Bad attitudes: how deficit thinking corrupts professional development

Why we can't "PD" the problems out of education.

Teachers all know what deficit thinking is. They had to sit through a workshop on the subject because admin wanted to correct their mindset. This was after they were forced to attend behavior training because admin thought they could do more to curb student violence, but it was before they had to sit through a lecture on how to better differentiate for learners.

Leaders know that, one day, they can PD all the deficiencies out of their staff. I saw boring lessons in classrooms last week– they need PD on student engagement! they think, or else: Hardly any teachers are using the new math app– they need PD on instructional technology. You have to admire their tenacity: identify a failure, provide corrective (sorry, “targeted”) PD. Rinse and repeat.  

There’s just one problem: this doesn’t work. If “targeted” PD were the silver bullet leaders suppose it is, every principal would be leading an army of perfect, or at least compliant, teachers. But they’re not. They’re overseeing teachers who resent PD they find irrelevant at best and patronizing at worst, and who consequently ignore it. Consider your own school. How much institute day time is devoted to compliance-driven training, and how many garden variety workshops has your district has run, purchased, or sent your teachers to? Does all of that time in PD generate instructional change?

Of course not.

You still have people who break the rules and ignore the admirable practices you’ve taught them. Clearly, there’s a wrench in the machine.

How can this be? Leaders know what teachers need, right? They’re in classrooms, in PLCs, talking with teachers. They see the big picture, encompassing parent conversations, district initiatives, and instructional reform. Why can’t teachers just overcome their obstacles of resentment, fear, and cynicism and just get better already? 

Administrators out there: stop grinding your teeth. I see you. You do, indeed, have a wider lens than teachers, not only because you liaise with more stakeholders and lead more initiatives, but–crucially–because you are in more classrooms than teachers, who are necessarily confined to their own. You observe instruction, build relationships, and serve in professional learning communities across the district. Your opinions are important, and your perspective belongs in the conversation around teacher growth. I get it.

But yours isn’t the only perspective that belongs. Are you doing everything in your power to bring teacher voices into the conversation about what and how teachers should learn? Are you asking the right questions and leaving room for sincere discussion and meaningful decision making? Would you trust teachers to take the lead in their own professional development? The answer to some of these questions for most of us is, truthfully, “Not as much as I should.” 

Leaders are often too frustrated with the seeming impotence of their professional development plans to confront the hard truth: they can be part of the problem. If they start with a deficit mindset, one that assumes teachers have personal or professional shortcomings which hold students back, they’re setting themselves and their teachers up for failure. Subconsciously or otherwise, they can see laziness, incompetence, and truculence over any other qualities. What else would make a skilled leader assume she knows best?

Leaders solicit teacher input in many other areas, but professional development is often the exception because leaders believe their panoramic lens justifies unilateral decision making, and because the idea of PD targeting specific deficiencies sounds virtuous, at least at first. If they incorporate teachers’ opinions, it’s often reactive– a response to whatever teacher complaints were loud enough to break through the assembly line of institutionalized staff improvement.

This top-down planning method omits the most essential element of teacher growth: measuring the impact of professional practice on students. PD planned through a teacher deficit lens goes like this: a leader spots a gap in student metrics and attributes it to teacher deficiency without bringing teachers into the conversation. The leader implements mandatory training, then watches in horror as teachers fail to embrace the new strategies.

This confirms the leader’s suspicion that teachers were to blame the whole time. Teachers and administrators are too busy resenting each other to consider the most important beneficiary of PD: students. There’s no collaborative analysis of how instructional adjustments impact students, no feedback loop in which teachers and leaders exchange information about new strategies, and certainly no incorporation of student voices. The only thing leaders and teachers can agree on, it seems, is that PD feels like a never-ending cycle of false starts and failed initiatives. 

Breaking that cycle entails, firstly, a mindset makeover. Teachers and administrators must see– and treat– each other as collaborators in student learning. This can only happen if they actually unite toward common causes. When leaders use PD as a cudgel to correct supposedly deficient teachers, they’re eliminating all possibility of collaboration. However, leaders who work together with staff to define what academic, behavioral, or social-emotional outcomes they want for their students can then collaborate around questions like these: 

• What instructional and systemic adjustments might achieve the outcomes we all want for our students?

• What supports do teachers and other staff need in order to make the instructional adjustments?

• What school-wide systems will administrators adjust to achieve the outcomes we all want for our students?

• What metrics will we use to monitor our progress toward the desired student outcomes, and when will we collaboratively review them throughout the year?

• As we review student metrics, do we trust each other enough to collectively generate new ideas to respond to student metrics that are not yet what we want?

