sesuai
dengan peraturan perundang-undangan. Pada Pasal 4 juga dijelaskan bahwa kedudukan guru sebagai tenaga
professional sebagaimana dimaksud dalam Pasal 2 ayat 1 berfungsi untuk meningkatkan martabat dan peran
guru sebagai agen pembelajaran berfungsi untuk meningkatkan mutu pendidikan nasional. The teacher as an
educator should pay attention to various developments in the world of education. A change is needed in the
application of concepts or ideas that require work patterns. The pattern of work can be appropriate, if the
capabilities possessed are supported by knowledge and motivation (Darmiati et al, 2020). Teachers who have
been the only main role in providing scientific education services willgradually be displaced along with the
times. In order to remain needed and meaningful in their existence in the classroom, therefore teachers must
always be required to innovate and have creativity as needed (Suratman et al, 2020). As stated by Kristiawan
et al (2019); Kristiawan (2015) that to optimize the ability of students, readiness of human resources, develop
student character values, digital-based learning facilities and infrastructure, appropriate curricula and policies
in education are some of the solutions that need to be done in the world of education.
Dalam menciptakan mutu pendidikan sosok guru yang mempunyai kualifikasi, kompetensi, dan
dedikasi yang tinggi dalam menjalankan tugas profesionalnya sangat dibutuhkan. Guru merupakan kunci
keberhasilan suatu lembaga pendidikan. Baik buruknya perilaku atau tata cara mengajar guru akan sangat
mempengaruhi citra lembaga pendidikan. Tanpa adanya sumber daya guru yang profesional mutu pendidikan
tidak akan meningkat. Karena dalam pelaksanaan pendidikan sekolah sangat ditekankan adanya peningkatan
mutu sebagai jawaban terhadap kebutuhan dan dinamika masyarakat yang sedang berkembang, sehingga
peningkatan mutu dapat diwujudkan melalui pelaksanaan pendidikan. In another hand, from the perspective
of education and educational background, it has not fulfilled the expectation so that it can be considered that
the teacher is not professional yet. This indicator is shown quantitatively upon the condition in Indonesia as
follow: the low quality caused by various determining variables such as variable of curriculum, learning media,
lack of facility, parents and society support, headmaster management, natural environment, less supporting
social and culture and the last but not the least is teacher (Wachidi et al, 2020).
Sejalan dengan hal itu, seperti yang tertera dalam UU RI no. 14 tahun 2005 Bab II Pasal 2 ayat 1
menyatakan: guru mempunyai kedudukan sebagai tenaga profesional pada jenjang pendidikan dasar,
pendidikan menengah, dan pendidikan anak usia dini pada jalur pendidikan formal yang diangkat sesuai
dengan peraturan perundang-undangan.
Guru merupakan suatu profesi, yang berarti suatu jabatan yang memerlukan keahlian khusus sebagai
guru dan tidak dapat dilakukan oleh sembarang orang di luar bidang pendidikan. Tugas guru sebagai suatu
profesi meliputi mendidik, mengajar dan melatih. Mendidik berarti meneruskan dan mengembangkan nilai-
nilai hidup. Mengajar berarti meneruskan dan mengembangkan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi, sedangkan
melatih berarti mengembangkan ketrampilan-ketrampilan pada peserta didik. Mengenai hasil, guru dikatakan
berhasil apabila mampu mengubah prilaku sebagian besar peserta didik ke arah penguasaan kompetensi dasar
yang lebih baik (Afriyanli and Sabandi, 2020).

Guru merupakan pihak pemegang kunci dari menarik serta efektif tidaknya suatu proses
pembelajaran, karena itu seorang guru tidak hanya di tuntut mampu menghidupkan suasana kelas tetapi juga
mampu untuk menjadikan pembelajaran menjadi suatu proses dalam peningkatan kepribadian bagi peserta
didik. Upaya dalam meningkatkan kualitas pendidik dan tenaga kependidikan untuk menyelesaikan masalah
yang dihadapi saat menjalankan tugasnya guru akan memberi dampak positif yaitu pertama, penyelesaian
masalah pendidikan dan pembelajaran melalui sebuah investigasi terkendali akan dapat meningkatkan
kualitas isi, masukan, proses, dan hasil belajar; kedua, kemampuan dalam menyelesaikan masalah pendidikan
yang nyata akan semakin meningkat; dan ketiga, peningkatan profesionalisme pendidik dan tenaga
kependidikan lainnya. Guru profesional akan terlihat melalui tanggung jawabnya sebagai seorang guru dalam
melaksanakan seluruh pengabdiannya. Guru profesional mampu memikul dan melaksanakan tanggung
jawabnya kepada peserta didik, orang tua, masyarakat, bangsa, negara dan agamanya. Guru profesional
mempunyai tanggung jawab sosial diwujudkan melalui kompetensi guru dari lingkungan sosial serta memiliki
kemampuan interaktif yang efektif (Fitria et al, 2019).
Guru memiliki kualifikasi akademik, kompetensi, sertifikat pendidik, sehat jasmani dan rohani, serta
mampu untuk mewujudkan tujuan pendidikan nasional. Kompetensi guru meliputi kompetensi pedagogik,
kompetensi kepribadian, kompetensi sosial dan kompetensi profesional yang diperoleh melalui pendidikan
profesi. Masalah kompetensi profesional guru merupakan salah satu dari tenaga kependidikan memiliki
tanggung jawab untuk mengembangkan tugas itu.
Profesionalisme adalah kebutuhan yang tidak dapat tunda lagi, semakin meningkatnya persaingan
yang semakin ketat dalam era globalisasi maka perlu ditingkatkan lagi profesionalisme dari seorang guru.
Untuk meningkatkan profesionalisme guru maka guru dituntut untuk melakukan proses pembelajaran yang
lebih inovatif kepada peserta didik. Kompetensi profesional meliputi sebagai berikut, 1) menguasai struktur
dan materi kurikulum bidang studi; 2) menguasai substansi bidang studi dan metodologi keilmuannya; 3)
menguasai dan memanfaatkan teknologi informasi dan komunikasi dalam pembelajaran; 4)
mengorganisasikan materi kurikulum bidang studi; dan 5) meningkatkan kualitas pembelajaran melalui
penelitian tindakan kelas (Kristiawan & Rahmat, 2018).
Pengertian tenaga kependidikan dapat dilihat dalam ketentuan umum Undang-undang Nomor 20
Tahun 2003 tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional pasal 1 ayat 5, menjelaskan bahwa tenaga kependidikan
adalah anggota masyarakat yang mengabdikan diri dan diangkat untuk menunjang penyelenggaraan
pendidikan.
Di samping itu, kedudukan guru sebagai tenaga kependidikan yang profesional bertujuan untuk
melaksanakan sistem pendidikan nasional dalam mewujudkan tujuan pendidikan nasional, yaitu
berkembangnya potensi peserta didik agar menjadi manusia beriman dan bertaqwa, berilmu, cakap, serta
kreatif.
Profesi guru telah hadir cukup lama di negara Indonesia, meskipun hakikat, fungsi, latar tugas, dan
kedudukan sosiologisnya telah banyak mengalami perubahan. Sejalan dengan kenyataan itu, keberhasilan
pembangunan nasional akan ditentukan oleh keberhasilan dalam mengelola pendidikan nasional dimana di
dalamnya guru menempati posisi utama dan penting.
Maka dari itu tidak dapat dipungkiri bahwa guru harus memiliki pengetahuan yang luas, menguasai
berbagai jenis bahan pembelajaran, menguasai teori dan praktik pendidikan, serta menguasai kurikulum dan
metodologi pembelajaran.
Kompetensi guru adalah salah satu faktor yang mempengaruhi tercapainya tujuan pembelajaran dan
pendidikan di SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih, namun kompetensi guru tidak berdiri sendiri, tetapi dipengaruhi latar
belakang pendidikan, pengalaman mengajar, dan lamanya mengajar. Kompetensi guru dapat dinilai penting
sebagai alat seleksi dalam penerimaan calon guru, juga dapat dijadikan sebagai pedoman dalam rangka
pembinaan dan pengembangan tenaga guru. Selain itu, penting dalam hubungannya kegiatan belajar mengajar
dan hasil belajar siswa.
Dengan kompetensi profesional tersebut, dapat diduga berpengaruh pada proses pengelolaan
pendidikan sehingga mampu menghasilkan pendidikan yang bermutu profesi. Masalah kompetensi
profesional guru merupakan salah satu dari kompetensi profesional guru memegang peranan penting untuk
meningkatkan mutu pembalajaran sisiwa, di sekolah ini sering ada siswa yang malas, sering keluar masuk kelas
ketika jam belajar sedang berlangsung dengan alasan ingin pergi ke kamar mandi dan terkadang tidak
memperhatikan pelajaran. Apabila kondisi ini tejadi dapat diartikan bahwa guru dianggap tidak berhasil
menciptkan mutu pembelajaran yang tepat dalam proses belajar mengajar dan kurangnya motivasi kepada
siswa agar dapat giat belajar.
Di zaman globalisasi ini kemajuan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi yang semakin canggih dan
mengalami pertukaran yang sangat cepat. Profesionalisme dalam bidang tersebut sangat diharuskan,
terutama profesionalisme guru. Guru yang peka dan tanggap terhadap perubahan-perubahan, pembaharuan
serta ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi yang terus berkembang sejalan dengan kebutuhan masyarakat dan

perkembangan zaman. Di sinilah tugas guru untuk senantiasa meningkatkan mutu pendidikan sehingga apa
yang diajarkan jelas dan mampu diserap oleh peserta didiknya.
Dari penjelasan di atas, memberikan pandangan bahwa pendidikan harus diarahkan untuk
menghasilkan kualitas manusia yang mampu bersaing, di samping memiliki budi pekerti yang luhur. Kualitas
sebuah negara dapat dilihat dari beberapa faktor, di antaranya adalah faktor pendidikan. Sekolah merupakan
sebuah lembaga yang dipersiapkan untuk menyediakan kebutuhan sumber daya manusia yang berkualitas.
Sumber daya manusia yang berkualitas akan meningkatkan kualitas suatu negara. Oleh karena itu, upaya
meningkatkan kualitas sumber daya alam tidak dapat terpisah dari pendidikan (Rahmadoni, 2018).
Tugas dan peran guru dari hari kehari semakin berat, seiring dengan perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan
dan teknologi. Guru sebagai komponen utama dalam dunia pendidikan dituntut untuk mampu mengimbangi
bahkan melampaui perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi yang berkembang dalam masyarakat.
Melalui sentuhan guru di sekolah, diharapkan mampu menghasilkan peserta didik yang memiliki kompetensi
tinggi dan siap menghadapi tantangan hidup dengan penuh keyakinan dan percaya diri yang tinggi sekarang
dan ke depan, sekolah/pendidikan harus mampu menciptakan mutu pendidikan, baik secara
keilmuan/akademis maupun secara sikap mental.
Kompetensi profesional guru sangat dibutuhkan upaya proses pembelajaran yang lebih baik, sehingga
peserta didik akan termotivasi untuk belajar dan berprestasi. Karena guru yang professional akan mampu
melakasanakan strategi pembelajaran dan menyajikan materi dengan baik dan menyenagkan dan tidak hanya
berorentasi kepada ketuntasa belajar saja tetapi pada proses tumbuh kembang potensi peserta didik yang
meliputi aspek kognitif, afektif dan psikomotorik. Berdasarkan pegamatan beberapa kelas di SMPN 8
Prabumulih juga masih banyaknya guru menggunakan metode konvesional seperti halnya metode ceramah,
jadi disini guru yang lebih aktif dalam proses pembelajaran dibandingkan siswa. Dalam penguasaan materi
pelajaran yang meliputi sistematika dalam penyampaian, tepat dalam memberikan contoh, mampu menjawab
pertanyaan serta kualitas dalam menjelaskan, cenderung akan menciptakan mutu pembelajaran, hal ini
terbukti bahwa semakin guru tidak menguasai materi pelajaran maka hasil belajar siswa akan menurun.
Demikian halnya yang berlangsung di SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih, sarat dengan prestasi baik dari segi
pendidiknya maupun siswanya. Beberapa gurunya pernah meraih predikat sebagai guru berprestasi dan
sebagai guru teladan. Hal ini diraih tentunya karena adanya kompetensi yang dimiliki oleh guru-guru SMP
Negeri 8 Prabumulih khususnya kompetensi profesional sehingga SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih banyak meraih
prestasi.
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengkaji dan mendiskusikan secara mendalam strategi pengembangan
profesional guru di SMP Negeri 8 dengan fokus pembahasan pada: 1) strategi dan metode pembelajaran di
SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih; 2) kendala yang dihadapi dalam mengembangkan kompetensi professional; 3)
model pengembangan kompetensi profesional guru yang disarankan ke depan, dan 4) upaya dalam
meningkatkan kompetensi profesional.
Adapun alasan penulis memilih penelitian di SMP Negeri 8 prabumulih karena sekolah tersebut
menyandang sebagai sekolah model. Karena pada dasarnya sekolah model adalah sekolah yang memiliki guru
yang profesional apakah pada kenyataannya itu benar atau tidak. Berdasarkan latar belakang diatas. Maka
penulis tertarik untuk meneliti mengenai “Kompetensi Profesional Guru Dalam meningkatkan mutu
Pendidikan di SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih”
METODE PENELITIAN
Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif etnografi dan fenomenologis,
yaitu penelitian yang menekankan pada kualitas atau hal yang terpenting dari suatu kejadian, fenomena, atau
gejala sosial yang dapat dijadikan sebagai pelajaran berharga bagi suatu pengembangan konsep teori.
Penelitian kualitatif ini dilakukan karena peneliti ingin mengungkap fenomena-fenomena yang tidak
dapat dikuantifikasikan yang bersifat deskriptif seperti proses suatu langkah kerja, formula suatu resep,
pengertian- pengertian tentang suatu konsep yang beragam, karakteristik suatu barang dan jasa, gambar-
gambar, gaya-gaya, tata cara suatu budaya dan lain sebagainya.
Menurut pendapat Sutopo (2002) di dalam penelitian kualitatif: 1) kondisi subjek sama sekali tidak
dijamah oleh perlakuan/ treatment yang dikendalikan secara ketat oleh peneliti; 2) peneliti hanya berfungsi
sebagai motivator dan fasilitator bagi berlangsungnya kegiatan tersebut, dan 3) peneliti menjelajahi kancah
dan menggunakan sebagian besar waktunya dalam mengumpulkan data secara langsung dan data yang
didapat benar-benar berdasarkan perspektif subjek yang diteliti.
Penelitian ini menggunakan desain etnografi sehingga desain tersebut sering disebut dengan
penelitian etnometodologi. Inti dari etnografi adalah upaya untuk memperhatikan makna-makna tindakan
dari kejadian yang menimpa orang yang ingin dipahami. Penelitian menggunakan sampel populasi yakni
sampel penelitian sama dengan jumlah populasi yakni 62 orang guru dan Pegawai. Teknis analisis data yang
digunakan adalah deskriptif naratif yang diterapkan dengan tiga jalur yaitu reduksi data, penyajian data dan

