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Professional Development

Pattern · All patterns
Evidence · 51 claims (33 for, 14 mixed, 4 against) · 45 studies (11 review, 10 qualitative, 8 causal, 7 quant-synthesis, 4 design, 3 theoretical, 2 associational), q1–q4 · 7 of 45 report an effect size · 45 claims rest on one study

Description and scope

A reusable policy for changing what practising educators do in their own classrooms: choose one observable classroom practice → find out how each teacher currently enacts it and what they know of its content → show the practice and the reasoning behind it → rehearse it with colleagues → teachers enact it with their own students while a coach or peer observes (live or on video) → feedback on that enactment, tied to the practice and to what students did → repeat the enact-and-feedback cycle with support withdrawn as the practice holds → check later that it is still in use. The learners are teachers (adult, adult-workplace): the target is a complex-skill enacted in a classroom, with the knowledge and beliefs that go with it. The intended change is in observed teaching practice (skill-performance), and through it in students' behavior or achievement, at a horizon of a term or more (term-plus). Teacher knowledge, satisfaction ratings and stated intentions are not the target, though they are worth recording.

It applies the cognitive apprenticeship pattern to adult learners whose task is teaching, and it sits inside the scaffolding and fading principle, which owns the general relationship between contingent support, its withdrawal and independent performance; this page does not restate either model. Where the PD is carried mainly by a standing group of colleagues (a professional learning community, lesson study), the Communities of Practice principle holds the model for sustained participation in a shared practice, and the Fostering Communities of Learning pattern is the nearest community pattern. This page owns the narrower configuration: a cycle of modeling, enactment with one's own students, and feedback on that enactment, run for teachers over a term or more.

No claim in this wiki tests this pattern's distinguishing relationship: that sustained, practice-embedded PD with coached enactment changes practice or student outcomes more than a one-off workshop. The two syntheses the earlier page leaned on are now recorded as claims, and they bear on the coached-enactment step rather than on the whole pattern: Kraft, Blazar & Hogan (2018) pool causal studies of teacher coaching (Teacher coaching programs improve teachers' instructional practice by a pooled 0.49 SD across 43 causal studies [+M]; Teacher coaching raises student achievement on standardized tests by a pooled 0.18 SD across 31 causal studies [+M]), and coaching paired with group training and materials went with larger effects (Pairing coaching with group trainings is associated with larger effects on instruction and achievement; instructional materials with larger, and video libraries with smaller, effects on instruction [~M], an association across studies, not a test); Darling-Hammond, Hyler & Gardner (2017) report coaching or expert support in 30 of 35 effective programmes (Coaching and expert support appeared in 30 of 35 studies, with coached classrooms showing larger gains in a randomized trial [+M]). Neither compares sustained, practice-embedded PD with the same content as a one-off workshop, which is this pattern's own relationship. Beyond them the wiki holds: two reviews reported second-hand in one 1994 monograph (staff-development experiments mostly changed instruction and raised achievement against control teachers; the techniques that trained instructional skills); one review of 16 supervisory-coaching studies; one small quasi-experiment in which coaching changed four mathematics teachers' small-group moves; case studies of a three-year science program and of two teachers adapting a practice; programme reports, implementation studies and surveys from coaching and PD initiatives, which report sustained, followed-up and job-embedded PD, coaches' own support and district backing as conditions of success, and one difference-in-differences comparison of schools by how much standards-related professional learning they took part in, none comparing formats with the same content; and learner-level claims on feedback, contingent support and fading, carried to teachers by extrapolation. The sequence below is the earlier page's, kept as the default, with each step's evidence status stated; the doses are labelled proposals, and the response-dependent policy is an untested design proposal.

