Professional Development for School Leaders

There isn’t much doubt that America’s schools—and the administrators who lead them—face unprecedented challenges today. Consider the compound effect of seismic curriculum shifts, fragile students dubbed the “Anxious Generation,” nagging post-Covid learning gaps, AI, polarized communities, accountability demands, and health and safety concerns. For school leaders, continuous learning is essential: It is the only way to stay abreast of developments in the field, build an understanding of new practices, and retool one’s skill set.

For many administrators, the expression “It’s lonely at the top” rings true. The maxim is especially relevant to professional development (PD) in many school settings. An elementary school might have a few dozen teachers holding similar job titles, which leaves them positioned to collaborate and learn together. In contrast, the administrative team often consists of just one principal and perhaps an assistant principal, providing few immediate opportunities for forging any kind of learning community. Yet research confirms that professional learning is best when it’s not a solitary endeavor.

Principals want access to high-quality professional learning

Studies have established the characteristics of effective professional development for school leaders and their preferences as well. In Developing Expert Principals: Professional Learning That Matters, researchers identified three attributes of impactful principal professional development: (1) individualized, one-on-one support in the form of mentoring and coaching; (2) active participation in a community of learners; (3) applied learning, less theoretical and more practical, focused on actual problems and solutions. Principal professional development meeting these three criteria results in increased teacher retention rates, more effective professional development for teachers, and impact on student achievement scores.

A 2022 survey conducted by Education Week and the Wallace Foundation polled school leaders on their professional development experiences and preferences. They found that most principals would rather join in-person workshops with administrators from multiple districts than participate in online sessions. Interestingly, rural principals expressed the strongest interest in in-person meetings (73 percent among rural principals versus 57 percent in urban schools), even though the logistics of such sessions could be challenging. Only half of the principals queried described district-sponsored professional development as continuous, a significant deficiency. Twenty-three percent reported that they were rarely or never consulted about their professional development needs, another problematic result considering the fact that relevance is a key component of effective on-the-job learning for school leaders.

A high degree of self-determination is characteristic of significant adult learning in general and principal professional development in particular. One implication of the EdWeek/Wallace Foundation poll is for school districts to allow individual school leaders meaningful control over their own professional development, including budget, forum, and topics. Individually and in groups, administrators need to exercise a level of choice over, for example, conferences they attend, the focus of study, and opportunities to visit other schools. Districtwide leadership meetings become opportunities to learn together when participants have a voice in planning and demonstrate leadership by helping their colleagues on the leadership team acquire new information and practice new skills. Districts can also support professional learning simply by allocating time for school leaders in similar positions to share experiences and problem-solve together. As one principal expressed to Rob, “Just talking to the other [school principals] is often the best way to learn.”

What kinds of PD for principals work best?

Mentoring and coaching. Mentoring and coaching meet the dual criteria of “authentic and job-embedded” delineated in Developing Expert Principals. We would add the necessity of providing a mentor or job coach on an ongoing basis, a minimum of three years for neophyte principals, and periodic coaching for all. As with any mentor–mentee relationship, the presence of trust is a critical factor. Principals must feel they can honestly share their frustrations and challenges without impact on their performance evaluations, so they can use these occasions as the starting points for meaningful learning and skill development.

Professional learning communities. The most powerful professional development that Seth experienced was a PLC he joined in his 26th year as a school administrator. Participants were a dozen middle school principals from around the U.S. using the voice messaging app Voxer to share best practices and problem-solve difficult work situations that members brought to the group. There was a palpable sense of collegial understanding and mutual support. We suggest that PLCs not solely exchange texts or email, but at least occasionally engage in videoconferencing or meet face-to-face (perhaps for TGIF, if possible) to nurture more genuine personal relationships.

How do you locate or launch a PLC? Possibilities include inviting administrators from your district or from neighboring districts or schools countywide, organizing classmates enrolled in your graduate educational leadership program, and convening like-minded people you meet at a conference. Start small, then ask each member to recruit one or two other leaders to join. To kick off a new PLC, encourage the group to collaboratively choose a topical article or book to read and discuss, or offer a question of the week for the group’s consideration.

Regularly scheduled PD. A principal’s day is a whirlwind. In our combined decades as school leaders, we’d often get to Friday and honestly wonder what happened to Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday! Undoubtedly, essential job responsibilities, all of them worthy (curriculum planning, parent engagement, observations, professional development for teachers, school and community events, etc.), compete for an educator’s precious time.

We recommend that school leaders block out time for professional development on their calendar each month, reserving at least an hour or two every couple of weeks for their own learning and growth, with interruptions permitted only for actual emergencies. We found that we were more likely to follow through on our resolve to immerse ourselves in professional growth if the time was designated on our calendars. Management consultants refer to the practice as allocating “think time” or “20 percent time,” as Google once called it. (Of course, a school leader’s job is unlikely to provide 20 percent of a week for PD!) The amount of time that works for you might vary, but Seth tried to schedule two hours every other week, usually on a Friday morning.

What do you do with this gift of time? You probably belong to multiple professional associations, but when do you read the publications, browse resources on the website, or be fully present for webinars they offer? (We regularly observe administrators multitasking during webinars.) Select a focus question for self-study. Team up with other administrators. Conduct walk-throughs in each other’s buildings. Interview a colleague you consider an expert on a topic, or invite a fellow administrator to your building to coach you in post-observation conferencing, for example. Or you might ask teachers to send artifacts you can view with a colleague in order to advance your collective understanding of the curriculum in use.

The demands on school principals have never been greater. As such, the need for professional learning has never been more urgent for school leaders and their schools. Investing time and resources in professional development for principals (and, by extension, all school leaders) must be a priority, not an afterthought.