penarikan kesimpulan/ verifikasi. Pemeriksaaan atau pengecekan ke absahan data/ triangulasi yang dilakukan
melalui konfrontatif analisis
HASIL DAN PEMBAHASAN

Dalam meningkatkan kompetensi profesional guru serta mutu pendidikan kepala sekolah selalu
berupaya memotivasi dan memfasilitasi guru di SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih untuk mengembangkan ke
profesionalan mereka. Profesionalisme guru itu sangat ideal, berarti sesuatu yang tidak mustahil untuk segera
diwujudkan, guru yang profesional punya tantangan tersendiri ketika dia berkecimpung serta bertanggung
jawab terhadap pekerjaan sebagai seorang guru. Setiap guru selalu berusaha menjadi guru yang memiliki
prestasi kerja yang bisa meningkat mutu pendidikan di SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih. Oleh sebab itu tantangan
itu diharapkan tepat sasaran tujuan pendidikan untuk menghasil produk pendidikan yang baik.
Upaya yang dilakukan oleh Kepala Sekolah dalam meningkatkan kompetensi profesional guru di SMP
Negeri 8 Prabumulih adalah: 1) pembinaan kompetensi guru, pihak sekolah telah memfasilitasi para guru
untuk: a) kursus komputer di sekolah, sehingga dalam proses pembelajaran para guru di sekolah ini telah
menggunakan laptop sebagai media; b) pelatihan guna mengembangkan potensi tenaga pendidik, maupun
kegiatan mandiri dengan bekerja sama dengan guru yang menjadi operator computer, dan c) membentuk
forum diskusi guru atau lebih dikenal di masyarakat luas sebagai Kelompok Kerja Guru. Dalam forum diskusi
guru diharapkan ada sharing konwledge, peer teaching dan berbagi pengalaman antar guru serta memecahkan
masalah yang dihadapi Guru di kelas-kelas mereka; 2) penyediaan dan pengembangan sumber dan media
belajar; 3) pengelolaan lingkungan belajar; yaitu dengan melakukan pembenahan lingkungan belajar baik di
dalam maupun diluar kelas agar terbentuk lingkungan yang ASRI (aman, sehat, resik dan indah). Kelas-kelas
diharapkan terkelola dengan baik dengan lebih banyak menampilkan informasi yang bersifat mendidik dan
memberikan motivasi belajar. Dalam konteks ini maka semua siswa, guru dan karyawan diharapkan
senantiasa menjaga dan mewujudkan lingkungan belajar yang bersih dan kondusif; 4) pembangunan e-
learning, dimana langkah-langkah yang sedang dan akan dilakukan diantaranya mengoptimalkan penggunaan
komputer untuk pembelajaran. Penggunaan Televisi maupun VCD, CD dan DVD yang dapat direkayasa untuk
pembelajaran; 5) pengontrolan mutu proses pembelajaran dengan cara Kepala Sekolah memberikan
kebijakan agar semua guru pernah mengalami supervisi terjadwal maupun supervisi tidak terjadwal yang
dilakukan oleh Kepala Sekolah, wakil Kepala kurikulum maupun bagian akademik. Supervisi dilakukan bukan
semata terhadap pelasanaannya, namun dari perencanaan, pelaksanaan hingga evaluasi tidak luput dari
supervisi, dan 6) pembinaan siswa dengan cara penanaman sikap disiplin belajar, tertib dalam pelaksanaan,
tuntas dalam pekerjaan dan beramal baik dalam keseharian merupakan hal-hal positif dalam pembelajaran di
kelas. Pelibatan siswa dalam penigkatan mutu pembelajaran tidak semata terkait dengan kedisipilinan dan
sikap selama pembelajaran namun juga dilakukan penanaman motivasi belajar melalui intervensi aspek
internal dan eksternal siswa. Terkait intervensi aspek internal siswa, madrasah melakukan kegiatan
pembinaan rutin, baik yang dilaksanakan setiap pekan melalui bimbingan pada upacara bendera setiap hari
senin, maupun setiap hari melalui kegiatan pembelajaran di kelas oleh guru mata pelajaran ataupun guru
kelasnya masing-masing.
Sedangkan upaya guru dalam mengembang kompetensi profesional di SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih
dengan mengikuti berbagai kegiatan keprofesionalanya seperti: MGMP/musyawarah guru mata pelajaran,
penataran, workshop-workshop serta pelatihan-pelatihan. Hal ini senada dengan yang dijelaskan oleh Ibu Hj.
Idawati, S. Pd, M. Si, bahwa ada beberapa alternatif pengembangan profesi yang dapat dilakukan guru, yaitu:
1) program-program penataran atau kursus-kursus, kegiatan-kegiatan ilmiah, dan Workshop. Untuk hal
tersebut kepala sekolah sangat mendukung bagi peningkatan kompetensi guru melalui kegiatan diklat
maupun workshop yang bekerja sama dengan palcomtech kota Prabumulih. Untuk meningkatkan
profesionalisme guru, pihak sekolah mewajibkan para guru mengikuti Kelompok Kerja Guru dan Musyawarah
Guru Mata Pelajaran yang dilaksanakan satu bulan sekali. Kepala sekolah juga sering mengutus para guru
untuk mengikuti diklat maupun workshop yang dilaksanakan oleh Dinas Pendidikan kota Prabumulih; 2) sikap
pro-aktif guru dalam mengembangkan wawasan kependidikan sesuai dengan bidangnya, ini dapat dilakukan
dengan keikut sertaan guru dalam pelatihan-pelatihan atau seminar dengan inisiatif sendiri dan biaya sendiri,
dan 3) penelitian tindakan kelas, di samping kegiatan diklat maupun workshop, upaya meningkatkan
keprofesionalan kerja serta mutu pembelajaran menurut Ibu Hj. Idawati, S. Pd, M. Si dilakukan dengan
penelitian tindakan kelas. Menurutnya, Seorang guru merupakan arsitek dalam pembelajaran sekaligus juga
sebagai pelaksana termasuk di dalamnya melakukan evaluasi. Untuk merencanakan, melaksanakan proses
pembelajaran yang bermutu, menilai, dan mengevaluasi hasil pembelajaran diperlukan sebuah penelitian
tindakan kelas. Penelitian tindakan kelas adalah penelitian yang dilakukan oleh guru di kelasnya sendiri
dengan jalan merencanakan, melaksanakan, mengamati, dan melakukan refleksi diri melalui siklus-siklus yang
bertujuan untuk meningkatkan mutu pembelajaran. Penelitian tindakan kelas dapat membantu guru
memperbaiki mutu pembelajaran, meningkatkan profesionalitas guru, meningkatkan rasa percaya diri guru,
memungkinkan guru secara aktif mengembangkan pengetahuan, dan keterampilannya. Selain itu, penelitian

tindakan kelas akan menumbuhkan budaya meneliti di kalangan guru yang merupakan dampak dari
pelaksanaan tindakan secara berkesinambungan, maka manfaat yang dapat diperoleh secara keseluruhan
yaitu label inovasi pendidikan karena para guru semakin diberdayakan untuk mengambil berbagai prakarsa
profesional secara mandiri. Sikap mandiri akan memicu lahirnya percaya diri untuk mencoba hal-hal baru yang
diduga dapat menuju perbaikan sistem pembelajaran. Sikap ingin selalu mencoba akan memicu peningkatan
kinerja dan profesionalisme seorang guru secara berkesinambungan. Sehingga proses belajar sepanjang hayat
terus terjadi pada dirinya.
Dilihat dari sumber dayanya guru - guru di SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih sudah sudah menggunakan
teknologi dan menggunakan media pembelajran walaupun masih sederhana, namun media pembelajaran yang
berbasis teknologi masih minim jumlahnya, seperti laptop, LCD dan ruang multimedia namun secara umum
guru di SMP Negeri 8 meberikan penilaian dalam pembelajaran sudah menggunakan teknologi.
Kendala-kendala yang di hadapi dalam pengembangan kompetensi profesional guru diantaranya: 1)
kurangnya motivasi dalam bekerja. Sebagian kecil guru masih ada yang rendah motivasinya untuk
meningkatkan kompetensinya. Sikap konservatif yang dimiliki oleh guru membawa dampak bagi lemahnya
motivasi bagi guru untuk melakukan perubahan; 2) dana, masalah klasik ini selalu menjadi penentu. Namun
demikian dengan keterbatasan dana sekolah tetap berusaha semaksimal mungkin untuk memfasilitasi setiap
usaha guna meningkatkan kompetensi guru. Terbatasnya sarana prasarana, Sarana dan prasarana yang ada
belum memadai untuk memenuhi semua kebutuhan guru dalam pelaksanaan pembelajaran; 3) penguasaan
ilmu teknologi yang masih kurang. Pada era sekarang ini zaman sudah canggih sebagian besar pekerjaan sudah
bisa dilakuan dengan menggunak ilmu pengetahuan teknologi. Dengan kemajuan tersebut terdapat kendala
dalam mengembangkan kompetensi profesional guru, tanpa terkecuali di SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih
kenyataaan yang ada dilapangan. Kepala Sekolah selalu berusaha mencari solusi untuk membantu guru para
untuk bisa melaksanakn tugasnya dengan baik. Pada era pandemi ini pembelajaran online yang menggunakan
IT, karena adanya keterbatasan agar bisa mengajar, maka pihak sekolah memfasiltasi belajar di ruang
komputer dibantu oleh operator komputer untuk mentranferkan materi pembelajran melalui google
classroom; 4) guru mengajar bukan pada bidangnya. Dalam proses belajar dan mengajar masih terdapat
kendala yang dialami oleh beberapa guru di SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih yang berkualifikasi pendidikan bahasa
inggris mengajar bidang studi seni budaya. Ada juga yang memiliki kualifikasi IPS mengajar bidang studi
prakarya. Disatu sisi hal ini disebabkan banyaknya guru yang sudah sertifikasi yang dituntut harus menjar 24
jam pelajaran, sedang jam pelajaran disini belum cukup jadi yang belum sertifikasi di berikan mangajar di
bidang studi yang cenderung kekurangan gurunya. Kurangnya kreatifitas guru. Oleh karena itu kepala sekolah
berusaha memnuhi bidang studi yaang mengalami kurangnya guru dengan bidang studi yang gurunya
dianggap lebih.
Untuk itulah maka keberhasilan sebuah pembelajaran setidaknya dipengaruhi oleh 5 komponen
kunci, yaitu: guru, sumber dan media belajar, lingkungan, siswa, dalam proses pembelajaran. Jadi guru dalam
pembelajaran memiliki peran yang sangat strategis. Jika kepala madrasah adalah penentu kebijakan dalam
lembaga, maka guru adalah pelaksana dan orang yang terjun langsung dalam proses pendidikan yang berada
dalam kelas.
SIMPULAN
Untuk menghasilkan mutu pendidikan yang lebih baik kepemimpinan Kepala Sekolah dan kreatifitas
guru yang professional, inovatif, kreatif, merupakan salah satu tolok ukur dalam peningkatan mutu
pembelajaran di sekolah, karena kedua elemen ini merupakan figur yang bersentuhan langsung dengan proses
pembelajaran, kedua elemen ini merupakan figur sentral yang dapat memberikan kepercayaan kepada
masyarakat/ orang tua, siswa, kepuasan masyarakat akan terlihat dari output dan outcome yang dilakukan
pada setiap periode. Kompetensi professional guru SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih dalam meningkatkan mutu
pendidkan dapat disimpulkan sebagai berikut: 1) kompetensi Guru SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih relatif baik,
dimana semua guru berpredikat sarjana, memiliki perangkat pembelajaran, menerapkan pembelajaran
dengan model pembelajaran kooperatif, sudah tersertifikasi, dan ada yang berprestasi padatingkat propinsi.
Kompetensi guru yang baik sangat berpengaruh kepada kualitas pembelajaran dan mutu pendidikan,
demikian yang terjadi di SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih sehingga banyak prestasi yang diraih oleh para siswa baik
dalam bidang kokurikuler maupun ekstrakulikuler; 2) upaya-upaya yang dilakukan oleh kepala sekolah dan
guru dalam mengembangkan kompetensi professional dengan mengikuti diklat, pelatihan penataran,
workshop, dan kelompok kerja guru, menciptakan suatu hasil melalui penelitian tindakan kelas atau inovasi
secara langsung yang bisa diberikan kepada peserta didik agar menghasil output yang lebih baik dan tangguh
bersaing di dunia pendidikan ataupun di masyarakat, dan 3) kendala yang dihadapi dalam mengembangkan
kompetensi profesional guru dalam meningkatkan mutu pendidikan di SMP Negeri 8 Prabumulih, adapun
kendala-kendala diantaranya penguasaan ilmu dan teknologi yang masih kurang, kurang kreatifitas guru, guru
yang mengajar bukan dibidangnya.

