Twice each year, the Wyoming Department of Education (WDE) delivers professional development events for its staff. And while the department was confident in its ability to identify topics that resonate with its staff, it was less confident in its approach to planning the events. For that reason, WDE requested support from the Region 11 Comprehensive Center (R11CC) to help its division leaders formulate a draft framework for its 2024 professional development events, called Division Days, scheduled for May and August.

Through the process, R11CC centered its WDE support and capacity building on four key steps drawn from improvement science, steps that can assist any state education agency or district improve its planning for professional learning events.

Step 1: Clarify roles and plan

As a first step, identify the roles, structures, and goals for the event. This should involve high-level conversations about who will lead the event, who will develop the sessions, and how the event will be structured (for example, lectures vs. breakout sessions).

This is also an ideal time to determine the scope of the event by defining the event as a professional development or professional learning event. Typically, professional development is something done to teachers/staff in a one-size-fits-all fashion, such as a one-time event, training workshop, or seminar. Professional learning is an ongoing, job-embedded learning done for and with its teachers/staff to meet staff where they are and engage them in making substantive, lasting change. The planning framework can cover both types of events, but the steps and expected outcomes/impact will differ based on the selection. For the WDE Division Days, the events were structured as professional development days. Other WDE events in the future may fall into the professional learning category.

Step 2: Define a common language

Early in the planning process, define the learning terms that will be used during the session. This is an important early step that can eliminate confusion among planners, speakers, and attendees about terms that may be commonly used but often aren’t commonly defined.

For example, for the May WDE event, which focused on personal effectiveness, the planning team defined terms like personal wellness, physical wellness, time management, prioritization skills, and efficiency practices. Some of the terms were large enough that aspects of the definition required their own definitions, such as prioritization skills, which included additional terms such as identifying importance, assessing urgency, and weighing impact. For the August session on professional standards, the division leaders identified and defined nine terms, including customer service, leadership, communications, and accountability. Defining specific terms can also help leaders set event expectations. For example, the August planning team hoped to clarify expectations, encourage consistent behavior, and support a culture of continuous improvement and excellence within the organization.

Step 3. Review evidence-based practices

While professional development events are a cornerstone for most industries, these events don’t always equate to changes in behavior. Simply put, there’s a lot of old habits that don’t follow best practices.

According to evidence-based resources such as Designing Better Professional Learning with the Brain in Mind and  Designing Successful Professional Meetings and Conferences in Education, events should be structured in a way that maximizes the learning of participants. For example, McREL’s brain-based model of professional learning uses a 6-phase model that turns neuroscience research into a practical framework for how learning can best be sequenced and supported, helping event planners design their presentations to better reflect how our brains process and retain new information.

6-phase model for professional learning

McREL’s 6-Phase Learning Model

After collectively reviewing evidence-based practices for professional learning, planning teams should create a norms document. This document will set the stage for participant engagement expectations and should be used whenever delivering professional development and learning events and activities. The norms document WDE created included nine items:

  • Come prepared, get/remain curious, stay engaged.
  • Be open to giving and receiving feedback.
  • Set personal goals for learning.
  • Spend reflection time on your learning.
  • Select a peer to discuss your learning and the application of your learning.
  • Take time to process learning with your team.
  • Understand that professional learning is about improving your performance.
  • New knowledge and skill development requires repetition for it to stick in long term memory.
  • It will take four to six weeks to apply your learning to your work.

Step 4. Drafting a planning framework

After clarifying roles and goals, defining standards and terms, and reviewing, discussing, and synthesizing the research, it is now time to draft a planning framework. The goal for the framework is to be something that can be used each time a team comes together to plan a professional development or professional learning event.

Your framework should include several editable sections:

  1. The event objective(s). For example, “Develop a professional development plan for staff on the topic of professional standards and increase staff awareness and commitment to professional standards.”
  2. The schedule for the event. In addition to the date and the hourly schedule, the types of sessions should be included here. For example, WDE started the day at 8 a.m. with an hour of office time, followed by 3 hours of interactive and breakout sessions, followed by lunch/office check-in, and then the rest of the day was devoted to team implementation time.
  3. The planning team members. List names, titles, and contact information for those involved in planning the event.
  4. An overview of the topic at hand. A bulleted list of the topics the event intends to cover is sufficient.
  5. The planning framework topics. This outlines the steps a planning team should follow to plan their event. It takes all the preplanning and research into account to create a step-by-step list for planners to follow.

Using the August WDE event as an example, their team broke the planning framework topics into four categories:

  • The first category asks planners to determine the desired impact of the event and potential evaluation questions that correspond to the desired level of impact. It outlines five levels of impact: participants’ reactions, participants’ learning, organizational support and change, participants’ use of new knowledge and skills, and staff learning outcomes. All events might not achieve all five levels, as some are more aligned with ongoing professional learning sessions than one-time professional development events. But the level of impact will dictate the design of the event or activity.
  • The second category is to consider is how adults learn, discussing the evidence-based learning model and crafting the session’s agenda to follow the six phases: become interested; commit to learning; focus on new learning; make sense of learning; practice and reflect; and extend and apply.
  • The third category highlights effective adult learning elements. The list includes strategies to support how adults learn and included things like clear learning objectives, relevant and applicable materials, and assessment and evaluation, all of which can be customized to the event’s topic.
  • The fourth category is revisiting professional learning norms.

By following this planning framework, WDE staff can take any topic they want to highlight at their Division Days and thoughtfully plan an event that is sequenced in a way to maximize learning and engagement. As with all continuous improvement efforts, the draft can be adapted based on feedback following events to ensure it is helping support the creation of the best events possible for WDE and its staff.

For more information about designing, planning, and delivering effective professional learning, please contact Joe Simpson.