Navigating a Fractured Landscape: Teachers’ Engagement with Professional Learning Across Multiple Forms and Formats

Purpose: Coherent systems of teacher professional learning (PL) hold great promise for supporting teacher practice. Yet little research systematically examines characteristics of PL systems or how teachers are engaging with PL within and across schools and districts. Research Methods: We use statewide teacher survey and administrative data from Tennessee to examine variation in the reported quantity and instructional helpfulness of PL activities. We also explore whether PL engagement is associated with three sets of factors: professional skills and needs of individual teachers, external accountability pressures and instructional priorities, and organizational conditions and capacity to offer PL. Findings: There is substantial variation in PL engagement across and even within schools. Teacher need and external pressures appear to inform PL engagement, which is higher among less experienced and higher-performing teachers, teachers in tested classrooms, and teachers in priority schools (i.e., those identified by the state as low-performing). Local context is also a key driver, with teachers in smaller, rural districts and in schools with less supportive climates reporting less regular PL engagement. Organizational conditions, including ratings of climate and teacher autonomy, are associated with increased helpfulness. Implications: These findings indicate that teachers are not having uniform experiences with PL. Some districts may be targeting their limited resources toward PL based on certain teacher needs and external instructional priorities (i.e., state initiatives, tested subjects). Regional efforts to support PL and virtual PL may offer two potential avenues to increase access to PL for more teachers, especially those working in smaller, rural districts.