UCAPAN TERIMA KASIH

Terima kasih yang sebesar-besarnya kami ucapkan kepada Kepala Sekolah SMP Negeri 1 Kecamatan
Sekayu, SMP Negeri 2 Kecamatan Sekayu, SMP Negeri 5 Kecamatan Sekayu, Rektor Universitas PGRI
Palembang, Direktur Program Pascasarjana Universitas PGRI Palembang dan Program Studi Manajemen
Pendidikan Universitas PGRI Palembang yang telah memberikan dukungan kepada kami untuk melakukan hal
yang luar biasa ini. Proyek ini didanai secara independen. Kami juga ingin berterima kasih kepada teman-
teman kami di Manajemen Pendidikan yang banyak membantu kami dalam menyelesaikan proyek ini dalam
jangka waktu yang terbatas.
DAFTAR PUSTAKA
Afriyanli, H. K & Sabandi, A. (2020). Pengaruh Supervisi Kepala Sekolah terhadap Kinerja Guru. Jurnal
Manajemen, Kepemimpinan dan Supervisi Pendidikan 5(1), Januari-Juni 2020.
Alamsyah, M., Ahmad, S., & Harris, H. (2020). Pengaruh Kualifikasi Akademik dan Pengalaman Mengajar
terhadap Profesionalisme Guru. Journal of Education Research, 1(3), 1830187.
doi:https://doi.org/10.37985/joe.v1i3.19
Astuti, R. W., Fitria, H., & Rohana, R. (2020). The Influence of Leadership Styles and Work Motivation on
Teacher’s Performance. Journal of Social Work and Science Education, 1(2), 105-114. Retrieved from
https://ejournal.karinosseff.org/index.php/jswse/article/view/33
Asvio, N., Yamin, M., & Risnita. (2019). Influence of Leadership Style, Emotional Intelligence and Job
Satisfaction toward Organizational Commitment (Survey at SMA Muhammadiyah South Sumatera).
International Journal of Scientific & Technology Research 8 (8).
Darmiati, D., Kristiawan, M., & Rohana, R. (2020). The Influence of School Leadership and Work Motivation
toward Teacher’s Discipline. Journal of Social Work and Science Education, 1(1), 32-44. Retrieved
from https://ejournal.karinosseff.org/index.php/jswse/article/view/8
Fitria, H., Kristiawan, M., & Rahmat, N. (2019). Upaya Meningkatkan Kompetensi Guru Melalui Pelatihan
Penelitian Tindakan Kelas. ABDIMAS UNWAHAS, 4(1).
Hartiwi, H., Kozlova, A. Y & Masitoh, F. (2020). The Effect of Certified Teacher and Principal Leadership
Toward Teacher’s Performance. International Journal of Educational Review Vol. 2, Issue 70-88.
Retrieved from https://ejournal.unib.ac.id/index.php/IJER/article/view/10629
Juniarti, E., Ahyani, N., & Ardiansyah, A. (2020). Pengaruh Kepemimpinan Kepala Sekolah dan Disiplin Guru
terhadap Kinerja Guru. Journal of Education Research, 1(3), 193-199.
doi:https://doi.org/10.37985/joe.v1i3.21
Kristiawan, M. (2015). A Model of Educational Character in High School Al-Istiqamah Simpang Empat, West
Pasaman, West Sumatera. Research Journal of Education, 1(2), 15-20.
Kristiawan, M., Nizarani., & Syamsidar. (2019). Role of School on Forming Character of Z-Generation Through
Entrepreneurial Skills. International Journal of Scientific & Technology Research, 8(10).
Kristiawan, M., & Rahmat, N. (2018). Peningkatan Profesionalisme Guru Melalui Inovasi Pembelajaran. Jurnal
Iqra’ : Kajian Ilmu Pendidikan, 3(2), 373 - 390. https://doi.org/10.25217/ji.v3i2.348
Suratman, S., Arafat, Y., & Eddy, S. (2020). The Influence of Principal’s Leadership and Teacher’s Competence
toward Teacher’s Performance in Indonesia. Journal of Social Work and Science Education, 1(2), 96-
104. Retrieved from https://ejournal.karinosseff.org/index.php/jswse/article/view/32
Sutopo. (2002). Metodologi Penelitian Qualitatif I: Dasar Teoritis dan Karakteristiknya. Surakarta: UNS.
Rahmadoni, J. (2018). Isu Global Manajemen Pembiayaan Pendidikan di SD Indonesian Creative School
Pekanbaru. Jurnal Manajemen, Kepemimpinan dan Supervisi Pendidikan 3(2), Juli-Desember 2018.
Rohma, S., Harapan, E., & Wardiah, D. (2020). The Influence of School-Based Management and Teacher’s
Professionalism toward Teacher’s Performance. Journal of Social Work and Science Education, 1(1),
13-23. Retrieved from https://ejournal.karinosseff.org/index.php/jswse/article/view/6
Rusdiana & Irfan, M. (2014). Sistem Informasi Manajemen. Bandung: Pustaka Setia.
Wachidi., Rodgers, A., & Tumanov, D. Y. (2020). Professional Competence Understanding Level of Elementary
School in Implementing Curriculum 2013. International Journal of Educational Review Vol. 2, Issue
99-105. Retrieved from https://ejournal.unib.ac.id/index.php/IJER/issue/view/814

eISSN: 2775-7854
Jurnal Inovasi, Evaluasi, dan Pengembangan Pembelajaran (JIEPP)
Volume 2, Nomor 1, Agustus, 2022, (Hal. 34-40)
Strategi Peningkatan Kompetensi Profesional Guru
Ilyas
STKIP Yapis Dompu, Nusa Tenggara Barat, Indonesia
E-mail: ilyascendekia@gmail.com
Article History: Received: 2022-07-10 || Revised: 2022-07-27 || Published: 2022-08-04

Sejarah Artikel : Diterima: 2022-07-10 || Direvisi: 2022-07-27 || Dipublikasi: 2022-08-04
Abstract
This research is a qualitative research with a literature review that examines various related references with
the strategy of increasing the professional competence of teachers, teachers are jobs that require various
professional requirements. Quality education is very dependent on quality teachers as well. Because only
qualified teachers can carry out their duties adequately. General tasks The teacher is to educate the nation in
the broadest sense, to develop human personalities Indonesia as a whole and form scientists and experts. A
quality teacher is a teacher who have the personality requirements and the technical ability of the teacher.
This article will discuss about various strategies needed to improve the professional competence of teachers.
Keywords: Teacher; Competence; Professional; Quality; Education.
Abstrak
Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian Kualitatif dengan Kajian Pustaka yang mengkaji berbagai referensi terkait
dengan strategi peningkatan kompetensi profesional Guru, Guru merupakan pekerjaan yang membutuhkan
berbagai persyaratan profesional. Pendidikan bermutu sangat tergantung kepada guru yang bermutu pula.
Sebab hanya dengan guru yang bermutu dapat menyelenggarakan tugasnya secara memadai. Tugas umum
guru adalah mencerdaskan bangsa dalam arti yang seluas-luasnya, mengembangkan pribadi-pribadi manusia
Indonesia seutuhnya serta membentuk ilmuwan dan tenaga ahli. Guru yang bermutu adalah guru yang
memiliki syarat-syarat kepribadian dan kemampuan teknis keguruan. Tulisan ini akan membahas tentang
berbagai strategi yang diperlukan untuk meningkatkan kompetensi profesional guru.
Kata kunci: Guru; Kompetensi; Profesional; Mutu; Pendidikan.
I. PENDAHULUAN
Dalam Undang-undang Nomor 14 Tahun 2005 tentang Guru dan Dosen disebutkan bahwa guru
adalah pendidik profesional dengan tugas utama mendidik, mengajar, mengarahkan, melatih,
menilai, dan mengevaluasi peserta didik pada pendidikan anak usia dini jalur pendidikan formal,
pendidikan dasar, dan pendidikan menengah”. Kemudian menurut Undang-undang Nomor 20
Tahun 2003 tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional dinyatakan bahwa, pendidik adalah tenaga
kependidikan yang berkualifikasi sebagai guru, dosen, konselor, widyaiswara, tutor, instruktur dan
sebutan lain yang sesuai dengan kekhususannya serta berpartisipasi dalam menyelenggarakan
pendidikan.
Undang-undang ini secara jelas menyatakan bahwa guru adalah pendidik profesional. Hal ini
menunjukan bahwa guru merupakan pekerjaan yang membutuhkan berbagai persyaratan
profesional yang ditetapkan. Dalam konteks ini ada tiga istilah yang perlu diperjelas yakni profesi,
profesionalitas, dan profesional. Sebagian ahli menyatakan bahwa ketiga istilah tersebut memiliki
pengertian yang berbeda. Profesi diartikan pekerjaan untuk memperoleh nafkah, mulai dari
pekerjaan yang tidak membutuhkan keahlian sampai pada pekerjaan-pekerjaan yang
membutuhkan keahlian. Kemudian profesionalitas berarti kepemilikan seperangkat keahlian atau
kepakaran di bidang tertentu yang dilegalkan dengan sertifikasi oleh sebuah lembaga. Sedangkan
http://journal.ainarapress.org/index.php/jiepp 34
profesional adalah seseorang yang memiliki seperangkat pengetahuan atau keahlian yang khas dari
profesinya. Maka, berdasarkan ketiga pengetian tersebut, dapat disimpulkan bahwa istilah
profesional itu merupakan profesi yang membutuhkan profesionalitas (Suwardi, 2007: 16).
Pengertian profesi dengan segala ciri dan persyaratannya tersebut akan membawa konsekuensi
yang fundamental terhadap program pendidikan, terutama yang berkenaan dengan komponen
tenaga kependidikan. Salah satu konsekuensi itu diantaranya adalah berkenaan dengan
accountability dari program pendidikan itu sendiri. Hal ini sebagai suatu petunjuk bahwa
keberhasilan program pendidikan tidak dapat dipisahkan dari peranan masyarakat secara
keseluruhan, baik sebagai sumber asal dan sumber daya, maupun sebagai pemakai hasil. Jadi
kompetensi lulusan tidak semata-mata tanggung jawab pengajar/guru, akan tetapi juga ditentukan
oleh pemakai lulusan serta masyarakat pada umumnya, baik itu secara langsung maupun tidak
langsung akan terkena akibat dari adanya lulusan tersebut. Hal semacam ini harus dipahami oleh
setiap unsur manusiawi yang terlibat di dalam program pendidikan, termasuk guru. Bagi guru yang
merupakan tenaga profesional di bidang kependidikan dalam kaitannya dengan accountability,
bukan berarti tugasnya menjadi ringan, tetapi justru lebih berat dalam rangka memberikan
pelayanan kepada masyarakat, untuk itu, guru dituntut memiliki kualifikasi kemampuan yang lebih
memadai.
II. METODE PENELITIAN

Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian Kualitatif dengan Kajian Pustaka, Penelitian ini merupakan
penelitian Kualitatif dengan Kajian Pustaka yang mengkaji berbagai referensi terkait dengan strategi
peningkatan kompetensi profesional Guru, Penelitian kualitatif bertujuan mempertahankan bentuk
dan isi perilaku manusia dan menganalisis kualitas-kualitasnya, alih-alih mengubahnya menjadi
entitas-entitas kuantitatif (Mulyana, 2008: 150), tujuan dari penelitian deskriptif ini adalah untuk
membuat deskipsi, gambaran atau lukisan secara sistematis, faktual dan akurat mengenai fakta-
fakta, sifat-sifat serta hubungan antar fenomena yang diselidik, adapun sumber data yang dijadikan
acuan dalam penelitian ini diantaranya Referensi-referensi pustaka yang bersumber dari literature
terkait dengan problem guru professional dan mutu Pendidikan.
III. HASIL DAN PEMBAHASAN

A. Kualifikasi Kemampuan Guru
Secara garis besar ada tiga tingkatan kualifikasi profesional guru sebagai tenaga profesional
kependidikan. Yang pertama, adalah tingkatan capability personal, maksudnya guru diharapkan
memiliki pengetahuan, kecakapan dan ketrampilan serta sikap yang lebih mantap dan memadai
sehingga mampu mengolah proses belajar-mengajar secara efektif. Tingkat kedua, adalah guru
sebagai inovator, yakni sebagai tenaga kependidikan yang memiliki komitmen terhadap upaya
perubahan dan reformasi. Para guru diharapkan memiliki pengetahuan, kecakapan dan
ketrampilan serta sikap yang tepat terhadap pembaharuan dan sekaligus merupakan penyebar
ide pembaharuan yang efektif. Kemudian tingkat yang ketiga adalah guru sebagai developer,
selain menghayati kualifikasi yang pertama dan kedua, dalam tingkatannya sebagai developer,
guru harus memiliki visi keguruan yang mantap dan luas perspektifnya. Guru harus mampu dan
mau melihat jauh ke depan dalam menjawab tantangan-tantangan yang dihadapi oleh sektor
pendidikan sebagai suatu sistem.
Sebagai pencerminan dari perbedaan-perbedaan individual, maka logis kalau dikatakan setiap
guru itu memiliki perbedaan-perbedaan dalam hal kualifikasi kemampuan. Kualifikasi pada
tingkat pertama tentunya merupakan dasar yang harus dimiliki oleh setiap guru, untuk
kemudian menuju pada tingkat kesempurnaan yakni inovator dan developer. Oleh karena itu,
ada sementara pendapat bahwa yang berperan sebagai inovator dan developer itu biasanya
guru-guru angkatan yang sudah agak lama, dengan alasan mereka sudah memiliki banyak
pengalaman kerja, tetapi sebaliknya ada juga pendapat yang mengatakan justru dari kelompok
guru-guru mudalah yang kiranya lebih banyak mengambil peran dalam soal pembaruan. Alasan
yang dikemukakan adalah bahwa tenaga-tenaga muda itu masih cukup potensial dan biasanya
lebih responsif di dalam menyiasati ide pembaruan. Persoalan ini memang sulit dijawab, tetapi
masih memerlukan kajian yang lebih lanjut. Hanya yang perlu diingat bahwa ukuran yang tepat
untuk upaya reformasi itu tidak sekadar banyaknya pengalaman kerja, tetapi persoalannya
cukup kompleks, sebab menyangkut sikap mental dan kultur masing-masing. Dengan demikian,
jelas bahwa untuk melihat seberapa besar tingkat kualifikasi kemampuan guru tidak dapat
dipisahkan dari sikap dan prilaku guru itu sendiri.
Sehubungan dengan itu maka perlu ditegaskan bahwa selain faktor-faktor pengetahuan,
kecakapan, ketrampilan dan tanggap terhadap ide pembaharuan serta wawasan yang lebih luas
sesuai dengan keprofesiannya, pada diri guru sebenarnya masih memerlukan persyaratan
khusus yang bersifat mental. Persyaratan khusus itu adalah faktor yang menyebabkan seseorang
itu merasa senang, karena merasa terpanggil hati nuraninya untuk menjadi seorang
pendidik/guru. Oleh Waternik, faktor khusus itu disebut dengan istilah rouping atau ”panggilan
hati nurani”. Rouping inilah yang merupakan dasar bagi seseorang guru untuk melakukan
kegiatannya (Sardiman A.M., 2004: 133-137).
Untuk dapat melakukan peranan, tugas dan tanggung jawabnya guru memerlukan syarat-syarat
tertentu. Syarat-syarat inilah yang akan membedakan antara guru dan manusia-manusia lain
pada umumnya di antaranya (1) persyaratan administrasi (2) persyaratan teknis (3)
persyaratan psikis (4) persyaratan fisik. Dari persyaratan di atas menunjukan bahwa guru
menempati bagian tersendiri, apalagi kalau dikaitkan dengan tugas keprofesiannya sebagai
guru. Sesuai dengan profesinya maka sifat dan persyaratan tersebut secara garis besar dapat
diklasifikasikan dalam spektrum yang lebih luas, yakni guru harus (a) memiliki kemampuan
profesional (b) memiliki kapasitas intelektual (c) memiliki sifat edukasi sosial.
Ketiga syarat kemampuan itu diharapkan telah dimiliki oleh setiap guru sehingga mampu
memenuhi fungsinya sebagai pendidik bangsa, guru di sekolah dan pemimpin di masyarakat
(A.M. Sardiman, 2004: 126-127). Berbicara soal kedudukan guru sebagai tenaga profesional,
kita dapat mengetahui bahwa kata profesional itu memiliki banyak konotasi, salah satu di
antaranya tenaga kependidikan yang memiliki potensi, termasuk guru. Secara umum profesional
diartikan sebagai suatu pekerjaan yang memerlukan pendidikan lanjut di dalam science dan
teknologi yang digunakan sebagai perangkat dasar untuk diimplementasikan dalam berbagai
kegiatan yang bermanfaat. Dalam aplikasinya, menyangkut aspek-aspek yang lebih bersifat
mental dari pada manual work. Pekerjaan profesional akan senantiasa menggunakan teknik dan
prosedur yang berpijak pada landasan intelektual yang harus dipelajari secara sengaja,
terencana dan kemudian dipergunakan demi kemaslahatan orang lain.
Seorang pekerja profesional, khususnya guru dapat dibedakan dari seorang teknisi, karena di
samping menguasai sejumlah teknik serta prosedur kerja tertentu, seorang pekerja profesional
juga ditandai adanya respon terhadap implikasi kemasyarakatan dari objek kerjanya. Hal ini
berarti bahwa seorang pekerja profesional atau guru harus memiliki persepsi filosofis dan
ketanggapan yang bijaksana yang lebih mantap dalam menyikapi dan melaksanakan
pekerjaanya, sehingga di akhir pekerjaannya akan membuahkan hasil yang memuaskan,
menurut H.A.R. Tilaar, ada dua indikator guru itu profesional, yaitu (1) dasar ilmu yang kuat.
Seorang guru yang profesional hendaknya mempunyai dasar ilmu yang kuat sesuai dengan
bidang tugasnya sekaligus mempunyai wawasan keilmuan secara interdisipliner; (2)
penguasaan kiat-kiat profesi berdasarkan riset dan praktis pendidikan, artinya hendaknya ada
saling pengaruh memengaruhi antara teori dan praktik pendidikan yang merupakan jiwa dari
perkembangan ilmu dan profesi tenaga kependidikan (Nurdin Muhammad, 2008: 211). Adapun
menurut Nanang Fatah, guru profesional adalah yang menguasai substansi pekerjaannya secara
profesional, yaitu:
1. Mampu menguasai substansi mata pelajaran secara sistematis, khususnya materi pelajaran
yang secara khusus diajarkannya.
2. Memahami dan dapat menerapkan psikologi perkembangan sehingga seorang guru dapat
memiliki materi pelajaran berdasarkan tingkat kesukaran sesuai dengan masa
perkembangan peserta didik yang diajarkan.
3. Memiliki kemampuan mengembangkan program–program pendidikan yang secara khusus
disusun sesuai dengan tingkat perkembangan peserta didik yang diajarkan. Program
pendidikan ini dikembangkan sesuai dengan tujuan pendidikan dengan mengombinasikan
antara pilihan materi pelajaran dengan tingkat perkembangan peserta didik. Keahlian dalam
mengembangkan program pengajaran inilah yang bisa kita identifikasikan sebagai pekerjaan
profesional seorang guru yang tidak bisa dilakukan oleh profesi lain.
Sehubungan dengan keprofesionalisme seseorang, Wolmer dan Mills mengemukakan bahwa
pekerjaan itu baru dikatakan sebagai profesional apabila kriteria atau ukuran-ukuran tertentu:
1. Memiliki spesialisasi dengan latar belakang teori yang luas.
2. Merupakan karir yang dibina secara organisatoris
3. Diakui masyarakat sebagai pekerjaan yang mempunyai status profesional.
Ada tiga tingkatan kualifikasi profesional guru sebagai tenaga profesional kependidikan:
1. Tingkatan capability personal, maksudnya guru diharapkan memiliki pengetahuan,
kecakapan dan ketrampilan serta sikap yang lebih mantap dan memadai sehingga mampu
mengelola proses belajar mengajar secara efektif
2. Guru sebagai inovator, yakni sebagai tenaga kependidikan yang memiliki komitmen terhadap
upaya perubahan dan reformasi.
3. Guru sebagai developer, yakni guru harus meiliki visi keguruan yang mantap dan luas
perspektifnya (A.M. Sardiman, 2004: 134-135).
Guru profesional adalah guru yang mampu menerapkan hubungan yang berbentuk
multidimensional. Guru yang demikian adalah guru yang secara internal memenuhi kriteria
administratif, akademis, dan kepribadian serta mampu dan mau melihat jauh ke depan dalam
menjawab tantangan-tantangan yang dihadapi oleh sektor pendidikan sebagai suatu sistem.
Terdapat dua ketentuan mengenai penggunaan kata profesi ini. Pertama, suatu kegiatan hanya
dapat dikatakan profesi kalau kegiatan itu dilakukan untuk mencari nafkah. Kegiatan yang
dilakukan tidak untuk mencari nafkah, melainkan untuk mencari kesenangan atau kepuasaan
semata-mata disebut hobby. Kedua, ditentukan pula bahwa suatu kegiatan untuk mencari
nafkah hanya boleh disebut profesi kalau dilakukan dengan tingkat keahlian, sedangkan yang
sedang-sedang saja disebut kejuruan atau vokasi. Sedangkan suatu kegiatan mencari nafkah
tanpa keahlian semata-mata dalam bahasa Inggris disebut unskilled labour. Dalam bahasa
Indonesia pekerjaan semacam ini disebut pekerjaan awam (Nata, 2007: 138).
B. Peningkatan Kompetensi Profesional Guru

