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Effective professional development is an essential part of helping teachers meet the challenges of teaching mathematics and science. Yet most current professional development programs are inadequate, say Susan Loucks-Horsley and colleagues at the National Institute for Science Education (NISE).

Many professional development programs are ill designed. They don't give teachers the knowledge and skills they need. Loucks-Horsley doesn't mince words: "Professional development that is confined to short, discrete events is usually a wasted effort. Professional development takes time. It requires teachers to be reflective about their practice."

Loucks-Horsley and the NISE Professional Development Team have accumulated and analyzed information about effective professional development practices, strategies, and structures for inservice staff development. The Team has developed case studies, synthesized research, and assembled the experiences of seasoned professional developers to provide guidance about how mathematics and science teachers can best be assisted in their professional growth. The Team (including Peter Hewson, Nancy Love, and Kathy Stiles) recently published its findings in Designing Professional Development for Teachers of Science and Mathematics (Corwin Press, 1997). The book describes a framework for designing inservice professional development for K-12 science and mathematics teachers and includes descriptions and examples of 15 different professional development strategies, critical issues that all programs must address, and professional development programs that use the design framework for development and analysis.

"The national standards for science, mathematics, and professional development exhibit a strong knowledge base and a great deal of consensus about what constitutes effective professional development," the authors say. "Yet there's still a gap. There's a lack of rich description of effective programs that are constructed in various contexts and that address common challenges in unique ways. Nowhere is there accumulated the knowledge of effective professional development strategies and structures for teachers of mathematics and science. There's no guidance, in any one place, about how these teachers can best be assisted in their professional growth." Designing Professional Development for Teachers of Science and Mathematics aims to address these needs.

The authors insist that science and mathematics teachers need to experience for themselves the science and mathematics learning they will want their students to do. Learning about it in a vicarious manner is no substitute. Effective professional development happens in a community of learning. Just as students deepen their knowledge of science and mathematics through communication, so too do their teachers learn through formulating, sharing, and challenging what they and their colleagues think they know.

Professional development also must go beyond the needs of individual teachers to address entire school systems. "School systems can influence teaching in powerful ways," the authors say. "They have a key role in developing leadership in their teachers." Systemwide influence occurs directly, through the nature of professional development that's offered and, indirectly, through the structures and policies that help or hinder a teacher's efforts.

A framework for designing professional development

Successful professional development planners use distinct but related kinds of knowledge in their work: (a) what is known about learners and learning in general, (b) what is known about teachers and teaching, (c) the nature of the disciplines of mathematics and science, (d) the principles of effective professional development, and (e) knowledge of change and the change process.

Designers of effective professional development filter knowledge through their own contexts to arrive at the most appropriate approach for a given setting. This knowledge includes strategies, critical issues, and beliefs. "As professional developers learn from their experiences, they become active contributors," the authors say. "And as their needs and interests change, they look to research for new ideas. Beliefs change, too." When professional developers see the effects of their work, they begin to think differently about students, teachers, their disciplines, professional development, and change. Experience leads designers to consider new issues or gain deeper understanding of the ones they have grappled with. "Professional development is recursive and sometimes messy," Loucks-Horsley says. "It demands flexibility and continuous learning throughout the process."

Critical issues in designing professional development

Effective professional development programs support subcultures in which professional development can flourish. The need to create subcultures for high-quality professional development is more than instrumental, the authors say; it has a deeper significance. "The nature of the reform that is embodied in the mathematics and science standards will require a large number of teachers to keep changing and learning," says Loucks-Horsley. "It also implies a different intellectual culture for schools than is typical. So schools need to build capacity not only for teachers to reflect on their own teaching, but for the culture of teaching and schooling itself to change."

Viewing reform as a cultural matter as well as an individual psychological one opens new avenues, says Loucks-Horsley. "If we created supportive subcultures in different parts of the system we would begin the process of cultural change. Researchers would then have the opportunity to study the nature of such cultures." Building capacity means initiating, developing, and supporting teacher subcultures at social and organizational levels that will complement efforts designed to build capacity at individual levels.

Public support for professional development is intimately related to public support for science and mathematics reform. Professional developers can address the dual purpose of garnering public support for science and mathematics education reform and for teacher professional development. They can do so, the authors say, by paying attention to three areas:

• increasing awareness of the importance of effective teaching and learning of science and mathematics, as well as effective professional development--and what they look like;

• involving the public in learning situations (those of both students and teachers); and

• gathering and publicizing the results of teaching and professional development.

The University of Washington's professional development project for elementary school teachers directly addressed the issue of garnering public support for science education. Teachers learned how to craft messages to address the questions and concerns of various audiences, for example, parents, principals, business executives, and city council members. They interacted with a panel representing these groups around the question, "What would motivate you to support science education?" They identified the common threads and the unique needs of the various groups.

For more information see Designing Professional Development for Teachers of Science and Mathematics, Corwin Press, 1997. The NISE Web site can be visited at http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/nise.

(Susan Loucks-Horsley is Team Leader for the NISE's professional development team; Director of Outreach and Professional Development for the National Research Council's Center for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education, and a Program Director at WestEd.)