Inputs: establish the design brief

Field Record or elicit
Learner and starting observation Before any session, observe or video one lesson per teacher (or collect a lesson plan and a sample of student work if observation is impossible) and record how the target practice is currently enacted, using the same look-for list that will be used later. Record content familiarity in the subject the practice serves, role (new teacher, experienced teacher, faculty member, teaching assistant, volunteer), and whether participation is voluntary. Do not infer readiness from years of experience; keep unknowns as unknowns.
The practice Name one practice specific enough to observe in a lesson (for example "pose a question, give think time, take three responses before evaluating", or "run the curriculum's launch–explore–discuss lesson structure"), not a broad aim ("student-centered teaching"). Whether it is a teacher behavior (praise, questioning) or the faithful running of a specific academic task or program. Whether it needs content knowledge teachers may lack.
Context and activities Setting (classroom, online-instructor-led, mixed in-room and remote), span (single-session, days-weeks, term-plus), number of teachers, coach or facilitator hours available per teacher per month, whether release time or cover exists, whether lessons can be filmed, whether teams from one school or department can take part together, and whether the PD is linked to performance evaluation.
Learner-valued goal Ask each teacher what they want from it (a calmer class, a curriculum that works, students who talk more, getting through an inspection, career progression). Record where it differs from the designer's objective.
Designer objective Which change is the target: enactment of the named practice, faithful running of a specific program, teachers' own design of lessons using a framework, a team's shared routine, or a student outcome. Name the one the evaluation will weigh.
Outcome An observation instrument for the practice (a look-for checklist or coded video), used at baseline, during, at the end, and again at least six weeks after support ends; a student measure aligned with the practice, if student change is claimed; and teacher reports kept apart from observed practice.

A request to "design PD on formative assessment" or "run a coaching program" does not specify these. Ask what practice, observed how, over what span and with how much coach time, before choosing a format.

Sequence and conditional policy

The default sequence is the earlier page's seven steps, with doses added as labelled proposals. Steps 1, 3 and 7 are untested here; steps 2, 4, 5 and 6 have neighbouring claims, each carried by extrapolation.

  1. Diagnose starting points (weeks 0–2). Observe or film one lesson per teacher with the look-for list; look at a sample of student work; ask each teacher what they want from the PD. Use the result to set each teacher's first target and the coaching intensity. Evidence status: untested; from the earlier page. Content familiarity, not teaching experience, predicted reform-based practice [~M] (334 science teachers, one district partnership, an association) is a reason to diagnose content familiarity rather than sort teachers by years of service.
  2. Model the practice and its reasoning (launch: proposed one or two days, about 6–12 hours, before or at the start of the term). Show the practice live, on video or by think-aloud, with the reasoning for each decision, and present the rationale for it. Evidence status: the techniques that trained teachers' instructional skills [+M] (a review by Showers, Joyce and Bennett as a 1994 monograph reports it, no effect sizes): presentation of the rationale, demonstration and modeling, practice with feedback, and coaching for transfer to the classroom.
  3. Analyze together (within the launch). Teachers pick apart the modeled practice against student work, agreeing on what the look-for list will count. Evidence status: untested; from the earlier page.
  4. Rehearse with colleagues (within the launch, and 15–20 minutes at the start of each later team meeting). Teachers try the practice with peers acting as students and get feedback before using it with their classes. Evidence status: part of the same reported technique list [+M]; no claim tests rehearsal separately.
  5. Enact with support (proposed coaching cycles of two to three weeks each, four to six cycles across a term). Each cycle: a short planning conversation (20–30 minutes); the teacher teaches with the practice while the coach observes live or the teacher films the lesson; a debrief within two school days (30–45 minutes) that starts from the teacher's own viewing of the video, names one thing to keep and one change, and states what the students did. Feedback is about the enacted practice and students' responses, not about the teacher as a person. Evidence status: coaching aimed at the fidelity of a specific academic task [+M] and coaching to increase teacher praise [+M] (one review of 16 K–12 studies): coached behaviors rose, and studies of task fidelity met more quality indicators and showed more sustained outcomes. Group-level scaffolding training with on-the-job coaching [+M] changed two mathematics teachers' small-group moves against two matched teachers (five lessons each; more students took part in each interaction) but did not improve how well their content support was calibrated. Feedback at the task and process levels [+S] is from two meta-analyzes of learners and of performance generally, not of teachers. Video self-observation [+W] is teachers' report in one focus-group study. In one survey, coached teachers more often reported PD with enough time to try and evaluate new ideas, and most ranked one-to-one meetings and classroom visits as the most valuable contact [+W] (self-report, coached against non-coached teachers in one technology programme, no effect size).
  6. Reflect, iterate and fade (later cycles). Early cycles: the coach models in the teacher's class or co-teaches, and chooses the focus. Middle cycles: the teacher teaches, the coach observes and gives one focus. Late cycles: the teacher chooses the video segment and the focus, a colleague observes instead of the coach, and the coach meets monthly. Move a teacher on to the next practice, or to peer-only support, when the practice is seen at the agreed level in two consecutive observed lessons and the teacher can say why they made the choices they did (a proposal). Evidence status: contingent support [+M] and fading support [+M], both from studies of students in tutoring and example-based learning, carried to coaching by analogy; guidance that helps novices can become redundant as expertise grows [~M], from studies of trainees and students, is the reason to fade rather than hold support constant. Across four sites of one teacher-led PD network, lasting change was observed to be more likely where teachers tried strategies, got feedback and improved them over several workshops with coaches at hand [+W] (a cross-case observation, follow-up "variable yet indispensable", no comparison group).
  7. Sustain and check maintenance (after support ends). Fold the practice into a standing team routine: lesson study, peer observation or a professional learning community meeting every two to four weeks for about an hour. Observe again at least six weeks after coaching stops, with the same look-for list. Evidence status: untested; from the earlier page. Most coaching studies did not measure maintenance, and where it was measured it was not always kept [~M], which is why the later observation is in the design.

