Realizing the Promise of Professional Learning for Teaching, Equity, and Change

In Short

• Recent research shows that professional learning is essential “equity infrastructure,” the key to engaging front-line educators in the action-oriented partnerships needed to implement equity-focused practices with quality and at scale.

• Our new, 2023 report examines professional learning at community colleges and Minority Serving Institutions, which together serve the bulk of higher education’s poverty-affected and racially minoritized students. This sector has been largely overlooked in research on professional learning.

• Based on data from nearly 100 institutions, our report finds that interest in professional learning is particularly high in this sector. But this interest has not been matched by systemic investment nor a consistent set of high-impact institutional practices.

• While exemplary MSIs and community colleges deploy research-based practices shown to effectively engage educators, systemic gaps in staffing and funding for professional learning undercut equity initiatives at most campuses in this sector.

• To address this problem, our report spotlights concrete steps to be taken by professional learning coordinators, academic leaders, and external partners such as funders, systems leaders and national higher education reform organizations.

Introduction

Professional development—or, as we term it, “professional learning”—is a powerful tool for addressing higher education’s most stubborn challenge: the need to build equity and greater success for all students. Professional learning has been called essential “equity infrastructure,” the key to engaging front-line educators in the action-oriented partnerships needed to implement equity-focused practices with quality and at scale (Pacansky-Brock, 2022, p. 55).

Our 2023 report, Teaching, Learning, Equity and Change: Realizing the Promise of Professional Learning, examines professional learning at minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and community colleges (Eynon et al., 2023). Professional learning at these institutions is particularly vital, as they serve the vast bulk of higher education’s poverty-affected and racially minoritized students. Yet this sector has been largely overlooked in previous research on professional learning.

Our report is based on data from a 2022 survey of academic and professional learning leaders representing approximately 100 campuses (more than half of them community colleges or MSIs) as well as interviews with 20 campus-based field leaders. It examines current practice, identifies strengths and gaps, and compares findings from community colleges and MSIs with institutions in other sectors of higher education.

Our data show that, while respondents from across higher education felt their institutions valued professional learning for front-line educators, belief in the value of professional learning was highest at MSIs and community colleges. At these same institutions, however, that interest has not been matched by investment nor a consistent set of high-impact institutional practices. This shortfall undercuts efforts to scale equity-focused change on these systematically underfunded but vital campuses.

In this article, we will examine these new data, highlight key findings, and summarize the report’s recommendations for campus leaders and external higher education partners, including system leaders, funders, and national reform organizations. We begin with brief background on the research on professional learning and our research methodology.

Background: New Data Build on Strong Research

In recent decades, researchers have identified evidence-based teaching and student support practices that build equity and student success (Artze-Vega et al., 2023; Bransford et al., 2000; Eynon & Iuzzini, 2020; Kuh, 2008). When done well, strategies such as active learning, guided pathways, culturally responsive teaching, and high-impact practices transform the student experience and have disproportionate benefits for racially minoritized and poverty-affected students (Brown & Kurzweil, 2018; Hammond, 2015; Theobald et al., 2020).

Research also shows that such equity strategies have greater benefits for students when institutions support front-line educators, engaging them in well-designed professional learning that helps them actively adapt and integrate strategies into their own practice (Borko, 2004; Condon et al., 2016).

New research-based resources synthesize this literature to identify best practices in professional learning. For example, the American Council on Education (ACE) and the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD) released the ACE/POD Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) Matrix, a rubric for planning and assessing CTL development (Collins-Brown et al., 2018). From a different angle, The New Learning Compact: A Framework for Professional Learning and Educational Change (NLC Framework) analyzes the literature to derive principles of good practice related to program design and institutional support (Bass et al., 2019). These complementary publications offer invaluable resources to campus leaders seeking to build essential equity infrastructure.

To be effective, the NLC Framework suggests, professional learning should be both co-constructed and systemic. What does this mean? Co-constructed professional learning designs engage faculty’s experiences and expertise through peer feedback and the power of community. Systemic approaches, meanwhile, encompass strategic institutional support for and deployment of professional learning in mission-critical initiatives.