Sebagai jabatan profesional pekerjaan guru memerlukan latihan secara sistematik dan ilmiah
sama halnya jabatan professional lainnya seperti dokter, insinyur, ahli hukum dan lain-lain.
Dalam dunia pendidikan, tak dapat disangkal bahwa terselenggaranya pendidikan yang
bermutu sangat tergantung kepada guru yang bermutu pula. Sebab hanya dengan guru yang
bermutu dapat menyelenggarakan tugasnya secara memadai. Tugas umum guru adalah
mencerdaskan bangsa dalam arti yang seluas-luasnya, mengembangkan pribadi-pribadi
manusia Indonesia seutuhnya serta membentuk ilmuwan dan tenaga ahli. Guru yang bermutu
atau yang baik adalah guru yang memiliki syarat-syarat kepribadian dan syarat-syarat
kemampuan teknis keguruan. Profesi guru bukan tidak bisa dikerjakan oleh setiap orang. Setiap
orang dapat menjadi guru dan sekaligus guru yang baik atau yang bermutu. Hal itu semua tentu
sangat tergantung kepada kemauan, ketekunan, dan usaha yang bersangkutan untuk
menguasasi berbagai kompetensi yang diperlukan dalam tugasnya.
Secara ideal, seorang guru mempunyai tugas ganda yaitu sebagai pendidik dan pengajar. Sebagai
pendidik cakupan tugasnya menyangkut pembinaan pribadi, pengembangan sikap moral yang
dikehendaki oleh masyarakat pada umumnya dan juga yang memberi ciri pada seorang warga
negara (Tim IKIP Jakarta 1987: 9-10). Sebagai pengajar, guru bertugas untuk mengembangkan
pengetahuan serta berbagai keterampilan yang diperlukan bagi setiap orang agar dapat bekerja,
berpikir, bertindak, bertindak, berkomunikasi, serta melakukan tugas-tugas sehari-hari. Dengan
demikian, kehidupan orang tersebut bermanfaat bagi dirinya dan kehidupan masyarakat
sekitarnya. Secara singkat dapat dikatakan seorang guru harus memiliki kompetensi mendidik
dan kompetensi mengajar. Agar dapat menjalankan tugasnya dengan baik, maka guru harus
memiliki kemampuan untuk mengembangkan potensi pribadi anak didik secara keseluruhan
maupun berkembangnya kognisi, sikap, dan tingkah laku atau keterampilan anak didiknya.
Kemampuan-kemampuan inilah yang dimaksudkan sebagai kompetensi. Pada garis besarnya,

sebagai pendidik dan pengajar, seorang guru perlu memiliki kompetensi personal, kompetensi
social, dan kompetensi professional.
Kompetensi personal adalah kemampuan dan ciri-ciri yang ada pada diri guru, dan yang dapat
mengembangkan kondisi belajar sehingga hasil belajar dapat di capai dengan lebih efektif.
Termasuk dalam katagori kompetensi personal adalah ciri-ciri tingkah laku guru atau
keperibadian guru itu sendiri yang dapat di jadikan anutan anak didik dalam proses belajarnya
(Tim IKIP Jakarta 1987: 11). Seorang guru seharusnya memiliki keperibadian yang baik dan
terpuji, sehingga menumbuhkan rasa percaya pada diri anak didiknya. Apa yang akan diajarkan
hendaknya diyakini oleh anak didiknya karena akan memberikan manfaat besar diri anak
didiknya tersebut. Seorang guru sebaiknya dapat memberikan contoh yang baik dan bermanfaat
bagi kehidupan anak didiknya. Sementara itu seorang guru juga seharusnya dapat
membangkitkan minat dan semangat pada diri anak didiknya untuk selalu melangkah maju demi
mencapai kehidupan yang lebih baik. Seorang guru juga dapat memberikan pengarahan bagi
anak didiknya untuk melangkah kearah yang benar dan yang akhirnya dapat memberikan
kehidupan yang lebih baik bagi dirinya, maupun bagi kehidupan yang sejahtera bagi masyarakat
sekitarnya.
Kompetensi berikutnya adalah kompetensi sosial yakni kemampuan guru yang realisasinya
memberi manfaat bagi pemenuhan yang diperlukan oleh masyarakat. Jadi dalam hal ini terdapat
kesesuaian antara kompetensi yang dimiliki oleh seorang guru dengan apa yang dibutuhkan
oleh masyarakat. Kompetensi sosial ini tidak selalu menghasilkan sesuatu sumber pendapatan
bagi guru. Kadang-kadang kegiatan ini sifatnya sesuatu yang disumbangkan oleh seorang guru
yang terpanggil untuk melakukan sesuatu demi kesejahteraan anggota masyarakatnya (Tim IKIP
Jakarta 1987: 12). Jadi kompetensi sosial dapat menghasilkan suatu sumber penghasilan suatu
sumber penghasilan baru bagi seorang guru, tetapi juga karena sifatnya yang sosial itu, guru
berhak menggunakan kompetensinya tersebut sebagai pengabdian terhadap masyarakat.
Kompetensi lainnya yang tidak kalah pentingnya adalah kompetensi profesional dari seorang
guru. Kompetensi ini dasarnya adalah kemampuan yang dimiliki seorang guru sebagai pengajar
yang baik. Sebagai pengajar, seorang guru harus memiliki kemampuan dasar tentang apa atau
materi atau bahan pelajaran yang akan diajarkan. Jadi dalam hal ini adalah kemampuan guru
tentang penguasaannya terhadap ilmu atau pengetahuan, baik yang teoretis maupun yang
praktis. Yang termasuk dalam kompetensi profesional adalah kemampuan guru untuk
mentransfer atau mentransformasikan ilmu dan pengetahuan yang diajarkannya tersebut. Jadi,
menyangkut penguasaan proses atau metodologis, didaktis, dan psikologis, serta pengetahuan
tentang keterampilan pengelolaan pembelajaran (Tim IKIP Jakarta 1987: 13). Karena pada
dasarnya ruang tugas guru adalah pengembangan potensi yang terdapat pada diri anak
didiknya, maka di samping pengetahuan metodologis, guru juga harus memiliki kemampuan
menguasai berbagai prinsip dan teori psikologi perkembangan anak didik. Dengan pengetahuan
ini guru dapat mencapai tujuan mengajar lebih efektif, dalam dunia pendidikan dikenal 10
kompetensi guru yang telah dikembangkan oleh proyek pengembangan lembaga pendidikan
tenaga kependidikan. Sepuluh kompetensi itu adalah:
a) menguasai landasan-landasan pendidikan;
b) menguasai bahan pelajaran;
c) kemampuan mengelola kelas;
d) kemampuan mengelola program belajar mengajar;
e) kemampuan mengelola interaksi belajar mengajar;
f) kemampuan menggunakan media /sumber belajar;
g) menilai hasil belajar (prestasi) siswa;
h) memahami prinsip-prinsip dan hasil-hasil penelitian untuk keperluan pengajaran;
i) mengenal fungsi dan program bimbingan dan penyuluhan (konseling);
j) mengenal dan menyelenggarakan administrasi pendidikan.
Dengan menguasai sepuluh kompetensi itu para guru memiliki pengetahuan dan keterampilan
dasar untuk menjalankan tugasnya sebagai guru (Tim IKIP Jakarta 1987: 14). Dengan menguasai
landasan-landasan pendidikan diharapkan guru memiliki wawasan teoritis tentang tugasnya,

sehingga dapat menyelenggarakan pendidikan sesuai dengan tuntutan perkembangan siswa
dalam membina dan mengembangkan pribadi dan keterampilannya.
Menguasai bahan pelajaran, berarti memungkinkan guru dapat menyajikan bahan pelajaran
sebaik-baiknya sehingga siswa dapat menerima dan mengolahnya secara mantap dan kaya
sebagai bekal pengetahuan dan keterampilan yang dibutuhkan. Kemampuan mengelola program
program belajar mengajar akan memungkinkan guru merencanakan dan menyelenggarakan
pengajaran dengan baik, sehingga dapat diikuti oleh siswa dengan mudah dan efektif.
Kemampuan mengelola kelas memungkinkan guru menumbuhkan dan mengembangkan
suasana kelas yang mendorong siswa mengikuti proses belajar mengajar dengan penuh minat.
Kemampuan mengelola interaksi belajar mengajar memungkinkan guru mengatur kegiatan
siswa dalam belajar sehingga siswa mencapai hasil belajar yang optimal. Kemampuan
menggunakan media/sumber belajar memungkinkan guru memilih berbagai media dan sumber
belajar yang tepat sehingga siswa memperoleh manfaat yang sebesar-besarnya dari media dan
sumber belajar tersebut demi pencapaian hasil belajar yang diharapkan (Tim IKIP Jakarta 1987:
15).
Kemampuan menilai hasil belajar siswa memungkinkan guru menilai tepat kemajuan belajar
siswa sebagai bahan umpan balik bagi penunjang proses perkembangan siswa lebih lanjut.
Memahami prinsip-prinsip dan hasil-hasil penelitian memungkinkan guru secara terus-menerus
mengembangkan pengetahuan dan keterampilan bidang keahliannya sehingga pendidikan yang
diterima oleh siswa merupakan sesuatu yang hidup dan selalu diperbaharui. Mengenal fungsi
bimbingan dan penyuluhan memungkinkan guru mengetahui arah perkembangan kepribadian
siswa secara lebih mendalam; mengetahui hal-hal yang mungkin menimbulkan masalah-
masalah siswa dapat atau dikenali serta dicegah secara dini. Mengenal dan menyelenggarakan
administrasi pendidikan memungkinkan berbagai catatan, informasi, dan data tentang siswa
(khususnya perkembangan, kegiatan, dan kemajuan siswa) terkumpulkan dan terorganisasikan
dengan baik sehingga semua informasi itu dapat dipakai secara segera dan tepat untuk
kepentingan pengambilan keputusan dalam langkah-langkah pembinaan dan pengembangan
siswa selanjutnya (Tim IKIP Jakarta 1987: 16), lebih lanjut Supriadi (dalam E. Mulyasa, 2008:
11) mengemukakan bahwa minimal terdapat lima syarat untuk menjadi guru profesional yakni:
a) mempunyai komitmen pada peserta didik dan proses belajarnya
b) Menguasai secara mendalam bahan/mata pelajaran yang diajarkannya serta cara
mengajarnya kepada peserta didik.
c) Bertanggung jawab memantau hasil belajar peserta didik melalui berbagai cara evaluasi.
d) Mampu berpikir sistematis tentang apa yang dilakukannya dan belajar dari pengalamannya
e) Seyogyanya merupakan bagian dari masyarakat belajar dalam lingkungan profesinya
Adapun karakteristik guru profesional menurut E. Mulyasa (2008:18) adalah:
a) Mampu mengembangkan tanggung jawab dengan baik
b) Mampu melaksanakan peran dan fungsinya dengan tepat
c) Mampu bekerja untuk mewujudkan tujuan pendidikan di sekolah
d) Mampu melaksanakan peran dan fungsinya dalam pembelajaran di kelas
IV. SIMPULAN DAN SARAN

A. Simpulan
Profesi guru adalah bidang pekerjaan yang cukup berat dan bersifat kompleks karena
berinteraksi langsung dengan subjek dan objek manusia. Guru merupakan unsur manusiawi
paling utama dalam aktivitas pembelajaran. Perubahan kurikulum maupun peningkatan fasilitas
fisik tidak akan banyak menolong tanpa peningkatan profesionalitas guru. Pembelajaran adalah
aktivitas yang tidak hanya memerlukan persyaratan teknis semata tetapi juga melibatkan
proses mental yang kompleks.
B. Saran
Karena berbagai tuntutan dalam pelaksanaan profesi, dengan arah pada peningkatan
kompetensi, guru memerlukan pengembangan secara terus-menerus dan berkelanjutan.
DAFTAR RUJUKAN
A.M. Sardiman. Interaksi dan Motivasi Belajar-Mengajar. Jakarta: PT. Raja Grafindo Persada, 2004.
E. Mulyasa. Menjadi Guru Profesional. Bandung: Rosdakarya, 2008.
Jamaah, J. (2021). Peran Guru dalam Pembelajaran Home visit di Masa Pandemi Covid-19 pada
Siswa Sekolah Dasar. Jurnal Inovasi, Evaluasi Dan Pengembangan Pembelajaran
(JIEPP), 1(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.54371/jiepp.v1i1.74
Nata, Abuddin. Manajemen Pendidikan. Jakarta: Kencana, 2007.
Nurdin, Muhamad. Kiat Menjadi Guru Profesional. Yogyakarta: Ar-Ruzz Media, 2004.
Nurhasanah, E. (2021). Peran Orang tua dalam Membimbing Anak Usia Sekolah Dasar di Rumah
pada Masa Pandemi Covid-19. Jurnal Inovasi, Evaluasi Dan Pengembangan Pembelajaran
Rinjani, C., Wahdini, F. I., Mulia, E., Zakir, S., & Amelia, S. (2021). Kajian Konseptual Model
Pembelajaran Word Square untuk Meningkatkan Hasil Belajar Siswa. Jurnal Inovasi, Evaluasi
Dan Pengembangan Pembelajaran (JIEPP), 1(2), 52–59.
https://doi.org/10.54371/jiepp.v1i2.102
Rizaluddin, R. (2021). Peran Guru dalam Menerapkan Kurikulum 2013 pada Mata Pelajaran IPS
Siswa Kelas III Sekolah Dasar. Jurnal Inovasi, Evaluasi Dan Pengembangan Pembelajaran
Sugiono. 2016. Metode Penelitian Kuantitatif, Kualitatif, dan R&D. Bandung: CV. Alfabeta.
Suwardi. Manajemen Pembelajaran. Salatiga: STAIN Salatiga, 2007.
Tim IKIP Jakarta. Pembinaan Kompetensi Mengajar. Jakarta: IKIP Jakarta, 1987.
Undang-Undang RI No. 14 Tahun 2005 Tentang Guru dan Dosen.
Undang-Undang RI No. 20 Tahun 2003 Tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional.
JURNAL BASICEDU
Volume 6 Nomor 3 Tahun 2022 Halaman 5362 - 5369
Research & Learning in Elementary Education
https://jbasic.org/index.php/basicedu
Membangun Guru yang Profesional melalui Pengembangan Profesionalisme Guru dalam

