What Happens After the Workshop?

We’ve all been there: you leave a professional development workshop energized, inspired, and ready to make changes. But a few weeks later? That energy fades, and little has shifted.

Why does so much of our well-intentioned, meaningful, and well-delivered professional learning often fail to make an impact?

That’s exactly the issue Thomas Guskey pointed to in a recent article: despite good intentions, the outcomes of many professional learning efforts fall flat. He describes it as a puzzling mismatch between what schools invest and what actually changes in practice.

Here’s the link to his article:
https://kappanonline.org/explaining-the-puzzling-results-in-professional-learning-research/

A Puzzle With a Solution

But maybe it’s not so puzzling after all.

Most schools devote a huge majority of their time and money to the inputs of professional learning, deciding what conferences to attend, what speakers to bring in, or which online course to take.

These decisions feel productive. They give the impression that something is happening. But the deeper, more important work, the implementation, gets far less attention.

How many of us have gone to conferences about “collaboration and action,” only to return to our schools and face the same isolation? One teacher, one classroom, left to try (or not try) something new on their own. It’s no wonder the impact is so limited.

We largely neglect to spend much time figuring out the far more important question:  How to implement our learning in classrooms - and ideally, how can we do this together through peer feedback, shared accountability, and reflection on real student work we see from our efforts. 

Sharing Practices or Perceptions?

Even Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), which are built for this, struggle to find time and depth to address these questions given all the time constraints we face. 

We’re left with rapid fire meetings where we try to share our perceptions of how initiatives work (or  not). We lack the time and structures to sustain the momentum, share practices and implement change within a culture of shared learning. 

This isn't a small gap. It's a HUGE structural issue in how we design learning for adults.

As a former school leader, I’ve made this mistake myself. It’s easy to believe we’re making progress when the next training is booked. 

• What’s my next conference?

• What’s the topic I need (my team) to learn more about?

• Who can tell me (us) about this?

When instead, we should be asking: “How can I (and my team) learn about _____ by implementing it with shared accountability while sharing practices and feedback?” Until we build learning communities like this, we’re spending precious time and money with very limited results.

Investing In What Matters

The truth: The real professional learning doesn’t happen at the event. It happens afterwards, when we try to implement what we’ve learned. Yet, schools and organizations continue to focus on the inputs - not the implementation stage. 

If we want our investments in individual and organizational learning to truly change practice, we need to shift our focus from planning the input (the workshop, the consultant, the conference, the online course, etc.)  to planning what comes after.