Embedding co-constructed professional learning within an agile, systems-based approach to institutional change creates the continuous improvement model needed to ensure that higher education can advance equity-focused change and meet its pressing challenges. (Eynon et al., 2022, p. 41)

Building on this strong research, our report adds new data and voices from the field. Scholarship on professional learning has largely overlooked MSIs and community colleges, ignoring their distinctive experiences. To address this gap, a team of field practitioners from two national higher education organizations¹ gathered data and explored these questions:

• What is the status of professional learning at community colleges and MSIs?

• What does everyday practice look like at these institutions? What obstacles and gaps in practice get in the way?

• What kind of assistance do these institutions need from external partners, such as funders and national organizations?

With these questions in mind, we surveyed campus leaders involved with professional learning, such as CTL directors, department chairs, and provosts. Our nearly 100 respondents came from community colleges and research universities, MSIs, and predominantly White institutions (PWIs). We also interviewed 20 leaders, intentionally including leaders of exemplary professional learning programs as defined by the ACE/POD CTL Matrix.

Nearly 40 percent of our respondents represented MSIs—historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions, and tribal colleges. Just over 50 percent of our respondents represented community colleges. (These categories are not exclusive—some community colleges are MSIs.) To explore our questions, we considered the field as a whole and disaggregated our data. We compared community colleges to research universities, and MSIs to PWIs. Using the ACE/POD CTL Matrix and the NLC Framework as standards, we examined ways that current practice in the field aligns with research-based principles of good practice. We coded our interviews to identify patterns and examine the practices of colleges with outstanding professional learning programs.

Key Findings: The Impact of Systemic Inequity

Our survey data review revealed an important tension. MSI and community college respondents were more likely than respondents at PWIs and research universities to say their campuses place high value on professional learning. Yet they were also more likely than their counterparts to report that campus staffing and funding for professional learning was inadequate.

Among MSI respondents, 85.3 percent agreed with the statement, “My institution is committed to professional development.” That figure was 63.6 percent for PWI respondents. Similarly, respondents from community colleges indicated higher levels of commitment than those from Research I campuses.

However, aspirations are not always matched by resources. In our data, only 29.4 percent of MSI respondents saw their CTL as adequately funded. At PWIs, this figure was 45.4 percent. Research I respondents indicated greater satisfaction with funding than those from community colleges. Data on staffing followed a similar pattern. While underfunding is a fieldwide problem, the gap between aspiration and resources was most glaring at MSIs and community colleges.

Our data are attitudinal. Research on actual funding levels is scarce. One respected 2016 study of professional learning gathered budget data from 160 institutions and found that community college CTLs demonstrated persistently low levels of staffing and fiscal support (Beach et al., 2016). Unfortunately, the nuances of this gap (such as correlation of funding and institutional size) went unexamined, and MSIs were not considered as a category.

What we know for certain is that community colleges and MSIs are systematically underfunded (Carnevale et al., 2018; Cunningham et al., 2014; Kahlenberg, 2015). One prominent study found that broad-access public colleges serving poverty-affected Black and Latino students receive, on average, one-third of the per-student funding received by more selective public institutions primarily serving White students—and that this dramatic gap has a profound effect on faculty and student support services (Carnevale et al., 2018).

While underfunding for professional learning is problematic fieldwide, it makes sense that this issue disproportionately impacts less-resourced institutions. Our data add evidence that this systemic inequity undercuts community college and MSI aspirations to build robust CTLs and adopt high-impact professional learning design.

High-Impact Design and Faculty Learning

High-quality professional learning is sustained and recursive, bringing educators together as they learn about and adapt new approaches, test them with students, and reflect on what happened. Research has demonstrated the limits of isolated workshops, suggesting their one-and-done quality limits impact (Borko, 2004; Condon et al., 2016). As one literature review concluded, “[T]he more time teachers spend in professional development, the more likely their practice is to improve” (Hunzicker, 2011, p. 178).

Our study showed that exemplary CTLs, including those at MSIs and community colleges, have shifted from stand-alone workshops to sustained professional learning structures. “We do very few one-off, one-hit-wonder workshops,” reported one campus leader. Sustained faculty learning communities employ co-constructed inquiry and reflective practice, effectively supporting educators as they implement new approaches with students. Wilkes Community College uses multiple small faculty learning communities to engage large numbers of faculty with growth mindset. Montgomery College employs similar approaches to advance use of open educational resources.

