Evaluating Professional Learning
How do you evaluate professional learning?
Evaluation of professional learning is an essential part of sustaining an effective learning and teaching cutlure.
This page provides you with a tool for planning and evaluating professional development within your school.
"Just as teachers plan carefully and make ongoing assessments of student learning as an integral part of the instructional process, they need to make evaluation an integral part of their own professional development process. (Guskey, T.R. (2000) Evaluating professional development).
Thomas Guskey (Journal of Staff Development, v37 n1 pp.32-37 Feb 2016) has designed a five level tool for evaluating professional learning. The five levels in this model are hierarchically arranged, from simple to more complex. Each level builds on the level that precedes it. The five levels are:
- Level 1: Participants’ reactions – Did they like the PD? Did they believe their time was well spent? Did the content and material make sense to them? Were the activities well-planned and meaningful? Was the leader knowledgeable, credible, and helpful? Did they find the information useful? Were the amenities satisfactory? Questionnaires are the best way to gather data on this level of satisfaction.
- Level 2: Participants’ learning – Did they learn what they came to learn? What new knowledge, skills, attitudes, and dispositions were acquired? Gathering information on this level is a little more difficult than gathering information on the “happiness quotient” at Level 1.
- Level 3: Organizational support and change – These are key elements that must be in place “back home” for a professional learning experience to bear fruit. For example, if teachers attend a workshop on cooperative learning, master the key principles and practices, and return to their district full of enthusiasm, only to find that their students will be graded on a curve in a highly competitive environment, the PD won’t have much impact.
- Level 4: Participants’ use of what they learned – Did the new knowledge and skills make a difference in teachers’ professional practice? Data on this question can be gathered only by thoughtful classroom observations in participants’ schools.
- Level 5: Student learning outcomes – This is the true bottom line: Did the professional learning benefit students in specific, measurable ways? It’s important to look at a broad range of possible outcomes, measured in valid and reliable ways that are linked to the intervention. Data could come from student test scores, performance tasks, grades, student surveys, staff questionnaires, and other measures. Suppose, for example, that students’ test scores went up as a result of changed professional practices – but more students dropped out.
I have taken this summary from Does It Make a Difference? Evaluating Professional Development, Thomas R. Guskey, ASCD Educational Leadership 59:6, March 2002.