Total contact under this default is about 20–30 hours over a term, close to the earlier page's "20+ hours spread across a semester or year"; neither figure rests on a test here. Three reports bracket it. One randomised trial described in the Darling-Hammond review used 16 hours of workshops and seven biweekly coaching sessions over a semester, and coached classrooms gained more on a classroom-quality measure (coaching and expert support [+M], reported second-hand). In one technology programme, coached teachers averaged more than 16 hours of coaching over a school year, most at least 30 minutes a week [+W] (survey; dose described, not tested). And roughly 50 hours in one specific area [+W] is a recommendation reported second-hand from Darling-Hammond et al. (2009), whose printed evidence is a survey of how useful teachers found content-related PD, not a tested threshold. So the default keeps one term at about 20–30 hours for one narrow practice, and plans a second term (towards 40–50 hours) when the practice is broad or teachers also need content study (a proposal). The one program with a recorded dose, three years of PD for Leader Teachers [~M], gave nearly 500 hours and reports dramatic change by the third year, in one case study.

Observation Discriminating probe Proposed action, with its uncertainty
The teacher describes the practice well in sessions but it does not appear in the observed lesson Ask the teacher to plan the next lesson's use of it aloud, and ask what got in the way last time (time, class behavior, materials, a scheme of work). If they cannot plan it, the gap is in how to do it: model it in their class or co-teach. If they can plan it but something blocks it, change the constraint (materials, pacing, a smaller first version) rather than repeat the input. Neither branch is tested.
The practice appears, but in a changed form Ask what they changed and why; check whether the change keeps the practice's purpose (for example, students still do the thinking). If the purpose holds, accept the adaptation and record it. If time pressure has turned it into something else (faster, more procedural), negotiate a smaller version that keeps the purpose. Teachers synthesize PD practices with their context [~M] (two case teachers) is the reason not to score adaptation as failure.
The practice appears, but students' responses do not change Look at what students did in the filmed segment: who spoke, what they produced. If few students take part, change who the practice reaches (pair talk before whole-class talk, cold calling). If they take part but the work is weak, the gap may be the teacher's content knowledge or the task, not the routine: work on the task. Untested.
Low uptake: missed meetings, no filming, polite agreement and no change Ask privately what the teacher wants from this and what it costs them; check whether it is tied to their evaluation. If the PD is seen as evaluation, separate coaching from appraisal. If the cost is time, shrink the practice. Buy-in is seen as mediating coaching benefit [~W] (teachers' and coaches' views in one study).
The practice was in place at the end of coaching and has gone six weeks later Ask what replaced it and when it stopped. Restart a short coaching cycle, or put the practice into a team routine with a peer observer. Untested.
A teacher can run the modeled lessons but not design new ones with the framework Ask them to plan a lesson from scratch and compare it with the framework. Add co-planning and lesson-design feedback as a target of its own. Teachers had minimal success designing Constructive and Interactive activities after ICAP PD [-M].