However, our survey showed that stand-alone workshops remain the most common professional learning structure at MSIs and community colleges. Of MSI respondents, 84.4 percent reported that stand-alone workshops were important elements of their professional learning approach, with 50.0 percent saying they were “extremely important.” Only 32.7 percent of PWI respondents rated such workshops as extremely important.

This difference reflects systemic inequity. Workshops are less expensive than learning communities, demanding less time from educators and CTL staff. At MSIs and community colleges, where budgets are tight, educators struggle with heavy teaching loads, and many faculty are part time, workshops may seem like the only option. Unfortunately, this approach undercuts campus efforts to engage faculty as active partners and effectively scale evidence-based pedagogies.

Another factor further constrains the quality of professional learning programming at the less-resourced institutions that serve the bulk of poverty-affected and racially minoritized students. Our data show that relatively few higher education CTLs employ sophisticated methods to evaluate program impact. Participation headcounts and satisfaction surveys were the only approaches used by more than 50 percent of CTLs fieldwide. Far less common were more meaningful (but demanding and costly) assessments of program impact, such as measuring change in educator practice and impact on student outcomes. This problem was evident across institutions but particularly pronounced in underresourced sectors. For example, only 7.7 percent of community college respondents reported that they examined change in instructor practice as a way of evaluating the impact of professional learning, compared to 33.3 percent of respondents from research universities. A lack of sophisticated evaluation undercuts attempts to deepen professional learning program quality and leverage institutional support, particularly at community colleges and MSIs.

Faculty Engagement and Systemic Support

Engaging educators in sustained, high-quality professional learning requires an institution-wide effort, linking culture and policy. Campus leaders must build a culture that celebrates teaching innovation and professional learning. And this supportive environment must be paired with policy changes that reward faculty for the sustained effort required to implement equity-focused approaches with quality and care.

Colleges use a range of strategies to reward or “incentivize” full-time faculty participation in professional learning. Stipends and release time can help, but they are costly and can inhibit scaling. The NLC Framework identifies “leveraging reward systems” as a cost-effective design principle of systemic professional learning practice. Policy at some MSIs and community colleges, such as Amarillo College and Valencia College, illustrates this principle in action.

Amarillo College builds professional learning engagement into faculty job descriptions and hiring processes. Valencia College has identified seven essential competencies for Valencia faculty, from learner-centered teaching to engagement with assessment. Faculty use Valencia’s professional learning programs to build and demonstrate these competencies, making their case for promotion and tenure. “Professional learning is a key part of what faculty see as their responsibility, as part of being a Valencia faculty,” explains Vice President Isis Artze-Vega.

Our data suggest that most institutions, including most community colleges and MSIs, have yet to adopt these cost-effective strategies. Only 31.7 percent of community college respondents indicated that professional learning was consistently recognized in hiring, evaluation, and promotion processes. For MSI respondents, that figure was 28.1 percent.

At MSIs and community colleges with exemplary CTLs, the integration of professional learning into faculty reward structures is part of a systemic approach; leaders of such institutions recognize that investment in high-impact professional learning pays dividends, including improved student retention and completion. Systemic approaches also involve the strategic deployment of professional learning. Yet, across all institutions, including MSIs and community colleges, only 40.5 percent of respondents said their institutions effectively used professional learning to advance student success initiatives. Adopting more systemic approaches is key to realizing the promise of professional learning.

Equity and Part-Time Faculty

If incentivizing full-time faculty requires systemic attention, so does the engagement of part-time or adjunct faculty.

Across higher education, part-time faculty have a major role in shaping student success, particularly for poverty-affected students and racially minoritized students. Yet our data suggest that part-time faculty are underserved by professional learning processes.

Nowhere is this truer than at community colleges. One study shows that, at community colleges, 67 percent of faculty are part time (Hurlburt & McGarrah, 2016). Our survey asked respondents to consider who took part in their professional learning programs and estimate the proportion of participants from different campus constituencies. Our community college respondents estimated that part-time faculty made up only 32.8 percent of their participants.

Exemplary CTLs at community colleges have modeled strategies for effectively serving part-time faculty (Achieving the Dream, 2020). Montgomery College sets up special programs, led by part-timers. Harper College links adjunct participation in professional learning to salary increases and priority attention in class scheduling (Culver & Kezar, 2021). Despite their promise, these innovations were employed by less than 5 percent of the community colleges in our survey.

