Professional Teacher Standards and Collaborative Professional Development Plans

Video Transcription

In this tutorial, we'll examine the role that professional teacher standards can play in collaborative professional development. We'll begin by taking a broad look at the relationship between professional teacher standards and professional development. We'll then take a closer look at both the InTASC model core teacher standards and the National Board teaching standards. Let's get started.

Let's begin by considering the role that professional teacher standards can play in professional growth and development plans. Professional teacher standards can provide us with a guide that we can use for setting teacher quality and skill expectations in our collaborative professional development or professional growth plans. Additionally, most teacher evaluation rubrics nationwide are actually based on professional teacher standards. So no matter which teacher evaluation model your school or district has implemented, it is likely possible to use the rubrics that are found in your model as tools to measure your effectiveness in meeting the goals that you have set in your collaborative professional development or growth plan.

Let's take a closer look at two different sets of professional teacher standards. We'll begin with the InTASC model core teacher standards. The acronym InTASC stands for Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium. These model core teacher standards were published by the Council for Chief State School Officers in 2011. This document outlines standards for professional practice intended to determine teacher quality as required for the teacher evaluation process by both No Child Left Behind and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Both the Danielson model and the Marzano model use these standards in the development of their domains and their rubrics. And these standards are also used as the basis for many state-level professional teaching standards. The InTASC model core teacher standards are made up of 10 standards across four domains. The first domain is the learner and learning. The standards in this domain include learner development, learning differences, and learning environment. The second domain is content knowledge. In this domain, the standards include content knowledge and application of content.

In the domain of instructional practice, we have three standards, including assessment, planning for instruction, and instructional strategies. And in the fourth domain of professional responsibility, the standards include professional learning and ethical practice and leadership and collaboration. The InTASC model core teacher standards can be used to develop your collaborative professional development or professional growth plan.

For example, your PLC may set a goal related to the standard of assessment. More specifically, your PLC may decide to focus on aligning common assessments to the common core state standards. Then within the PLC, members may be paired to form peer coaching teams, and these peer coaching teams may set goals that are aligned with the planning for instruction and instructional strategies standards. These peer coaching teams may also refer to Marzano's high yield instructional strategies as they are setting their specific goals and going through that peer coaching process.

And finally, within the context of your personal professional growth or development plan, you may set a goal for yourself aligned with the learning environment standard. You may focus on the physical setup or arrangement of your classroom and other ways in which you build a learning environment that is conducive to your students' learning.

Let's next take a look at the National Board teaching standards. Teachers can opt to pursue National Board certification, that is an official certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching. Many teachers opt to pursue this certification not just as an option for improving their craft, but also in some instances, the National Board certification process can be used as part of a teacher's professional growth and development plan, or as evidence of their achievement of a professional growth goal.

Participating in the National Board certification process helps teachers to become more reflective educators and helps them to practice using the professional standards to improve their teaching craft, and also to get recognition as a highly effective teacher in their certification area.

The National Board does adhere to its own particular set of teaching standards, but those standards are similar to the InTASC standards and to many state standards. Research actually suggests that teachers with National Board certification have higher levels of student achievement than teachers who do not have that level of certification. There are 25 different certification areas available and the standards do vary according to those certification areas, but there are five core propositions that are common to all of those areas.

The first proposition states that teachers need to be committed to students and to their learning. The second proposition asserts that teachers know the subjects they teach and they know how to teach those subjects to students. The third core proposition tells us that teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning. Proposition four indicates that teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience. And the fifth and final core proposition states that teachers are members of learning communities.

Here's a chance for you to stop and reflect. Now that you've seen both the InTASC standards and the National Board teacher standards, can you see the relationship between these professional teacher standards and your professional growth or development plan? Can you think of ways in which you could incorporate these teacher standards into your goals and objectives in your professional growth plan? As you reflect on how this new information can be applied, you may want to explore the Additional Resources section that accompanies this video presentation. This is where you'll find links to resources chosen to help you deepen your learning and explore ways to apply your newly-acquired skill set. Thanks for watching. Have a great day.