These questions keep students at the center of professional development, where they belong. They also invite teachers and administrators alike to see each other as professionals– not delinquents and overlords, but fellow educators with a wealth of knowledge just waiting to be unleashed in service of students. A discussion built around these questions could lead to a full feedback loop: a team of teachers and leaders sets goals, tries new techniques, coaches each other, reviews student data, makes adjustments, reviews data again, and continues the cycle of learning. 

If that sounds utopian, consider how your school can build professional development systems around current student learning data– not the hope of future learning. If your school is like most, you probably provide plenty of PD that says, “Hey, try this. Your students will probably learn better.” It’s easy to see how teachers may view this as a gamble, or even an ineffective use of their time.

Now, consider a session in which teachers, support staff, and leaders example recent student academic or behavioral data. The facilitator guides a conversation around how the group can collaborate to improve these outcomes. How immediately relevant– even urgent– that would make the session. It would be clear that everyone, teachers and leaders alike, must alter their practices to improve student outcomes. Best of all, teachers have an equal voice in the conversation.

A word of caution: teachers are used to taking blame for lackluster student data. Think of the parade of “Yeah, buts” that stalk so many data-based conversations: “Yeah, but parents don’t…” “Yeah, but kids can’t…” “Yeah, but this year…” That’s why you can’t just drop this into an institute day without contextualizing the conversation as one of professional learning. It’s not about me, the administrator, blaming you, the teacher, for low test scores. It is about us working together to figure out how we will all grow professionally to better serve our students. 

You also need a stack of professional learning tools at the ready. This doesn’t necessarily mean hiring a speaker, delivering a slideshow, or going through a book study. It does mean:

• Discussion prompts that help staff analyze problems, along with a system that empowers them to brainstorm solutions 

• Access to a lush, diverse body of research related to the issue at hand, along with a system for digesting and implementing ideas 

• A set of strategies teachers can adapt in their classroom, along with a system for assessing the efficacy of those strategies 

• Technological resources for reflection, such as video coaching or portfolio-building, along with a system that values reflective practice

• Classroom observation forms aligned to professional learning goals, along with a system for tying observational data to professional learning activities

Let’s go through an example: your school wants to improve student behavior. You know this not because you see weak classroom management during walk-throughs, but because behavior referral data is off the charts. You could spend your precious institute day time forcing all teachers to listen to a hired speaker who explains everything they should be doing… but you’re smarter than that. Instead, you decide to build a professional learning plan that utilizes all five tools described above. You start by bringing staff into discussions around student behavior, using targeted prompts: What does behavior look like now? Why does it look like this? What should it look like? What behaviors are the most important to address right now? These discussions may happen during PLCs, department meetings, or even via an online survey. 

To empower teachers to brainstorm solutions, you provide a digital feedback forum. where any staff member can posit an idea based on this discussion. The school improvement team will review all suggestions, looking for trends that may guide decisions. Then, the team provides a library of books, articles, and webinars on the specific behaviors your staff identified, allowing teachers to conduct their own research if they like. You hold regular check-ins, perhaps during a staff meeting, for teachers to share insights gained from reading. Collaboratively, you identify six research-based strategies teachers can adapt in their efforts to improve student behavior. If you have institute day time for direct instruction of these strategies, great. If not, no problem; you task your instructional coaching team with creating on-demand resources such as how-to videos and model lessons. They also get into classrooms to model, co-teach, and give feedback to teachers implementing the strategies, providing them with support rather than judgment.

To assess the efficacy of these strategies, you regularly look at the data surrounding student behavior. You also invest in mobile cameras, which teachers can use to record their classes and analyze how their techniques impact student behavior. Finally, you revise the classroom visit forms school leaders use when conducting walk-throughs; they now specifically focus on: 1) teachers’ use of the six strategies 2) student behavior. Leaders are seeing how the strategies play out in classrooms, giving teachers additional support and ideas (again: without judgment).  

Please notice: time set aside for direct instruction is helpful, but not mandatory, to this plan. Its key components rely on what your school was already doing: conducting walk-throughs, compiling student data, running staff meetings, deploying instructional coaches, and enacting improvement plans. The difference is that now, all those things are focused on the same goals, and professional learning happens within teachers’ day-to-day tasks. This makes a huge difference to how teachers perceive PD; it’s no longer something that’s shoved down their throat by ivory tower tyrants who see them as deficient. Rather, they themselves played an integral role in analyzing data, devising solutions, and implementing improvements. 

Professional development worthy of the name has to treat teachers like– well, professionals. They’re not empty vessels in desperate need of our fountain of knowledge. They’re reflective practitioners who are justifiably skeptical of top-down decisions and promises of a quick fix. If leaders challenge themselves to stop focusing on teachers’ supposed deficits and start collaborating with them as equals, professional learning will benefit administrators, teachers, and, most importantly, students.