For the past 25 years, I’ve been studying professional learning in schools. During that time, I’ve conducted several formal and informal studies of coaching and worked with more than 100,000 educators from all continents except Antarctica. This work has provided me with many “learning opportunities,” which is a nice way of saying I’ve made my fair share of mistakes.
In reflecting on what I have learned, I have identified several myths about professional learning that I used to believe in and that persist in our collective educator consciousness—even though they have been proven not to be true. By describing these myths and explaining why they have proven to be false for me, along with an alternative, “what if,” scenario, I invite you to reflect on your own understanding of teacher learning and real change.
Myth 1: Workshops Change Practice
When I started providing professional development more than 25 years ago, workshops were my main form of delivery, and to this day workshops continue to be one of the most popular forms of professional development for educators around the world. Several times a year, teachers gather in large rooms and listen to consultants share ideas about teaching or other aspects of effective schools. Workshops seem like a cost-effective way of changing practices since so many educators can receive training at the same time.
Unfortunately, people rarely implement what they learn in workshops, often because they quickly forget most of what they hear. In fact, according to the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve (1913), people forget 50 percent of what they hear within 24 hours and 70–80 percent of what they learn within a week. The small number of teachers who do implement what they learn in workshops, I suspect, are only able to do so by reteaching themselves what they learned.
Additionally, because workshops offer a “one-size-fits-all” approach to change, they often fail to address individual teachers’ most pressing concerns. They may also create a “one-down” situation, with an expert telling teachers what practices they should adopt, leaving teachers feeling imposed upon rather than engaged (Schein, 2011).
Additionally, because workshops offer a “one-size-fits-all” approach to change, they often fail to address individual teachers’ most pressing concerns. They may also create a “one-down” situation, with an expert telling teachers what practices they should adopt, leaving teachers feeling imposed upon rather than engaged (Schein, 2011).
For these reasons, it is no wonder that the strategies shared in workshops often aren’t implemented successfully (if they are implemented at all). Further compounding the issue is the reality that when educators see that what was shared in workshops is not being implemented, their commitment to change decreases. Each time a workshop comes and goes without implementation, teachers become less and less likely to pay attention to new change initiatives.
As a result, the phrase “this too shall pass” is frequently heard in schools that rely heavily on workshops for professional development. Finally, workshop topics are often presented in disorganized or conflicting ways, which makes it difficult for teachers to make sense of learning and further erodes teachers’ openness to change.
Despite these limitations, workshops do serve an important purpose—they can increase awareness of effective practices and reinforce district-wide knowledge of innovations. But they are insufficient on their own. What I have learned about workshops reinforces what Joyce and Showers (1982) found more than four decades ago: Real, deep change likely won’t happen unless workshops are supported by follow-up professional development such as peer or instructional coaching.
What if change leaders recognized that workshops provide awareness but not real change, and used that insight to provide forms of professional development, like coaching, that lead to real, sustained change?
What if change leaders recognized that workshops provide awareness but not real change, and used that insight to provide forms of professional development, like coaching, that lead to real, sustained change?
Myth 2: Teachers Resist Change
One of the questions I’m asked most frequently when I work with coaches and leaders is: “What should we do about resistant teachers?” I used to ask myself the same question when I started out leading professional development activities and didn’t see the expected results. I would explain the research supporting what I shared, talk about my successes using the strategies, and advise teachers to implement the practices I had used. However, more often than not teachers didn’t implement the practices I suggested. So eventually I became convinced that resistance to change was a common human trait.
What I have learned, however, is that people don’t resist change, per se. They only resist change they don’t feel comfortable with or don’t see the point to.
Grenny, Patterson, and their colleagues (2013) identify two critical questions that determine whether or not someone will implement a change: Is it worth it? and Can I do it? When someone is offered a chance to implement something they think is worthwhile and they think they can do, they’ll do it. The opposite is also true. When someone is asked to do something they don’t think is worth it or they don’t think they can do, they likely won’t do it. They may comply to meet the minimum expectations to avoid conflict or criticism, but they won’t go the distance. People are very skilled at nodding their head yes and doing nothing.
