Why Doesn't More Professional Development Lead to Lasting Change?

How many of you have attended professional development over the years?

Go ahead—I can almost see the hands.

Now, keep them up if you returned to your classroom and immediately implemented everything you learned.

There aren't nearly as many hands now.

One last question.

How many of you tucked those conference handouts into a filing cabinet or onto a shelf, promising yourself you would revisit them later…only to rediscover them the following August while cleaning out your classroom for a new school year?

Now we're talking. If you're smiling right now, you're not alone.

After thirty-three years in education, I attended more professional learning opportunities than I could possibly count. School-based workshops. Divisional in-services. Provincial conferences. National conferences. Even international conferences. Many of them were excellent. The presenters were knowledgeable, the resources were practical, and I always left feeling inspired.

Yet, when I pause and reflect on my career, I can count on one hand the professional learning experiences that fundamentally changed my instructional practice over the long term. That realization has stayed with me. Not because I believe professional development doesn't work. Quite the opposite.

I believe deeply in professional learning. In fact, some of the most significant moments in my career have come from learning alongside other educators. Every meaningful shift in my thinking can be traced back to a conversation, a mentor, a colleague, or a professional learning experience that challenged me to see teaching differently.

So why doesn't more professional development lead to lasting change?

Over the years, I found myself asking that question more and more often. As a classroom teacher, instructional coach, and later a Continuous Improvement Administrator, I had a unique opportunity to view professional learning from different perspectives. I watched passionate educators attend workshops filled with outstanding ideas. They returned to their schools energized and eager to try something new. And then reality arrived. Monday morning brought twenty-five students, competing priorities, emails that needed answering, lessons that needed planning, and a dozen unexpected situations that no professional development session could have predicted. The excitement from the conference slowly gave way to the realities of everyday teaching.

Can you relate?

Looking back, I don't think the issue was ever teachers' willingness to learn. Teachers are lifelong learners by nature. We read books over the summer. We listen to podcasts on our commute. We share ideas with colleagues in the hallway. We willingly give up evenings and weekends to attend conferences because we genuinely want to become better educators for our students. Our profession is filled with people who care deeply. So perhaps willingness was never the problem. Perhaps clarity was.

Throughout my career, I noticed that much of our professional learning focused on what educators should do.

• Try this strategy.

• Implement this framework.

• Use this protocol.

• Ask these questions.

Those suggestions often had tremendous value. But I began wondering whether we were skipping an even more important conversation. Before deciding what we should do differently, shouldn't we first agree on what we hope to see if our teaching is making a difference?

• What would students actually be saying?

• What would they be doing?

• What evidence would tell us that our instruction was having the desired impact?

The more I thought about those questions, the more I realized how often they were missing from professional learning. Without a shared picture of success, implementation can become overwhelming. Teachers leave with pages of notes but little clarity about where to begin. Even worse, they often aren't sure how they'll know if the new learning is making a meaningful difference.

Another pattern also began to emerge.

Every few years, a new initiative would arrive. It often came with enthusiasm, books, professional learning days, and a renewed sense of possibility. Schools invested significant time, energy, and resources because everyone wanted the same thing—better outcomes for students. Then, before the previous initiative had fully taken root, another one appeared. The cycle repeated itself. I don't believe this happens because educators lose interest. Nor do I believe previous initiatives lacked value. Rather, I think we sometimes underestimate how difficult meaningful change really is. Lasting change requires more than inspiration. It requires: clarity, collaboration and ongoing reflection.

Most importantly, it requires a clear understanding of the impact we're hoping to have on students before we decide what actions to take as educators. That realization changed how I think about professional learning. It also changed how I approach instructional coaching. Today, when I work with educators, I find myself asking a very different question than I would have asked ten years ago.

Not...

"What strategy are we going to implement?"

But rather...

"If this learning is successful, what would we expect to see students doing?"

That single question has transformed countless coaching conversations. It shifts our attention away from simply implementing strategies and toward understanding the learning we are trying to create. For me, it was one of those rare professional learning moments that genuinely lasted. Ironically, it didn't begin with a framework. It began with a conversation.

A conversation that completely reshaped how I think about teacher learning, instructional coaching, and school improvement.

I'll share that story in my next post.