Research clearly indicates that professional development is most effective when it is embedded within teachers' day-to-day jobs, ongoing with frequent opportunities for coaching and practice. While school leaders often attend excellent, motivating — yet isolated — training events, these isolated events rarely translate into improved practice.
Unless these events are ongoing, linked to a strategic framework, and include a coaching component, training nearly always fails to translate into practice. School leaders need ongoing support, site visits and leadership coaching to support their efforts at turning the training into concrete actions on-site.
In order for training to translate into concrete action, it must be paired with follow-up coaching. The most successful models usually involve a cadre of coaches who are assigned to each of the teams, who provide ongoing phone, e-mail and on-site visits to help the leadership team apply its new learnings in the workplace.
It is imperative that these coaches be excellent listeners and facilitators. This coaching role could be filled by an outside provider, although ideally the strongest model is when the coaching is provided by those within schools and districts themselves. This allows for inter-school visitation, collaborative learning and a common definition of what the work of the leadership team looks like.
Coaching visits should be regular, with the first one scheduled after the initial training. They should then take place between each session to help teams stay focused and on-target in their plans, and to implement what they have learned.
Focus on Results provides coaching, and is available to work with district teams to help develop and train the coaches for this important follow-up work.