Miller and Rollnick (2013), who have dedicated their professional lives to studying the personal experience of change, suggest that we stop talking about resistance and start talking about misalignment. Leaders and coaches can achieve alignment by partnering with teachers to identify what teachers most need and then providing a pathway to that preferred future. In short, professional development that helps teachers see reality more clearly and set powerful goals that they consider important for their students is more likely to lead to real change.
In the end, blaming teachers for resisting is like blaming students for not learning. A better approach is to start creating the conditions that make it possible for real change to happen. So, instead of blaming teachers for resisting change, I now ask, “What am I doing that leads to teachers not implementing?”
In the end, blaming teachers for resisting is like blaming students for not learning. A better approach is to start creating the conditions that make it possible for real change to happen. So, instead of blaming teachers for resisting change, I now ask, “What am I doing that leads to teachers not implementing?”
What if change leaders focused on alignment rather than resistance by asking teachers what they need and then providing sustainable professional development that supports teachers’ professional learning in those domains?
Blaming teachers for resisting is like blaming students for not learning. A better approach is to create conditions that make real change possible.
Myth 3: People Are Motivated by Goals That Others Set for Them
When my colleagues and I first started studying professional development, we found ourselves misaligned with teachers because we underestimated the importance of emotional commitment to change. We believed that teachers would be motivated to change if we just told them what to do and why it was important. But after many years, we realized that we were confusing goal setting with goal attainment. That is, just because a goal is set, that doesn’t mean it will be hit. The research is quite clear that when a person doesn’t care about a goal or feel ownership of it, they most likely won’t attain it.
Sadly, the myth that teachers will embrace goals that others set for them is at the heart of most teachers’ individual professional development plans. A school leader might observe a teacher’s lesson, write up an evaluation based on that observation, and then tell the teacher what they need to do. This kind of top-down professional development can turn professional learning into a box to be checked. Busy teachers try to do what they’re told in the easiest way possible, and, not surprisingly, statements like “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it” become common in schools with a culture of compliance rather than collaboration.
Lastly, when leaders and other change agents set goals for teachers, the leaders and change agents, rather than the teachers, own the solution. In contrast, when teachers set goals in partnership with leaders, they have ownership of the proposed plan and, therefore, are more motivated to carry it out.
What if change leaders partnered with teachers so that teachers develop powerful goals that they are personally committed to hitting because those goals respond to their most pressing concerns for their students?
Myth 4: Coaches and Leaders Don’t Need to Have a Deep Understanding of the Teaching Strategies They Share
When I started out providing professional development, I didn’t believe this was true, of course, and I suspect that there aren’t many leaders or coaches who would argue that they don’t need to have a deep understanding of the strategies they share. However, actions often reveal reality. When I ask coaches and other leaders to create checklists for the strategies they share, for example, I find that they often don’t have a deep, nuanced understanding of the strategies they are sharing with teachers. They may think they know the strategies, but they often struggle to describe precisely what those strategies will look like when implemented in the classroom. And if coaches and leaders can’t describe strategies precisely, teachers won’t know how to implement them.
This is why I suggest that coaches and other leaders create what I call instructional playbooks (Knight et al., 2020) for the strategies they share. Instructional playbooks are documents that consist of (a) a list of 15–20 high-impact strategies teachers can use to hit goals, (b) one-page summaries of each strategy and the research behind it, and (c) a checklist that describes the specific elements of the strategy and how to implement it.
Creating effective “one-pagers” and checklists requires coaches and leaders to carefully study strategies and think deeply about how they should and shouldn’t be implemented. And as a result of this work, they have a communication tool that they can use to convey clearly to teachers what the research says about how a strategy should be implemented to be effective.
What if change leaders created playbooks that require deep knowledge to be created and that lead to deeper communication to help teachers implement new strategies effectively?
High-quality teaching should be measured by student learning and well-being, not by rigid adherence to a prescribed checklist.
Myth 5: Teacher Improvement Begins with Proven Practices Implemented with Fidelity
When I started out as a professional development provider, I had experienced the power of explicit instruction to teach students and had completed a rigorous process to become a certified professional development provider; that is, I was equipped with proven practices ready to be shared. So I started providing training with the expectation that teachers would implement what I shared and that when they subsequently changed how they taught, it would have a positive impact on student learning. This strategy-first way of thinking can be illustrated as:
Research ➜ Consultant ➜ Teacher ➜ Student.
