At a Glance

Implementation fidelity of principles of professional development content and processes associated with school reform instructional practice improvements positively affects the degree of change in teacher practice.

The Study

Kisa, Z. & Correnti, R. (2015). Examining implementation fidelity in America’s Choice schools: A longitudinal analysis of changes in professional development associated with changes in teacher practice. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 37(4), 437-457.

What This Means For Practitioners

Whole-school improvement depends on teachers’ capacity to implement associated instructional practices. Such reform requires professional learning to align teaching with the reform being implemented. The principles driving America’s Choice professional development content and process are drawn from the same research that undergirds Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning (Learning Forward, 2011).

This study demonstrates that attention to both the content and process of professional learning is equally important in supporting teachers’ implementation of new instructional practices and that the professional learning is sufficiently sustained over time to achieve high levels of implementation.

The study also illuminates the complexity of measuring implementation of content and process and expected changes. Researchers stress that specifying the theory of change and a clearly delineated logic model to operationalize the content, process, and expected changes as well as the expected content and process and how they might change over time requires reform leaders to describe with explicitly measurable specificity what those changes are.

These findings are strongly aligned with the Outcomes (content), Learning Designs (process), and Data (evaluation) standards of Learning Forward’s Standards for Professional Learning (Learning Forward, 2011).

When the outcomes of professional learning are clearly delineated and aligned to research- and evidence-based practices and students’ expected learning outcomes, and when the learning designs employ powerful strategies for both developing content knowledge and supporting transfer to practice — including training, coaching, and other forms of personalized, classroom-based supports, access to appropriate curriculum, and opportunities to plan instruction — the level of implementation of the desired change in practice is higher.

In addition, being able to measure the rate of change and the consistency of the professional learning treatment provides important data to adjust its implementation to achieve greater effects in changes in teacher practice.

Reference : Learning Forward. (2011). Standards for Professional Learning. Oxford, OH: Author.