Fitting the design to a situation

The three facts that most change the decision:

  • How specific and observable the target practice is. Coaching studies that targeted fidelity of a specific academic task met more quality indicators and showed more sustained outcomes than those targeting general teacher behaviors, and knowing a framework did not make teachers able to design lessons with it. If unstated, ask: what will an observer see in a lesson when the practice is in place?
  • How much coach or facilitator time each teacher gets, and over what span. Short, fragmented training is reported as hindering change, and the one recorded long program gave hundreds of hours; most real PD is a few hours. If unstated, ask: how many hours of a coach's or facilitator's time per teacher per month, for how many months, and is there release time?
  • Each teacher's content familiarity and current enactment of the practice, not years of experience. If unstated, ask: what does one of their lessons look like now, and how confident are they in the subject the practice serves?
If the brief says… Then change… Basis
New teachers in their first years, or student teachers on placement Keep the coach or mentor modeling in the teacher's own class for longer, observe weekly, debrief within a day, and fade only after two consecutive lessons at the agreed level; focus on one routine (often classroom management) at a time. For a student teacher, start with a short lesson (20–30 minutes) taught several times to small groups, revising between repetitions, before a whole class. Contingent support [+M] and fading [+M], from students, carried to teachers; repeating one short lesson six times with small groups let a mentee revise her classroom management and build confidence [+W] (one preservice case); doses untested
Experienced teachers adopting a new practice or curriculum Shorten modeling; start from the points where their current routine and the new practice clash; offer the principle and exemplars rather than a script; let them choose the video segment from the first cycle. Do not assume resistance from experience. Expertise reversal [~M] (trainees and students, not teachers); content familiarity, not experience, predicted reform practice [~M] (one association study)
Teachers with weak content knowledge in the subject the practice serves Add content study to the PD (doing the students' tasks as learners, then analysing them) before coaching the routine. Content familiarity predicted reform practice [~M]: an association, not a test of content PD
Teachers with low confidence, or a team reluctant to take part Use video of colleagues of similar standing rather than expert demonstrators; start with a small practice that can succeed in one lesson; keep coaching separate from appraisal; offer timing and credit that suit them. Buy-in is seen as mediating coaching [~W]; changed timing, offerings and credit drew in earlier non-participants [~W] (one program)
The target is teachers designing their own lessons with a framework, not running given ones Make lesson design the practiced task: co-plan, get feedback on the plan, then enact and debrief. Do not expect a knowledge course to produce it. Minimal success designing Constructive and Interactive activities after ICAP PD [-M]
One coach for many teachers, or scarce facilitator time (a coach across several schools, a busy term) Coach one practice at a time; replace live observation with a 5–10 minute teacher-chosen video clip and a 20-minute debrief; run rehearsal and later cycles in pairs or trios with peer observers; give the coach's time to the teachers whose observed enactment is furthest from the target. Untested proposal; coaching aimed at a specific academic task [+M] supports narrowing the target, not the shortened format
Some teachers join remotely while others are in the room, or coaching is wholly online Make filmed lessons the shared object for everyone; post clips before the meeting so remote teachers view them as the room does; pair each remote teacher with an in-room partner for rehearsal; debrief online within two school days. Untested proposal; video self-observation [+W] (web-mediated coaching, teachers' reports)
Only a single session is available (an inset day, a one-off workshop) Use it to model and rehearse one narrow practice and to set up a follow-up the school can run without the presenter: one peer observation with a look-for list within two weeks and one team meeting to review the clips. Do not promise changed practice from the session alone. Half of inservice activities lasted four hours or less, mostly talks or brief workshops [~W] (prevalence, not effect); short, fragmented training is reported to hinder a holistic view [-W]; the follow-up is untested
