In a 2017 report on effective teacher professional development, the nonprofit Learning Policy Institute suggested that effective PD typically ranges from 20 to 50 hours annually. While that scale may be a reference point for school leaders, some experienced educators say the total hours are far less important than whether teachers have time to absorb, practice and reflect on what they learn. What matters most is how PD is designed — and how consistently it shows up in teachers’ work.
THE MOST PRECIOUS RESOURCE: TIME
For many educators, the biggest barrier to meaningful PD is time. There is just never enough of it, according to Brittany Bernard, education technology manager at D.C. Public Schools and a GenerationAI fellow at the nonprofit International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).
Districts often respond to those constraints by compressing PD into mandated sessions, Bernard said. However, she warns that required trainings, especially if they are viewed by teachers as irrelevant to instruction, can build resistance.
“I understand making [PD] mandatory so that you know they are in that area to learn. But after a while, the fatigue grows,” she said. “You need to know who you’re teaching. You need to know what matters to them, or else, why are you doing this? What you’re saying applies to an ideal circumstance, like an ideal situation, an ideal classroom with perfect conditions. And that’s just not the reality.”
In contrast, she continued, when PD time gives teachers an outlet to solve problems with peers, sources of consistent support and time to practice what they learned in the classroom, they are more likely to feel the work is worthwhile and to transfer new skills into instruction.
Without a clear understanding of teachers’ needs, PD can quickly become compliance-driven rather than instructional, according to Georgia Terlaje, an ISTE community leader, consultant and former instructional coach with 31 years of classroom experience. Too often, she said, PD operates as a rotation of required topics rather than a coherent learning plan with follow-through.
“There are all these requirements for the districts that the principals are just checking a box,” she said. “But there is no follow-through.”
Terlaje noted that without sustained support, PD becomes a shallow exposure rather than a meaningful development arc. Teachers, she said, are often “sprinkled” with information — introduced to tools or strategies once, then expected to implement them independently. What’s missing is continuity: returning to the same skills throughout the year, connecting PD to both teacher and student outcomes, and embedding technology within everyday pedagogy.
“I really believe [tech] needs to be intricately in the pedagogy because as these students become adults, that’s the land they’re going to live in,” she said. “It’s a whole shift in how I think people are going to be teaching and how kids are going to be assessed.”
The result, Terlaje said, is a system where time is both the biggest barrier and the most powerful lever. Teachers need more of it to practice and refine new skills, but requiring hours can backfire if the content isn’t aligned to their needs or classroom realities — the challenge isn’t just finding time for PD, but designing PD that makes the time worth it.
ONGOING PD, IN PRACTICE
Some research and experts say PD is most effective when it is ongoing, job-embedded and collaborative. But the notion of “ongoing” is often misunderstood, according to Ji Soo Song, director of projects and initiatives at the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA).
“One week we’re talking about increasing ELA scores, the other week we’re talking about student behavior … the next week chronic absenteeism,” he said, noting how some districts schedule weekly PD sessions yet still fail to produce long-term change because each week focuses on a new, unrelated topic. “We know from research that that doesn’t really help lead to changes.”
Song underscored that ongoing PD should not be viewed in a temporal sense, but rather as a long-term system that allows teachers to apply new strategies in the classroom, reflect on results and adjust practices with support.
“Is there a connection between what we’re learning in September versus what we’re learning in December?” he said. “Is there continuous support and coaching for that team of teachers?”
Terlaje agreed, adding that teachers need space to practice skills, reflect and iterate — not rush on to the next trend.
“Teachers need scaffolding as well,” she said. “See how it works with their kids, come back and talk about how it works before you go on to the next thing.”
Professional development frequently exists as a rotation of required topics rather than a coherent learning plan, she added, and the lack of sustained support is one of the biggest reasons teachers dismiss PD as ineffective.
“There needs to be this big picture,” she said, emphasizing that districts should design PD arcs that revisit the same skills throughout the year instead of cycling through disconnected topics.
MEASURING EFFICACY OF PD
According to Song, most districts still rely on easily captured but limited metrics, such as number of teachers in attendance at a session, despite growing pressure to show returns on PD investments. But, he said, that approach fails to answer the most important question, in this case: Did the PD actually change instruction?
Song recommends that districts incorporate qualitative data, such as teacher reflections, coaching notes and artifacts of practice, to evaluate whether new strategies are taking hold.
“How can [administrators] effectively monitor how [teachers are] changing practice in their classroom on a day-to-day basis?” he said. “If we just keep relying on the data that’s easy to count, we’re not able to monitor progress effectively.”
Moreover, both Bernard and Terlaje argued that meaningful evaluation of PD requires looking at what teachers do differently, not how many sessions they attend: Teachers must have opportunities to practice, get feedback and revisit the same skills over time. If the structure of PD doesn’t enable that, no metric can meaningfully capture impact.
If a PD session is meaningful, Terlaje said, teachers should be able to implement a strategy, tool or instructional move in the days or weeks afterward — and student learning outcomes will follow.
ALTERNATIVE FRAMEWORKS
Some leaders are rethinking tech PD entirely. Tom Ryan, a former high school teacher, principal and CIO who is also a senior fellow for the Center for Digital Education, argues that short, isolated trainings don’t give teachers the support needed to adopt new practices.
Ryan favors a cohort model that unfolds over several years, allowing teams of teachers, along with their principals, to deepen skills together.
“They’re more likely to have success if you’ve got four or five people in the school doing something so they can help other people do it,” he said.
Multiyear structures also make it easier to tie PD to measurable indicators of teacher and student growth, he said. Collaborative models over a duration of time typically attract teachers voluntarily or semi-voluntarily, which shifts the tone, according to Ryan. Teachers enter with a shared purpose, build trust across the group and are more willing to try new approaches, because the learning is embedded in peer accountability and ongoing conversation — not a single afternoon.
“You’ve got to set a culture that expects to continually grow and improve, not just show up. That’s leadership,” Ryan said. “That then builds within teachers and in the classroom.”
By learning in a collaborative setting, Ryan added that teachers can surface real barriers they encounter in implementation — time constraints, access issues, workload pressures — and facilitators can adjust content accordingly. This not only strengthens the PD but provides districts with a clearer picture of where misalignment exists, and why certain strategies succeed or fail. That information often gets lost in one-time sessions.
“That’s a much more scalable model,” he said, in reference to having educators experience PD in multiyear groupings. “I don’t have enough staff to do everybody in the district anyway, but I can do these cohorts of people.”