Penerapan Profesinya
Delfi Eliza1, Regil Sriandila2, Dwi Anisak Nurul Fitri3, Syahreni Yenti4
Universitas Negeri Padang, Indonesia1,2,3,4
E-mail: deliza.zarni@gmail.com1, regilsriandila30@gmail.com2, dwianisaknurulfitri@gmail.com3,
syahreniyenti28@gmail.com4
Abstrak
Guru adalah suatu profesi yang menuntut kompetensi khusus dan tidak bisa dilaksanakan jika orang tersebut
tidak terlatih dalam bidang pendidikan. Guru yang professional menjadi elemen penting dalam menciptakan
pembelajaran yang lebih efektif dan siswa yang lebih baik. Pendidikan di abad 21 menekankan kualitas guru
yang professional yang bertujuan melahirkan kualitas pendidikan yang lebih baik dan siswa yang unggul. Untuk
itu, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memberikan langkah-langkah strategis dalam membangun guru yang
profesional. Metode penelitian yang digunakan yaitu studi kepustakaan dan dilakukan pengumpulan data
dengani studi literatur terhadap penelitian terdahulu yang relevan. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan terdapat 4
keterampilan yang harus dimiliki guru yang profesional yaitu memiliki pengetahuan yang tinggi, memiliki
kemampuan mentransmisikan pengetahuan, memahami perkembangan peserta didik, dan memiliki inovasi dan
selera humor yang tinggi. Selain itu, guru profesional juga harus memiliki 4 kompetensi yaitu pedagogic, sosial,
kepribadian, dan profesional. Untuk mencapai keempat kompetensi tersebut diperlukan empat langkah
diantaranya pelatihan yang berkesinambungan, senantiasa melakukan inovasi baru, membentuk kelompok
diskusi, dan mempunyai dukungan.
Kata kunci: Profesi, Profesional, Profesionalisme guru.
Abstract
Teacher is a career that necessitates a high level of competence and cannot be carried out by someone who has
not received training in the field of education. Professional teachers play a critical role in fostering more
effective learning and improved students. The importance of competent teachers in 21st-century education is
emphasized, to produce higher-quality education and exceptional students. As a result, the goal of this research
is to provide strategic approaches for developing professional instructors. The research approach employed is
the literature review, and data gathering is done by reviewing literature from prior studies that are relevant to
this one. Professionalism, profession, and teacher professionalism are all terms that can be used to describe a
teacher's professionalism. The findings revealed that skilled teachers must possess four skills: a high level of
knowledge, the capacity to transmit knowledge, a grasp of student growth, as well as originality, and a good
sense of humor. Professional instructors must also possess four skills: pedagogical, social, personality, and
professional. Continuous training, constant new ideas, developing discussion groups, and having assistance
are all required to acquire these four competencies.
Keywords: Profession, Professional, Teacher professionalism.
Copyright (c) 2022 Delfi Eliza, Regil Sriandila, Dwi Anisak Nurul Fitri, Syahreni Yenti
 Corresponding author :
Email : regilsriandila30@gmail.com ISSN 2580-3735 (Media Cetak)
DOI : https://doi.org/10.31004/basicedu.v6i3.2878 ISSN 2580-1147 (Media Online)
Jurnal Basicedu Vol 6 No 3 Tahun 2022
p-ISSN 2580-3735 e-ISSN 2580-1147
5363 Membangun Guru yang Profesional melalui Pengembangan Profesionalisme Guru dalam Penerapan
Profesinya – Delfi Eliza, Regil Sriandila, Dwi Anisak Nurul Fitri, Syahreni Yenti
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31004/basicedu.v6i3.2878
PENDAHULUAN
Kompetensi guru dan pembelajaran yang berkualitas menjadi kunci utama dalam pengembangan kualitas
pendidikan (Bourke et al., 2018; Wyss et al., 2021)Guru yang professional menjadi elemen penting dalam
menciptakan pembelajaran yang efektif dan siswa yang lebih baik (Kyriakides et al., 2021) Selama beberapa
tahun terakhir, kesadaran akan perlunya pengembangan guru yang profesional, serta jaminan program
pendidikan berkualitas dan efektif telah menjadi perhatian banyak negara dalam dunia pendidikan.
Pengembangan profesional guru merupakan proses berkelanjutan untuk meningkatkan pencapaian mutu
pendidikan, memperluas pengetahuan akademik, mengasah keterampilan profesional, dan meningkatkan
kemampuan mengajar bagi guru (Pharis et al., 2019).
Pendidikan di abad 21 menekankan kualitas guru yang professional yang bertujuan untuk menciptakan
siswa yang unggul dan mutu pendidikan yang lebih baik (Hofmann, 2019; Bae et al., 2022). Untuk membangun
profesionalismenya, setiap guru harus terus belajar dan berkembang dalam profesinya. Pemberian kesempatan
yang merata untuk pengembangan kompetensi personal dan pengembangan profesional melalui berbagai
merupakan faktor penting untuk meningkatkan kemampuan dan kualitas dari seorang guru (Svendsen, 2020).
Pengembangan professionalme guru berkontribusi pada peningkatan pengetahuan dan kemampuan guru, serta
perubahan sikap dan keyakinan guru sehingga sesuai dengan profesinya.
Guru yang professional sangat diperlukan untuk dapat menciptakan kualitas pendidikan yang jauh lebih
baik. Hal ini dikarenakan bahwa tugas guru sebagai profesi bukan hanya mengajar peserta didik, namun guru
juga mempunyai tugas dalam mendidik dan melatih siswa untuk membentuk peserta didik yang berkarater dan
mempunyai keterampilan yang sesuai dengan tuntutan abad 21(Murkatik et al., 2020). Guru sangat penting bagi
kelangsungan hidup suatu bangsa, terutama mengingat lintasan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi saat ini yang
berkembang pesat dan mendorong perubahan di semua sektor kehidupan, termasuk perubahan nilai-nilai yang
menjadi landasan karakter bangsa. Dengan kata lain, jika dalam menjalankan profesinya seorang guru sudah
kompeten, maka akan terjamin dan terlatih seseorang dalam proses pembangunan bangsa.
Akan tetapi, pada kenyataanya ditengah kemajuan teknologi dan arus globalisasi fenomena penurunan
moral peserta didik masih terus terjadi. Perilaku peserta didik seperti tawuran antar siswa, pergaulan bebas,
kasus narkoba, ngebut, geng motor, lunturnya tata krama dan sopan santun seperti mengucapkan kata-kata yang
kotor, dan sikap tidak bersahabat serta kurang ramah terhadap guru telah mewarnai perilaku peserta didik
sekarang. Hal ini tentu saja berdampak pada kualitas SDM dan daya saing bangsa. Human Development Index
mencatat Indonesia berada di urutan ke 69 dari 104 negara. Sementara menurut Global Competitiveness Indeks,
Negara Indonesia peringkat 54 dari 134 negara. Kasus yang lebih mencengangkan lagi adalah munculnys
oknum-oknum guru dan tenaga kependidikan yang berperilaku amoral seperti penyalahan Dana BOS,
pemerkosaan terhadap siswa, hingga kasus pungli terhadap siswa jika menginginkan nilai yang tinggi. Hal ini
tentu saja sangat bertentangan dengan tugas dan profesionalisme guru dalam menjalankan kewajibannya sebagai
pendidik untuk membentuk siswa yang berkarakter. Untuk itu, perlu perlu dikaji profesionalisme guru dalam
melaksanakan tugas dalam profesinya serta diperlukan suatu langkah-langkah strategis dalam meningkatkan
profesionalisme guru untuk membenuk guru yang professional.
Penelitian terkait dengan tema pengembangan profesional guru sejatinya telah dilakukan oleh Husaini
(2018); Ratnasari (2019); Risdiany & Herlambang (2021). Berdasarkan penelitian yang telah dilakukan oleh
Husaini (2018) mengungkapkan bahwa dalam rangka pengembangan profesionalisme guru berkelanjutan dapat
dilakukan dengan berbagai strategi antara lain, berpartisipasi didalam pelatihan atau in service training,
membaca dan menulis jurnal atau makalah ilmiah lainnya, berpartisipasi di dalam kegiatan pertemuan ilmiah,
melakukan penelitian, partisipasi di dalam organisasi/komunitas profesional, kerjasama dengan tenaga
profesional lainnya di sekolah. Selanjutnya penelitian yang dilakukan oleh Ratnasari (2019) mengungkapkan
bahwa upaya peningkatan profesionalisme guru dapat dilakukan dengan melakukan pelatihan-pelatihan

p-ISSN 2580-3735 e-ISSN 2580-1147
mengenai pemanfaatan teknologi dimana saat ini guru sebagai tenaga profesional harus memiliki kemampuan
dalam menggunakan teknologi agar tidak tertinggal serta dapat bersaing dengan guru lain. Dan penelitian yang
dilakukan oleh Risdiany & Herlambang (2021) memaparkan hasil penelitiannya yang menunjukkan bahwa
berbagai upaya yang telah dilakukan oleh pemerintah dalam peningkatan profesionalisme guru dengan
meningkatkan kualifikasi dan persyaratan jenjang pendidikan yang lebih tinggi bagi tenaga pengajar dari
jenjang sekolah hingga perguruan tinggi. Usaha lain yang dilakukan oleh pemerintah adalah sertifikasi dan
pemutusan agenda PKG (Pusat Kegiatan Guru) serta KKG (Kelompok Kerja Guru). Tambahan pula adanya
pengembangan kesejahteraan dengan mengupayakan adanya tunjangan profesi guru. Berbeda dengan penelitian
yang dilakukan oleh Husaini (2018), Ratnasari (2019) dan Risdiany & Herlambang (2021) penelitian ini
mencoba membahas dan menguak secara deskripsi terkait dengan pengembangan profesionalisme guru melalui
metode tinjauan pustaka.
Berdasarkan latar belakang tersebut, maka penelitian ini memiliki tujuan utnuk memberikan langkah-
langkah strategis dalam membangun guru yang professional melalui pengkajian profesioalisme guru dalam
menjalankan tuganya sebagai guru.
METODE
Metode tinjauan pustaka (literature review), yang sering dikenal sebagai penelitian kepustakaan,
digunakan untuk menulis artikel ini. Literature review adalah jenis penelitian yang menggunakan sumber-
sumber yang di ambil dari publikasi sebelumnya, baik berupa karya tulis maupun hasil-hasil penelitian (borego
et al., 2014). Teknik perpustakaan memerlukan pencarian dan pembacaan sumber bacaan yang relevan terkait
dengan profesionalisme guru dalam menjalankan tugas profesinya. Sumber penelitian yang diperoleh dalam
penelitian ini bersumber dari buku, jurnal, artikel ilmiah, tesis, disertasi, makalah, dan karya lain yang telah
ditulis sebelumnya. Temuan-temuan eksplorasi tersebut kemudian dikumpulkan dan digabungkan dengan
menggunakan pendekatan deskriptif, yaitu metode yang menghasilkan deskripsi seperti pernyataan-pernyataan
yang dihasilkan oleh penulis tentang profesionalisme guru dalam menjalankan tugas profesinya dengan
menggunakan referensi-referensi sebelumnya. Jurnal yang dipilih dalam penelitian ini merupakan jurnal dengan
keluaran (publish) 10 tahun terakhir, hal ini dimaksudkan agar suatuasi yang ada saat ini masih relevan dengan
tema profesionalisme guru sehingga dapat dijadikan sebagai rujukan mutakhir.
Adapun Prosedur penelitian dalam penelitian ini menggunakan lanngkah-langkah penelitian menurut
Mirzaqon (2018) yangmana penelitian ini memiliki langkah-langkah sebagai berikut: pertama, Pemilihan topik
penelitian; kedua, mencari dan mengeksplorasi informasi; tiga, menentukan fokus penelitian; empat,
pengumpulan sumber data; lima, persiapan penyajian data; dan terakhir, penyusunan laporan. Selanjutnya untuk
teknik analisis data yang dipergunakan, penelitian ini menggunakan teknik analisis isi. Weber (Moleong, 2007)
mendefinisikan kajian isi merupakan metodologi yang memanfaatkan seperangkat prosedur untuk menarik
kesimpulan yang benar dari sebuah buku atau dokumen Dimana dalam teknik analisis ini dilakukan proses
memilih, membandingkan dan menggabungkan serta memilah berbagai pengertian sehingga pada akhirnya
menemukan yang relevan. Teknik analisis isi juga memiliki tujuan untuk mengetahui gambaran karakteristik isi
dan kemudian menarik kesimpulan (Nana, 2009).
HASIL DAN PEMBAHASAN