This model of professional development remains very popular today. Indeed, it is supported by a sensible logic that goes somewhat like this: Research has shown certain strategies increase student achievement. Let’s hire someone to teach our teachers how to implement those strategies. Then, let’s construct observation tools to make sure that teachers are implementing those strategies. Next, the logic goes, if teachers implement with fidelity the teaching practices identified by research to be most effective, our students will most certainly improve.
As you might have guessed, there are several problems with this model. In some cases, a focus on a particular model of instruction (say, direct instruction or inquiry) can lead to a kind of tribalism that limits critical thinking about teaching. Professional developers or teachers become so fixated on one ideology of instruction that they are unable to see the strengths of other ideologies. In extreme cases, talking about teaching can be as polarizing as talking about politics or religion.
Further, if we don’t involve teachers in talking about their perspective on teaching and instead adopt a one-size-fits-all model, we fail to account for classroom diversity and put the focus on procedural adherence rather than student outcomes. The focus of professional development shouldn’t be that every box on a checklist has been ticked and the teachers have taught with absolute fidelity. The real focus should be to ensure there are powerful improvements in student learning, achievement, and well-being.
The emphasis on strategies being implemented the same way in all classes underestimates the complexity of classrooms. Every class has a mixture of unique students moving at their own pace with their own individual needs and strengths, and rarely does a strategy perfectly fit the needs of every student. As a result, in the coaching we do now, most of the time is spent on adapting strategies until student-focused goals are hit.
Another issue is that when teachers first implement strategies, they’re likely just learning them, and consequently they struggle to implement them effectively. As a result, teachers either stop using the strategies or modify them to fit their existing pedagogical approaches. To turn this tendency around, professional developers can partner with teachers to set a student-focused goal and help the teacher refine and improve the practices until the goal is hit. A student-focused goal provides an authentic standard for excellence in a way that no checklist ever can. To hit that standard, teachers have to become good at implementing the strategy, and when they get good at it and then see the results with their students, they are more likely to sustain implementation.
The use of student-focused goals also provides an objective standard for measuring the effectiveness of strategies: Did the strategy change the learning, engagement, or well-being of students? When things have changed for students, the strategy has been effective, even if it has been adapted. On the other hand, if there’s no change in students, even if the strategy has been implemented effectively, I don’t think we can honestly say the strategy has worked. For these reasons, we suggest that high-quality teaching be measured by student learning and well-being, not by adherence to a checklist. Certainly, checklists can make it easier for teachers to learn new strategies, but they almost always have to be adapted to best meet students’ unique needs. Coaches can support this by helping teachers set and achieve student-centered goals, starting with students and moving to the teacher. This student-first model should look like:
Student ➜ Teacher ➜ Coach ➜ Research.
What if change leaders prioritized authentic, adaptable practices that truly benefit students over rigid processes?
What if change leaders prioritized authentic, adaptable practices that truly benefit students over rigid processes?
Paths to Success
The five myths described here—myths that I had to overcome in my own professional development—all underestimate the complex nature of change and the importance of teacher agency in the change process. When change efforts take the form of workshops without follow-up, assigning goals to teachers, labeling teachers as resistant, change leaders who don’t have a deep understanding of practices, and professional development that is focused on strategies rather than students, we shouldn’t be surprised if we don’t get the outcome we expect. However, when we involve teachers in developing their professional learning, when change agents have a deep understanding of the strategies they share, when we stop labeling teachers as resistant and start creating the conditions for teachers to set goals that they care about and—above all—when we start with kids, we should expect greater success.
Reflect & Discuss
➛ Which of the professional learning myths persist in your school or district? Why, and what could you do to disrupt these presumptions?
➛ Consider the best and most impactful professional learning initiatives you’ve been a part of. What do they have in common?
➛ What steps could you take to make teacher professional learning in your school or district more student-centered, as Knight suggests?
The Definitive Guide to Instructional Coaching
Jim Knight offers instructional coaches detailed strategies for collaborating with teachers in ways that are substantive and focused on student success.