The brief names its own routine (a district observation rubric, a PLC protocol, a lesson-study cycle, a coaching model already in use) Keep it; change only what the evidence says matters: make sure its focus is one observable practice, that feedback follows an enactment with students, and that one observation happens after support ends. Untested in this form; coaching aimed at a specific academic task [+M]; maintenance rarely measured [~M]
Coaching is run by supervisors or is tied to performance evaluation Separate the coaching record from appraisal, or name plainly what the supervisor will see; expect mixed results and measure both teacher and student change. Supervisory coaching shows mixed effects [~M] (16 K–12 studies, 6 met all quality indicators)
A district or school system setting up or running a coaching programme (newly appointed coaches, coaches who also administer programmes) Give coaches their own ongoing PD and a mentor; keep most of each coach's time for planning–observation–debrief cycles with teachers rather than spreading it across programme administration; have district leaders remove scheduling and access barriers and say plainly that trying a new practice is expected. Ongoing PD and mentorship were described as critical to coaches' growth and confidence [+W] and district leaders' active role in removing barriers [+W] (one three-year qualitative study across 32 districts); the complexity of coaching responsibilities may fragment coaching [-W] (an author's rationale, no data)
PD to adopt a classroom technology tool or new instructional materials Coach the integration of the tool or materials into the teacher's own lessons, at least monthly, not the tool's features in a one-off session; before modeling, check how far the materials' teacher guide explains why each practice matters and how to do it, and supply that reasoning where it is thin; give teachers the materials alongside coaching. Monthly coaching sessions helped teachers integrate a writing tool with their instruction [+W] (one implementation study, no comparison); coached teachers reported more frequent impactful technology use [+W] (self-report survey); teacher guides of four maths curricula differ in how much they explain the same practice [~W] (a materials review, no teacher outcome); materials paired with coaching went with larger effects on instruction [~M] (an association across studies)
Scaling through lead teachers or train-the-trainer Give lead teachers released time, principal support, and their own coaching on how to coach; plan for uneven spread and observe colleagues' practice, not the lead teachers' only. Leader-teacher diffusion was uneven [~M] (one three-year program)
District- or statewide rollout of one PD model to all schools Pilot with observation of practice and a student measure before scaling; budget follow-up coaching rather than more presenter days. Hunter's ITIP lacked evidence of improved achievement as implemented under typical conditions [-M] (a review reported second-hand)
Higher-education faculty, teaching assistants or adult-education tutors (adults in work settings with little release time) Use the same cycle with a peer observer from the same department; let the observed session be a seminar, lab or online class; time the cycle to the teaching calendar (one cycle per three or four weeks of teaching). Untested; the coaching claims are from K–12 classrooms
A real audience for the teachers' work (a public research lesson, a showcase, a conference) Use it as the end of the arc: the team plans, teaches and revises one research lesson observed by colleagues, with the debrief about students' responses, not the teacher's performance. Untested proposal; see lesson study

Fourteen of the sixteen rows cite a claim, and each such claim is carried to teachers, settings or formats it did not test, as its Basis cell says; in the one-coach, mixed-mode and single-session rows the claim covers only part of the move (the shortened formats and the follow-up are untested), the faculty and public-audience rows are untested proposals; and the district-programme and materials-adoption rows rest on single qualitative studies, surveys and a materials review, none of which compares one arrangement with another.