Greater attention to supporting underserved part-time faculty is key to advancing equity in teaching and learning. Colleges and universities should consider how equitable outcomes for students rest on a foundation of equitable supports for all educators.

Building Capacity and External Partners

A set of accessible resources (such as the ACE/POD CTL Matrix and the NLC Framework) offers campus leaders research-based professional learning practices that deepen quality and benefit faculty and students. In our interviews, leaders of exemplary CTLs valued the guidance provided by such resources.

In our survey, however, most MSI and community college respondents were not aware of these resources. For example, only a third (32.3 percent) of MSI respondents in our survey were aware of the NLC Framework, and less than a quarter (22 percent) knew of the ACE/POD CTL Matrix.

Understaffing may contribute to this problem. “I am an office of one,” explained a CTL leader at one HBCU, discussing the difficulty of keeping up with overwhelming demands on their time. Stress and overwork make it challenging to stay current with best practice.

This is an area where funders, system leaders, and other external partners can be helpful. Asked what kind of external assistance would be helpful, 77.9 percent of respondents across sectors requested assistance in familiarizing themselves with evidence-based professional learning resources and strategies. These figures were highest among MSI respondents (82.8 percent).

More broadly, our survey listed different types of external assistance and asked respondents, “How helpful would each of the following kinds of externally provided assistance be to strengthening your professional learning work?” The results were revealing.

Across all campuses, the most highly rated form of assistance, with 85.5 percent rating it as moderately or extremely useful, was, “Help us develop a long-term plan for strengthening our professional development work.” Campus leaders are eager to develop a well-considered strategic plan for building campus professional learning capacity and would welcome guidance and support in this area. It is worth noting that this was the most highly rated item for community colleges (94.6 percent) and MSIs (92.8 percent).

This evidence is bolstered by the second, third, and fourth most highly rated forms of assistance: “Help campus leadership learn about ways to strategically deploy professional development” (78.9 percent); “Help our campus professional development leaders identify useful resources, tools and strategies” (75.9 percent); and “Help us strengthen our CTL” (75.0 percent). These items were all highly rated by community college and MSI respondents.

In recent years, for-profit groups, such as the Association of College and University Educators, have begun to offer professional learning for faculty nationwide. And 55.3 percent of our respondents (including 63.1 percent of our community college respondents) said such services could be helpful. However, this was the least-desired form of assistance based on respondents’ ratings, which perhaps reflects concerns about the diversion of resources and control away from campus and the desire to implement programs tailored to the institution’s specific mission and context. Our data show a clear preference for assistance that would empower campuses to build their own capacity to offer and sustain high-impact professional learning.

This actionable finding, which underscores the commitment of MSIs and community colleges to capacity-building strategies, should help inform funders and system heads as they develop programs to advance equity in these key sectors.

Recommendations: Fulfilling the Promise

What are the implications of our findings? What steps would support the high-impact professional learning needed to advance equity and student success? What could be done to strengthen CTLs at MSIs, community colleges, and other institutions focused on serving the nation’s racially minoritized and poverty-affected students?

Our report offers a list of detailed recommendations, addressing three distinct (although related) audiences: institutional leaders, professional learning leaders (such as CTL directors), and a broader group of higher education stakeholders. Here we spotlight 10 recommendations, starting with four key steps for presidents, provosts, and other MSI and community college leaders. Based on our data and the broader research, we encourage these leaders to do the following:

• Plan strategic deployment. Given the enrollment, retention, and completion challenges facing MSIs and community colleges, campus leaders must highlight professional learning in campus strategic planning and deploy it to advance mission-critical initiatives.

• Invest in your CTL. Provide the funds (through internal budget reallocation and/or the securing of external funds) needed to support CTL capacity building and purposeful use of effective, research-based professional learning design.

• Demonstrate your commitment to teaching improvement. Leverage faculty reward systems to recognize engagement and to power cost-effective teaching improvement efforts.

• Engage part-time faculty. Focus greater professional learning support on part-time faculty, using proven methods to engage the educators so important to teaching and learning at MSIs, community colleges, and other broad-access institutions.

For institutional leaders, the key word is strategic. Systemic support for and strategic deployment of professional learning is essential to developing institutional agility, advancing equity-focused initiatives, and achieving mission-critical institutional goals.

