Phases of implementation for staff development
HOW TO ENSURE INSTRUCTIONAL CHANGE AND SUSTAIN IMPROVEMENT
Administrators and teachers need time to process professional development . Five phases of implementation can help bridge the gap between a great workshop and the classroom .
36 Leadership
Have you ever been to a great training session and returned to your work to find that the learning is difficult to implement ? As a school administrator , have you ever sent teachers to a conference on a specific strategy that you are trying to implement in your school , only to find yourself saying , “ I sent them to training , but why am I not seeing it in the classroom ?”
A possible answer to these questions is that we expect ourselves and our teachers to jump from hearing the good news in a workshop to refined implementation in the classroom without giving them or ourselves time to process what we have heard thoroughly and concretely .
Here is a concrete system containing five phases of implementation that may help to bridge the gap between a great workshop and the classroom .
Phases of implementation
• Awareness Information given through : 1 . Professional development . 2 . Staff meetings . 3 . Professional readings . 4 . Conferences .
• Organization
1 . Learner recalls what was learned .
2 . Learner reorganizes content according to their own schema or past learning , connecting the learning to their context .
3 . Learner creates a plan to implement the new strategy in their classroom .
• Approximation The learner takes the plan and “ gives it a try ” in their own context .
• Reflection The learner reflects on the following : 1 . Analysis of the match or gap . In other words , did the approximation match the model that was presented in the awareness phase ?
2 . How did the process go ? Did the new strategy go smoothly or were there obvious rough spots that need to be ironed out ? 3 . Did the students learn the content ? 4 . What were the learning outcomes ?
• Refined Implementation
1 . Based on the analysis in the reflection phase , plan for new instruction utilizing the newly adopted strategy . 2 . Teach . 3 . Assess . 4 . Analyze the assessment results . Ask ,
By Sue Kaiser