Choosing configurations from evidence

Do not rank coaching against workshops, or one PD model against another, from these claims: the coaching meta-analysis (Kraft et al. 2018, recorded above) compares coaching with no coaching, not with a workshop on the same content, and its moderator results are associations across studies. Do not read teachers' satisfaction or stated intentions as changed practice. A precise abstention names the missing comparison (coached, practice-embedded PD against the same content as a workshop, on observed practice and a student measure at a stated delay) and the local observation that would stand in for it: the same look-for list at baseline, at the end, and six weeks after support ends.

The evidence by question

Further evidence, not yet read against this model

Read against the model on 2026-10-19. Of the twelve claims that had gathered here, ten now sit in the model above: four were already cited in it (the observation table and situation rows) and were read again, and the TEFA, coaching-complexity, coach-support, monthly-coaching, Chicago professional-learning and teacher-guide claims were moved into the default sequence, two new situation rows, ## Choosing configurations from evidence and the evidence-by-question list. The thirteen claims the linker added under ## Claims below were read at the same time; eleven of them are now in the model too. The four below were read and left here, because they do not change a design decision on this page.

Illustrative design instance and observation record

Invented illustration, not a tested program. A district adopts a new middle-school mathematics curriculum. One coach serves 18 teachers across three schools for a year, with about three hours a month per teacher; four teachers at one school join meetings remotely. The table changed the default: the target is one observable practice from the curriculum (running the lesson's closing discussion so that students compare two solutions), not "the new curriculum"; the launch is one day in which teachers do two lessons as students, watch a filmed closing discussion and rehearse it in trios; coaching runs in three-week cycles, with teachers filming a 10-minute closing discussion and the coach debriefing for 20 minutes online within two days; the coach spends extra cycles on the five teachers whose baseline lessons had no closing discussion; remote teachers watch the same clips and rehearse with an in-room partner. A teacher says she wants her quieter students to speak; the designer's objective is faithful use of the closing discussion. They agree to record both how many students speak and whether two solutions are compared, and to observe again in the eighth week after coaching ends. The coaching claims come from other practices, settings and populations; these are local choices to observe, not settled ones.

Record: target practice and its look-for list → teacher's content familiarity, role and stated aim → baseline enactment → modeling and rehearsal given → each cycle's observed enactment, the feedback focus and who chose it → students' observed responses → support withdrawn and when → candidate explanations for any gap (does not know how, is blocked by a constraint, has adapted it, does not value it) and their basis → enactment at the end and at the later check. Preserve the teacher's stated aim and any change in it. An agent may summarize this record but must not fabricate missing observations or assign numerical probabilities of practice change without a calibrated model.

Elements and limits

Coaching, modeling, demonstration, think-aloud, observation, video-based reflection, feedback, fading, reflection, class discussion, check-in and assessment. Strategies that carry parts of the cycle: instructional coaching, peer coaching, lesson study and professional learning communities. Principles it draws on: Scaffolding and Fading, Communities of Practice, Active Learning and Assessment for Learning.

This pattern is scoped to changing one observable teaching practice through enactment and feedback over a term or more. Building a standing professional community, changing a school's organization or policy, and initial teacher education as a whole need other configurations. The policy supports observation and design reasoning; whether this configuration changes practice and student outcomes more than a workshop of the same content, for which teachers, at what cost in coach time and for how long after support ends, remains to be tested here.

Claims

Examples

Reading Recovery (https://www.readingrecovery.org): Teachers receive a year of training behind a one-way mirror, observing expert lessons, teaching with live coaching, and discussing decisions afterward — a full apprenticeship cycle with fading support.

MyTeachingPartner (https://curry.virginia.edu/myteachingpartner): Web-mediated coaching in which teachers upload classroom video and receive consultant feedback on teacher–student interactions; randomized trials show improved instructional quality and student outcomes.

Japan's lesson study (jugyō kenkyū): Teacher teams collaboratively plan, observe, and refine a single research lesson over weeks — collective participation, practice focus, and sustained duration in one structure.

