Beyond Job Embedded: Ensuring That Good Professional Development Gets Results

Recent research has proven that "job-embedded" professional development (PD) can improve instruction and student learning--if there is a sufficient infrastructure in place to support, oversee and reinforce it. In this report, NIET outlines how it uses TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement to ensure that "job-embedded" PD--professional development delivered by site-based teacher leaders during the school day--results in student academic growth. Specifically, NIET describes how TAP incorporates a structure to maximize the impact of collaborative learning teams and instructional coaching--both strategies that recent studies found to be potentially effective. TAP also takes the critical next step to support, oversee and reinforce PD through a range of other mechanisms, including explicit teacher leadership roles, clear but achievable responsibilities for principals, school wide instructional leadership teams, and alignment with other human resource strategies.