To realize the promise of high-impact professional learning, systemic support must be flanked by attention to quality. Resources such as the NLC Framework and its supplement, the ATD Teaching and Learning Toolkit, offer research-based principles for improving the design and facilitation of professional learning programs. Our data revealed common gaps in practice at MSIs and community colleges. Those data inform these three recommendations for CTL directors and professional learning facilitators:

• Engage educators as partners. Employ co-constructed design principles to leverage educators’ expertise, build motivation, and activate classroom change.

• Design sustained programs. Find ways to engage educators in the sustained, inquiry-driven programs (e.g., faculty learning communities) that yield teaching improvement and improved equity outcomes.

• Assess the impact of professional learning. Move beyond headcounts to correlate participation in professional learning with change in practice and improved student outcomes.

Our final set of recommendations recognizes that MSIs and community colleges function in a broad higher education ecosystem that includes state systems, funders, accreditors, and national higher education networks. To spur broad change, these external stakeholders must invest in long-term effectiveness and support campus-based capacity-building efforts. In our survey, campus leaders clearly specified the kinds of assistance they would find most helpful, and those data inform these three recommendations for external stakeholders:

• Support capacity building. Design and fund initiatives that support MSIs and community colleges as they advance strategic plans for strengthening CTLs, building institutional capacity, and implementing more effective professional learning design.

• Build leadership awareness. Create opportunities for institutional leaders from MSIs and community colleges to work with their peers at other institutions, examining research and jointly developing strategies for linking professional learning with broader change initiatives.

• Help disseminate professional learning resources. Put available research-based professional learning resources and planning guides into the hands of CTL leaders at MSIs, community colleges, and other broad-access institutions.

Across the country, educational leaders are searching for ways to advance equity. Support for MSIs and community colleges is critical in this context, as is attention to realizing the promise of high-impact professional learning. Our data show that MSI and community college leaders want to build their own capacity for teaching improvement. Funders and system leaders must find ways to support campus efforts to build this essential equity infrastructure.

Enacted in isolation, any one of these steps will have only limited benefit. Yet broader, more transformational change is possible. A concerted, multilayered effort to build professional learning capacity will go far in ensuring more effective change initiatives, improved teaching and learning, and greater equity for our students.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. 

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bret Eynon

Bret Eynon retired in 2019 from LaGuardia Community College (City University of New York), where he served as Associate Provost and taught history to an extraordinarily diverse body of students. Leading college-wide change initiatives related to teaching, learning, technology, advisement, assessment, and strategic planning, Eynon helped LaGuardia earn national recognition for advancing students’ economic mobility and double its graduation rate in 5 years. Honored as a Distinguished Humanities Educator by the Community College Humanities Association, Eynon now serves as a Senior Fellow at Georgetown University and as Strategic Teaching and Learning Coach at Achieving the Dream.

Jonathan Iuzzini

Jonathan Iuzzini is Director of Teaching and Learning at Achieving the Dream (ATD). He leads the development and implementation of coaching programs, seminars, and institutes that support colleges’ capacity-building efforts in equity-minded teaching, learning, and faculty-educational development. Before joining ATD, he led the Teaching & Creativity Center at Monroe Community College and taught psychology at colleges and universities in Texas and Tennessee.

H. Ray Keith

H. Ray Keith is Associate Director of Teaching and Learning at ATD. In this role, he leads and facilitates strategic direction and implementation of teaching and learning services and professional development that supports ATD Network colleges and advances the field of higher education. The dynamic programs and projects within his department are designed to build capacity for institutional transformation that takes inclusive, student-centered approaches to accelerate and sustain equitable student outcomes at ATD institutions nationwide.

Eric Loepp

Dr. Eric Loepp is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics, Government, and Law and Director of Learning Technology at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, where he teaches courses in American government, political behavior, and research methods. His disciplinary research focuses on electoral decision making, and his pedagogy research centers on using technology tools to enhance traditional forms of instruction and communication in college courses.

Nicole Weber

Nicole L. Weber is an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations and Coordinator of the Instructional Design and Learning Technology Master of Science degree at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater. Her recent areas of inquiry focus on professional learning, sense of belonging, and inclusion in fully online graduate courses, and the evolving roles of instructional design and learning technology professionals.

Notes

1 As detailed in the authors’ profiles, our team is based in Achieving the Dream, a national network of 300 community colleges and tribal colleges, and the Online Learning Consortium, a national organization supporting more effective digital learning across higher education.