1. Profesi
Profesi berasal dari kata bahasa Inggris profession, yang berasal dari bahasa Latin profesus, yang berarti
"kompeten atau ahli dalam pekerjaan". Profesi dapat didefinisikan sebagai karir atau posisi yang membutuhkan
keterampilan yang didapatkan melalui pendidikan dan pelatihan tertentu sesuai dengan standar tertentu, serta
memiliki tugas dan mematuhi kode etik tertentu (Abbott & Meerabeau, 2020). Sebuah profesi juga digambarkan
sebagai posisi atau karir tertentu yang memerlukan pengetahuan dan kemampuan khusus yang diperoleh melalui

p-ISSN 2580-3735 e-ISSN 2580-1147
pelatihan akademis yang ketat. Dengan kata lain, profesi adalah karir atau jabatan yang menuntut perolehan
kemampuan tertentu. Hal ini menunjukkan bahwa profesi adalah suatu pekerjaan atau jabatan yang tidak bisa
dijabat oleh sembarang orang, namun diperlukan adanya pendidikan, serta pelatihan-pelatihan khusus. Guru
adalah suatu profesi yang menuntut kemampuan khusus dan tidak bisa dilaksanakan oleh guru yang kurang
terlatih di bidang pendidikan. Sekalipun masih ada pengajar yang tidak memiliki gelar formal dalam mata
pelajaran pendidikan guru. Kegiatan profesional seorang guru menuntutnya untuk mengetahui dan mampu
menggunakan beberapa prinsip pengajaran dalam rangka melaksanakan tanggung jawabnya (Manasia et al.,
2020).
Menurut definisi tersebut di atas, guru merupakan seseorang yang mempunyai keahlian khusus di
bidangnya. Dimana guru harus mengajar, mendidik, dan membimbing siswa secara profesional. Karena guru
merupakan profesi yang benar-benar berkembang dan dapat menciptakan semua profesi lain di dunia, tidak
dapat dibandingkan dengan profesi pengusaha, polisi, presiden, menteri, petani, dokter, mekanik, pilot,
pramugari, pegawai bank, penjahit, dan sebagainya. Alhasil, menjadi guru bukanlah sesuatu yang bisa ditiru
atau dilakukan sebagai hobi sebelum berkarir. Untuk menjadi seorang guru harus dipenuhi kriteria-kriteria
tertentu, dan fasilitas tertentu harus dibuat agar profesi tersebut dapat dijalankan dengan baik dan sesuai dengan
tujuannya. Susanto (2021), merekomendasikan karakteristik guru sebagai suatu profesi sebagai berikut: (1)
Adanya komitmen dari guru bahwa jabatan tersebut membutuhkan pengikut; (2) menjunjung tinggi martabat
manusia di atas kepentingan pribadi; (3) suatu profesi mengharuskan orang untuk berpartisipasi dalam
mempersiapkan profesional dalam kurun waktu tertentu; (4) harus senantiasa menambah ilmu supaya terus
berkembang posisinya; (5) memiliki kode etik untuk jabatannya; (6) memiliki kemampuan intelektual untuk
memecahkan masalah.
2. Profesional
Profesional mengacu pada kemampuan untuk memiliki pemahaman yang komprehensif dan mendalam
tentang materi pembelajaran serta memungkinkan untuk membimbing siswa (Afrianto, 2018). Guru profesional
harus dipersiapkan, mulai dari kompetensi hingga strategi pengajaran dan manfaat yang akan diperolehnya
sebagai elemen penting dalam kemajuan bangsa. Menurut Rijal (2018) karakteristik guru profesional adalah:
a. Menyenangi profesinya atau menjiwai
Setiap profesi yang dipelajari, seperti mengajar, harus disegarkan, dicermati, dianalisis, dan dipahami
sebaik-baiknya. Jika suatu profesi tidak disukai, tugas-tugas yang harus diselesaikan secara sistematis akan
menjadi berat, tidak efektif, dan memakan waktu. Mengajar adalah profesi yang bekerja dengan makhluk yang
membutuhkan cinta/perhatian, makhluk berakal yang harus dibekali ilmu, dan makhluk dengan bentuk fisik
yang terus berkembang atau bertindak sesuai keinginan hati dan pikir
b. Menguasi profesinya berdasarkan bidang ilmu pengetahuannya
Seorang guru profesional yang akan memberikan pelajaran kepada siswanya harus benar-benar guru yang
ahli dalam bidang ilmunya dan benar-benar guru yang ahli dalam bidang ilmunya dan benar-benar guru yang
ahli dan menjadi ahli di bidang ilmu yang akan diajarkan bagi siswa, guru harus terlebih dahulu memilih
pendidikan yang sesuai dengan profesinya.
c. Memiliki kemampuan berkomunikasi secara efektif.
Guru profesional mampu mengkomunikasikan atau menjelaskan apa yang telah mereka pelajari (transfer
pengetahuan) kepada siswanya secara efisien dan efektif. Guru diharapkan memahami pengetahuan khusus
yang berkaitan dengan profesinya, seperti memahami siswa, menguasai metode/teknik menyampaikan
pengetahuan dengan objektif, dan cara berinteraksi dengan siswa secara benar dan tepat.
d. Berpegang teguh pada kode etik sesuai dengan profesinya
Sikap atau perilaku seorang guru harus sesuai dengan perkataannya. Guru dinilai bukan hanya dari apa
yang dia katakan kepada siswa, tetapi juga dari karakternya, kesabaran, kejujuran, ketulusan, cara berpikir,

p-ISSN 2580-3735 e-ISSN 2580-1147
ketakwaan, jiwa sosial, dan bahkan pada bagaimana dia mengelola emosinya, dan ini adalah kode etik yang
wajib diikuti oleh setiap guru.
1) Self Growth
Guru profesional berusaha untuk mengikuti perkembangan dan perubahan zaman untuk mencapai tingkat
kualitas setinggi mungkin. Akibatnya, tidak ada alasan bagi seseorang untuk berhenti mempelajari dan menggali
informasi, karena pada saat seorang guru tidak meningkatkan kemampuan yang dimilikinya, itu adalah bentuk
stagnasi terburuk dalam bidang pendidikan.
2) Capability
Pendidik yang mampu bekerja dan menunjukkan semangat dalam melaksanakan proses pembelajaran,
serta memiliki keterampilan diri dalam memahami dan melindungi peserta didik dengan baik adalah guru yang
profesional.
3) Inovatif
Guru juga harus terus berupaya inovatif dalam implementasi kurikulum seperti inovatif dalam bahan ajar,
menggunakan metode yang beragam, memilih media dan teknologi pembelajaran, dan melakukan penilaian
siswa dengan teknik yang beragam.
3. Profesionalisme
Profesionalisme di definisikan sebagai individu komitmen terhadap seperangkat norma, kode etik, atau
kategori atribut yang mencirikan perilaku yang diakui dalam bidang tersebut (Densmore, 2018).
Profesionalisme diartikan juga sebagai kecocokan dibanding kemampuan yang dimiliki oleh birokrasi dengan
kebutuhan tugas (Zhang et al., 2022). Profesionalisme juga menyangkut pola pikir professional yang
menyangkut bahwa semua pekerjaan harus diselesaikan oleh seseorang yang memiliki keahlian dalam bidang
atau profesi tersebut (Sinambela et al., 2020). Keberhasilan di tempat kerja, reputasi profesional yang kuat, dan
etos kerja serta kompetensi tingkat tinggi adalah hasil dari profesionalisme. Ciri-ciri profesionalisme: (1)
Keinginan untuk selalu bertingkah laku yang dapat dijadikan model; (2) Berusaha untuk mengembangkan dan
mempertahankan perilaku profesional seperti penampilan fisik, ucapan, penggunaan bahasa, kesehatan, dan
sikap sehari-hari yang harus di jaga; dan (3) Keinginan untuk mengikuti pelatihan pengembangan profesional
untuk meningkatkan dan memperluas pengetahuan dan kemampuan.
4. Profesionalisme guru
Kemampuan guru untuk melakukan, melakukan, dan melaksanakan evaluasi pembelajaran adalah
kemampuan guru untuk melakukan tugas pokoknya seperti pendidik dan pengajar serta dapat dikatakan
profesionalisme guru (Marsin, 2022) Profesionalisme yang tinggi akan tampak pada besarnya keinginan seorang
guru untuk senantiasa meningkatkan dan memelihara sikap dan perilakunya sebagai perwujudan
keprofesionalanya. Khorasgani (2019) akan mengusulkan enam karakteristik profesionalisme guru: (1)
pemahaman tugas dan penerimaan, (2) kemauan untuk bekerja secara efektif dengan siswa, guru, orang tua, dan
masyarakat, (3) kemampuan untuk mengembangkan visi dan kerja Lebih khusus lagi, menurut (Welker, 1992),
profesionalisme guru dapat diidentifikasi jika guru tersebut merupakan ahli (ahli) dalam melaksanakan tugas
dan mengembangkan dirinya (pertumbuhan). Menurut Ekinci & Acar (2019). ketika mengevaluasi
profesionalisme seorang guru, penting untuk mempertimbangkan faktor-faktor seperti kemampuan seorang
guru untuk melaksanakan tugas, serta komitmen dan akuntabilitas seorang guru (tanggung jawab) dan
kemandirian.
5. Membangun guru yang profesional dalam menjalankan profesinya
Guru yang dianggap profesional harus memiliki berbagai keterampilan agar dapat melaksanakan
tanggung jawabnya secara maksimal. Beberapa keterampilan guru profesional diantaranya: (1) basis
pengetahuan yang kuat, memiliki pengetahuan yang tinggi, terus berinovasi dan memperluas pengetahuan serta
kompetensi agar dapat bersaing dan menjadi yang terbaik; (2) memiliki keterampilan dalam mentransmisikan

p-ISSN 2580-3735 e-ISSN 2580-1147
pengetahuan secara efisien kepada siswa. Maka tugas seorang guru adalah menyiapkan materi, menyiapkan
dan melaksanakan materi, menyediakan fasilitas, menyampaikan materi membimbing, mengarahkan, dan
memotivasi siswa.; (3) Memahami perkembangan psikologi mahasiswa. Perkembangan psikologis setiap anak
adalah unik, oleh karena itu seorang guru dapat memahami anak-anak dengan sebaik-baiknya berdasarkan
karakter dan kepribadian mereka; dan (4) Memiliki rasa humor dan kemampuan mengajar. Dalam situasi ini,
gaya belajar seorang guru sangat dipengaruhi oleh perilakunya di dalam kelas. Selain keterampilan di atas,
kompetensi guru professional yaitu (Andina, 2018) :
a. Kompetensi profesional guru
Kompetensi guru profesional didefinisikan sebagai kemampuan seorang guru untuk melaksanakan
tanggung jawabnya. Dalam hal ini pengertiannya adalah bahwa guru yang kompeten dan profesional adalah
guru yang fokus pada tugas yang dihadapi. Kompetensi profesional adalah seperangkat keterampilan yang
hanya dapat diperoleh oleh seseorang yang memiliki kualifikasi akademik, profesional, dan profesional yang
diperlukan.
b. Kompetensi Pedagogik
Pedagogik kompetensi adalah kompetensi yang membedakan guru dengan profesi lain, dan kompetensi
yang mutlak yang harus dimiliki guru. Pengetahuan dan keterampilan yang lebih luas, serta mendalami
karakteristik dan psikologi siswa, adalah kompetensi ini. Dengan meningkatkan keterampilan ini, guru akan
lebih efektif dan efisien dalam interaksinya dengan peserta didik, serta dapat mengidentifikasi dan mengatasi
masalah yang muncul.
c. Kompetensi Sosial
Kompetensi sosial adalah kemampuan guru untuk memahami diri mereka sebagai anggota masyarakat
dan melanjutkan tanggung jawab mereka sebagai anggota masyarakat dan warga negara (Satori et al., 2006).
Karena seorang guru adalah anggota masyarakat, ia harus memahami dan menerapkan norma-norma dan nilai-
nilai yang ada di masyarakat, seperti mengidentifikasi dan menangani tanggung jawab sosial, seperti
mengidentifikasi dan menangani tanggung jawab sosial yang dituangkan dalam Undang-undang. Undang-
Undang Dasar Republik Indonesia Undang-Undang Dasar Republik Indonesia bergaul dengan siswa, sesama
ssiwa, guru, tenaga kependidikan, orang tua siswa atau wali siswa, dan bergaul dalam masayarkat secara santun.
d. Kompetensi Kepribadian Sosial
Selain keterampilan-keterampilan yang lain, seorang guru harus memperhatikan hal-hal berikut: guru
sosial, pedagogik, dan profesional kompetensi kepribadian, yaitu kepribadian yang baik, stabil, dewasa, arif dan
bijaksana, berwibawa, berakhlak mulia, dan berkembang diri secara berkelanjutan.
Untuk mengembangkan empat kompetensi diatas demi terbentuknya guru yang profesional maka ada 4
langkah yang perlu dilakukan, diantaranya:
1) Setiap guru harus mengikuti berbagai macam pelatihan dan pembinaan secara berkesinambungan.
Beberapa penelitian menunjukkan bahwa lokakarya singkat hanya dilakukan satu kali seringkali tidak
berdampak sama sekali terhadap peningkatan kompetensi guru. Untuk itu, perlu dilakukan pengajaran,
pembinaan, dan latihan secara berkesinambungan untuk guru dapat menerapkan strategi pembelajaran
baru.
2) Setiap guru senantiasa melakukan inovasi baru dalam proses pembelajaran, seperti menerapkan metode
baru, menggunakan media interaktif, hingga sesekali guru perlu menggunakan metode pembelajaran di
luar kelas. Hal ini berguna untuk meningkatkan kompetensi guru dan membuat pembelajaran menjadi
lebih menyenangkan.
3) Membentuk kelompok guru sesuai dengan mata pelajaran yang di ampu, seperti musayarawah guru mata
pelajaran (MGMP). Kelompok ini bertujuan sebagai wadah guru untuk mendiskusikan permasalahan-
permasalahan yang dihadapi pada saat proses pembelajaran di kelas, sehingga dapat dicarikan solusi
terbaik.

