The problem with professional development
Most professional development is barely professional development at all. Teachers are gathered in a hall, shown a few slides, invited to discuss something agreeably vague about pedagogy, and then released back into classrooms where nothing much has changed. Teachers’ assumptions remain intact; their routines untouched, the curriculum is still what it was and the behaviour system still works or doesn’t. Teaching is simply expected to have been improved via teacher exposure to groovy ideas.
In fact, installing air conditioning is likely to do more for student outcomes than business-as-usual CPD. That sounds far fetched only if we assume the main barriers to better teaching are always located inside teachers. Often they’re in the fabric of the school itself. A classroom that’s too hot to think in is an instructional problem but not one within the power of teachers to solve.1
Instructional coaching, however, offers a compelling alternative to this bl…