NCSM / Illustrative Mathematics professional learning (https://illustrativemathematics.org): Curriculum-embedded PD in which teachers experience the lessons as learners, then analyze and rehearse facilitation — coherence with enacted materials. - Use the coaching framework as a structured discussion guide with a note-taking grid and study group questions - Sustain tutor quality through layered professional development: live and asynchronous learning, observations, coaching, and weekly office hours - Instructional Commons: record and disseminate top teachers' full-year instruction for peer-to-peer professional use - Sustained classroom-embedded professional development through demonstration teachers - Level 3 sustaining efforts: extend coach learning and foster independent teacher learning communities - Professional Learning Communities - Certified Executive Coaches provide side-by-side professional development and improvement science support for ARC Core implementation - Provide professional development on the pedagogy and content of ethnic studies before implementing new ethnic studies standards - Peer Teacher Workshops (PTWs) - Redesign workshop structure, content, timing, and location in response to non-participant barriers - Teaching is My Favorite Color: teacher-designed support network for teachers of color - Design educator preparation around pedagogical alignment, tightly linked clinical experiences, and a developmental approach to educator learning - Video-based coaching cycles in which teachers analyze their own discussions, practice talk moves, and reflect on effectiveness

Key Sources

  • Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., & Gardner, M. (2017). Effective teacher professional development. Learning Policy Institute. doi:10.54300/122.311
  • Kraft, M. A., Blazar, D., & Hogan, D. (2018). The effect of teacher coaching on instruction and achievement: A meta-analysis of the causal evidence. Review of Educational Research, 88(4), 547–588. doi:10.3102/0034654318759268
  • Guskey, T. R. (2000). Evaluating professional development. Corwin Press.
  • Darling-Hammond, L., Wei, R. C., Andree, A., Richardson, N., & Orphanos, S. (2009). Professional learning in the learning profession: A status report on teacher development in the United States and abroad. National Staff Development Council.
  • Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H., & Fung, I. (2007). Teacher professional learning and development: Best evidence synthesis iteration. New Zealand Ministry of Education.
  • Smith, A. T. (2009). Considering Literacy Coaching Responsibilities in Terms of Teacher Change. University of Washington Bothell. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED530353
  • Dozier, C. L. (2008). Literacy coaching: Engaging and learning with teachers. The Language and Literacy Spectrum, 18. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1059644
  • Comprehensive Early Literacy Policy: Fundamental Principles. (2024). ExcelinEd Policy Toolkit. https://www.excelined.org
  • Corcoran, Tom. (2003). The Merck Institute for Science Education: A Successful Intermediary for Education Reform. CPRE Research Report Series RR-052. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED480404 doi:10.1037/e383112004-001
  • Feiman-Nemser, Sharon, et al. (1994). Guiding Teacher Learning: Insider Studies of Classroom-Based Work with Teachers. Craft Paper 94-1. National Center for Research on Teacher Learning. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED377169
Page metadata
Field Value
type pattern
id professional-development
aliases coaching-level-2-necessary-supports-implementation-and-dialogue, coaching-level-3-sustaining-efforts-coach-learning-and-independence, ground-conversations-in-childrens-work, guided-practice-four-purposes
title Professional Development
description A reusable policy for teachers: one observable classroom practice is modelled, rehearsed, enacted with the teacher's own students and given feedback in coaching cycles over a term, with support faded and use checked later; expected to change observed practice where the target is specific and coach time is sustained, though no claim here compares it with one-off workshops.
status review
grain_size program
author Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Gardner (2017); Guskey (2000)
moved_from principle/coach-advocates-for-teachers-purposeful-change, principle/curriculum-embedded-teacher-led-sustained-pd, principle/hqim-adoption-with-professional-development
canonical True
generated by claude/unspecified on 2026-10-19
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 5 — smith-2009, dozier-2008, comprehensive-early-literacy-policy-fundamental-principles-2024, corcoran-2003, feiman-nemser-1994

Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.