p-ISSN 2580-3735 e-ISSN 2580-1147
4) Dukungan dari pimpinan dan teman sejawat

Guru yang profesional tidak tercipta begitu saja, namun dengan sebuah proses yang panjang. Dukungan
dari pimpinan dan rekan-rekan sesame guru sangat diperlukan dalam upaya meningkatkan kompetensi yang
dimiliki.
KESIMPULAN
Guru merupakan suatu profesi yang memerlukan kemampuan khusus dan tidak dapat dilakukan oleh
seseorang yang tidak terlatih dalam bidang pendidikan. Guru profesional harus dipersiapkan kehadirannya,
mulai dari kompetensi hingga pendekatan pengajaran hingga manfaat yang akan diperolehnya sebagai organ
penting dalam kemajuan bangsa. Guru yang profesional harus memiliki beragam keterampilan yang dapat
dimanfaatkan secara maksimal. Terdapat 4 keterampilan yang harus dimiliki guru yang profesional yaitu
memiliki pengetahuan yang tinggi, memiliki kemampuan mentransmisikan pengetahuan, memahami
perkembangan peserta didik, dan memiliki inovasi dan selera humor yang tinggi. Selain itu, guru profesional
juga harus memiliki 4 kompetensi yaitu kompetensi pedagogic, kompetensi sosial, kompetensi kepribadian, dan
kompetensi profesional. Untuk mencapai 4 kompetensi tersebut diperlukan 4 langkah diantaranya pelatihan
yang berkesinambungan, senantiasa melakukan inovasi baru, membentuk kelompok diskusi, dan mempunyai
dukungan.
DAFTAR PUSTAKA
Abbott, P., & Meerabeau, L. (2020). Professionals, Professionalization and the Caring Professions. In The
Sociology of the Caring Professions. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003070955-1
Afrianto. (2018). Being a professional teacher in the era of industrial revolution 4.0: opportunities, challenges
and strategies for innovative classroom practices. English Language Teaching and Research, 2(1).
Andina, E. (2018). Efektivitas Pengukuran Kompetensi Guru. Aspirasi: Jurnal Masalah-Masalah Sosial, 9(2).
https://doi.org/10.46807/aspirasi.v9i2.1103
Bae, Y., Hand, B. M., & Fulmer, G. W. (2022). A generative professional development program for the
development of science teacher epistemic orientations and teaching practices. Instructional Science, 143–
167.
Bourke, T., Ryan, M., & Ould, P. (2018). How do teacher educators use professional standards in their practice?
Teaching and Teacher Education, 75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2018.06.005
Densmore, K. (2018). Professionalism, Proletarianization and Teacher WorkProfessionalism, Proletarianization
and Teacher Work. In Critical Studies in Teacher Education (p. 31). Routledge.
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429450150
Ekinci, E., & Acar, F. E. (2019). Primary School Teachers’ Opinions on Professional Development
(Professional Development Model Proposal). Journal of Education and Training Studies, 7(4).
https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v7i4.4039
Hofmann, R. (2019). Dialogue, teachers and professional development. In The Routledge International
Handbook of Research on Dialogic Education (p. 4). Routledge.
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429441677
Husaini, R. (2018). Pembinaan Profesionalisme Guru. Jurnal Tarbiyah Islamiyah: Jurnal Ilmaih Pendidikan
Agama Islam, 8(2), 1–15.
Khorasgani, A. T. (2019). The Contribution of Teaching Skills and Teachers ’ Professionalism toward Students
’ Achievement in Isfahan , Iran Amir Toghyani Khorasgani *. International Journal of Latest Research
in Humanities and Social Science (IJLRHSS), 02(02), 29–40.
Kyriakides, L., Antoniou, P., & Dimosthenous, A. (2021). Does the duration of school interventions matter?

p-ISSN 2580-3735 e-ISSN 2580-1147
The effectiveness and sustainability of using the dynamic approach to promote quality and equity. School
Effectiveness and School Improvement, 32(4), 607–630. https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2021.1923534
Manasia, L., Ianos, M. G., & Chicioreanu, T. D. (2020). Pre-service teacher preparedness for fostering education
for sustainable development: An empirical analysis of central dimensions of teaching readiness.
Sustainability (Switzerland), 12(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/SU12010166
Marsin, M. (2022). No TitleaPengaruh Administrasi Pembelajaran dan Supervisi Akademik terhadap
Profesionalisme Guru (Studi di KKM MTsN 6 Tangerang) [UIN Sultan Maulana Hasanuddin BANTEN].
http://repository.uinbanten.ac.id/id/eprint/8201
Mirzaqon, A. (2018). Studi Kepustakaan Mengenai Landasan Teori Dan Praktik Konseling Expressive Writing
Library. Jurnal BK UNESA, 1.
Moleong, L. j. (2007). Metodologi Penelitian Kualitatif. Remaja Rosda.
Murkatik, K., Harapan, E., & Wardiah, D. (2020). The Influence of Professional and Pedagogic Competence
on Teacher’s Performance. Journal of Social Work and Science Education, 1(1).
https://doi.org/10.52690/jswse.v1i1.10
Pharis, T., Wu, E., Sullivan, S., & Moore, L. (2019). Improving Teacher Quality: Professional Development
Implications from Teacher Professional Growth and Effectiveness System Implementation in Rural
Kentucky High Schools. Educational Research Quarterly, 42(3).
Ratnasari, Y. T. (2019). Profesionalisme Guru dalam Peningkatan Mutu Pendidikan. Revitalisasi Manajemen
Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini (PAUD) Di Era Revolusi Industri 4.0, 235–239.
Rijal, F. (2018). Guru Profesional dalam Konsep Kurikulum 2013. Jurnal Mudarrisuna: Media Kajian
Pendidikan Agama Islam, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.22373/jm.v8i2.3235
Risdiany, H., & Herlambang, Y. T. (2021). Pengembangan Profesionalisme Guru dalam Mewujudkan Kualitas
Pendidikan di Indonesia. Edukatif : Jurnal Ilmu Pendidikan, 3(3), 817–822.
Satori, Djam’an, Kartadinata, Sunaryo, Makmun, Syamsudin, A., LN, & Yusuf, S. (2006). Profesi Keguruan.
In Profesi Keguruan dalam Mengembangkan Siswa (pp. 1–47). Universitas Terbuka.
Sinambela, E. A., Mardikaningsih, R., Arifin, S., & Ayu, H. D. (2020). Development of Self Competence and
Supervision to Achieve Professionalism. Journal of Islamic Economics Perspectives, 1(2).
https://doi.org/10.35719/jiep.v1i2.13
Susanto, R. (2021). Pemetaan kompetensi pedagogik dalam keterkaitan dimensi pengetahuan pedagogik dan
profil karakteristik awal. JPPI (Jurnal Penelitian Pendidikan Indonesia), 7(1), 164–171.
https://doi.org/10.29210/020211167
Svendsen, B. (2020). Inquiries Into Teacher Professional Development--What Matters? Education, 140(3).
Welker, R. (1992). The Teacher as Expert: A Theoretical and Historical Examination. State University of New
York Press.
Wyss, C., Rosenberger, K., & Bührer, W. (2021). Student Teachers’ and Teacher Educators’ Professional
Vision: Findings from an Eye Tracking Study. In Educational Psychology Review (Vol. 33, Issue 1).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09535-z
Zhang, H., Yang, L., Walker, R., & Wang, Y. (2022). How to influence the professional discretion of street-
level bureaucrats: transformational leadership, organizational learning, and professionalization strategies
in the delivery of social assistance. Public Management Review, 24(2).
https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2020.1805919

p-ISSN 2580-3735 e-ISSN 2580-1147

Dini - Jurnal Keseluruhan

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Dini - Jurnal Keseluruhan

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Dini - Jurnal Keseluruhan

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

626800

Review of Educational Research

How Does Professional Development

Professional development programs are based on different theories of how

Keywords: professional development, teacher learning, research design,

The idea that professional development (PD) can foster improvements in

Criteria for Study Selection

The Study Is About PD Only

The Study Includes Evidence of Student Achievement

The Study Design Controls for Motivation to Learn

Researchers Follow Teachers, Rather Than Students, Over Time

How These Rules Differ From What Works Clearinghouse

This correction is not sufficient, however, when the researcher is interested in

Comparisons Across Programs

Results and Interpretation

Teaching problem Prescription Strategy Insight Knowledge Total

Cole (1992) Mississippi Prescription No program 24 hours 1 year 12 el SAT reading

Downloaded from http://rer.aera.net at EMORY UNIV on February 26, 2016

PD contact Study Number of

Downloaded from http://rer.aera.net at EMORY UNIV on February 26, 2016

forget that the conventional model of PD is a three-step process: PD alters teach-

•• Mississippi’s Competencies (Cole, 1992) introduced teachers to 14 compe-

Enactment via Strategy

•• ESBD, or Earth Science by Design (Penuel et al., 2011), is based on the

Enactment via Insight

•• The Research Study Group (Gersten et al., 2010) introduced teachers to

Enactment via Bodies of Knowledge

Containing Student Behavior

•• PPA-1, or Process–Product Admonitions (Anderson et al., 1979), con-

Downloaded from http://rer.aera.net at EMORY UNIV on February 26, 2016

Exposing Student Thinking

Downloaded from http://rer.aera.net at EMORY UNIV on February 26, 2016

Both programs were prescriptive and both built on early “process–product”

•• CMCD, or Consistency Management and Cooperative Discipline (Freiberg

The first four of these programs relied on strategies to facilitate enactment.

Exposing Student Thinking

•• Formative Assessment (Mazzie, 2008) provided teachers with a 3-credit

ISSN: 0924-3453 (Print) 1744-5124 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/nses20

Identifying the characteristics of effective teacher

Sam Sims & Harry Fletcher-Wood

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2020.1772841

Published online: 28 May 2020.

Submit your article to this journal

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

Identifying the characteristics of eﬀective teacher professional

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

CONTACT Sam Sims s.sims@ucl.ac.uk UCL Institute of Education, London, UK

Background and motivation

diﬀerences in terminology, the underlying claims are highly consistent, as illustrated by a

Appropriateness of inclusion criteria

Validity of inference methods

Alternative methods for identifying the characteristics of eﬀective PD

Illustrative example: instructional coaching

alignment between evidence of mechanism and evaluations of speciﬁc PD interventions

Guskey, T. R. (2003a). Analyzing lists of the characteristics of eﬀective professional development to

Kompetensi Profesional Guru dalam Meningkatkan Mutu

Kata Kunci: Kompetensi; Profesional Guru; Mutu Pendidikan