Deeper professional learning: how leaders design for teachers to share their deeper learning practices

A core challenge for leaders for deeper learning is scaling promising practices to provide students with systematic access to deeper learning experiences. This case illuminates how a group of researchers organized professional learning activities around conferring, a promising deeper learning practice.

The author examines how the leaders of a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) created the conditions for teachers to share their deeper learning practices through a case study. The case study centers on one school team’s learning through their participation in the NIC activities, as evidenced by the artifacts they created and their exchanges with their team, participants from other schools and researchers.

The trajectory of one team through three NIC activities – a video club, a pitch and user testing – shows how they examined their own conferring practice, got ideas for change and shifted their thinking and practice toward a more student-centered approach. Insights from the case suggest three design principles – a common problem of practice, shared representations of practice and intentional network configurations – for deeper professional learning, or learning experiences that engage educators in purposeful and collaborative inquiry into deeper learning practices.

Two limitations of the case are a lack of data on the perceived experience of participants, which could speak to the depth of Irving’s shift toward student-centered conferring, and the narrow time scope of the NIC, which limits exploration of the sustainability of the changes to conferring.

The design principles represent important features for researchers and leaders to consider in ongoing efforts to scale deeper learning. Leaders might use the principles to examine existing or future professional learning efforts.

This case study extends an understanding of one facet of leadership for deeper learning: fostering professional community. Future research is needed to examine the educator experience of participating in deeper professional learning and its sustained impact on practices.