Teachers’ Professional Development
The High Performance Management
Model
Marc Tucker, CEO and President of NCEE
Professional-Model Work Organization
in the High Performance Law Firm
Senior
Partner
Partner
Associate
Managing
Partner
Moving Up
• More compensation
• More authority
• More responsibility
• More status (in the firm and the community)
• Greater esteem ***
Moving Up – How You Get There
• Get better and better at the work
• Lawyering
• Developing others
• Leading others
• How you get better at the work
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Read everything you can get your hands on
Research your cases
Observe the best attorneys
Get the most out of your coaches and mentors
• You are learning all the time. It is built into
the warp and woof of your work
Why It Works
• Advancement is based on doing your job
to a high standard, which requires:
• Increasing your own expertise
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Constant reading
Observing
Critiquing the work of others
Practicing in front of others and getting their
critiques
• Getting mentored and coached
• Developing the expertise of others
Teacher Development: U.S. Model
• “Workshop” model
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Lectures given to classes of teachers
Agenda comes from others, not the teachers
Time away from the work
Disconnected from the life of the school
• Improvement in teacher expertise tops out after a
few years
• Teachers learn what they have to learn to be “good
enough”; no incentive to do any better; job the same
at the end as at the beginning
• Teachers will sit through PD if they are paid to do so,
keeping one eye on their watch
Teacher Development:
The “Shanghai Model”
• Begins with career ladder; movement up
the ladder based on:
• increasing expertise as teacher and
• increasing demonstrated ability to develop
other teachers and to lead them in the work
of improving instruction in the school
• Much more time for teachers to work in
teams to improve every aspect of school
operations, especially instruction
Teacher Development:
The “Shanghai Model”
• Teachers work in teams, do their own research, use
continuous improvement cycle
• Set clear objective
• Read global research literature to determine best
practice
• Build development plan based on the best global
research
• Build research and evaluation plan to track project
success
• Develop new instructional approach
• Implement, observe, critique, correct course, evaluate,
correct course
Teacher Development:
The “Shanghai Model”
• Teachers in upper ranges of career ladder
responsible for mentoring, coaching others,
leading others
• In Shanghai, everyone except master teachers has
a mentor/message: everyone can get better
Teacher Development:
The “Shanghai Model”
• So where is the Professional Development?
• Woven into the work
• Pervasive coaching and mentoring from highly
accomplished senior teachers in your own school
• Teachers in each other’s classrooms all the time,
observing, critiquing, learning from each other
• Teachers working in teams, constantly doing research
on the literature related to the improvement projects
they are working on
• Teachers doing action research which gets published in
journals read by other teachers
• Teachers reading the literature and taking workshops of
their choosing, not to accumulate credits but to build
expertise that will be rewarded in career advancement
Key Features Compared: Shanghai,
Singapore, Hong Kong, British Columbia
• Career ladder system for teachers and principals
• Teachers expected to get better and better at the work
• PD woven into the work, seen as driver of school
improvement
• Teachers responsible for their own learning and the
learning of other teachers
• Time set aside every week for sustained collaborative
school improvement projects
• School-based research, continuous improvement system
• Teachers mentor, lead, publish research
• Supervisors rewarded for effective PD of faculty
Question
• Singapore and Shanghai have very well
developed career ladders that are at the
center of their professional development
systems
• Hong Kong and British Columbia do not,
but are also top performers
• Can we conclude that career ladders are not
essential features of high performance
professional development systems?
My Answer: YES!
• Hong Kong and British Columbia:
• Select from higher segments of their high school
graduating classes than the U.S.
• Have stronger teacher education institutions than
the U.S.
• Provide more support to practicing teachers than
the U.S.
• Have stronger professional cultures than the U.S.
• U.S. will not succeed unless very strong
measures are taken to incentivize practicing
teachers to continually improve their expertise
• Strong career ladder systems are the most
powerful tool available to do that