Along with guidance from experts, a recent report by the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) suggests effective, consistent professional learning is the critical lever to improve educators’ agency with tech.
This distinct shift, from striving for tech in schools to struggling with how to utilize it in practice, marks what SETDA Executive Director Julia Fallon calls the “digital design divide,” or the gap between having technology and knowing how to design learning experiences that make purposeful use of it.
“It’s not about devices or bandwidth. It’s about capacity, curriculum and educator support,” she said, pointing to best practices of professional development (PD) that school and district leaders can apply to ensure technology serves both teachers and students.
BUILD PD INTO SCHEDULES AND SYSTEMS
In accordance with SETDA’s research, Fallon stressed that high-impact professional learning (PL) requires 20-50 hours of job-embedded support through the duration of a school year. Federal guidance already supports this approach, she said, noting that the definition of professional learning under the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) requires PL to be “ongoing, differentiated, [and] targeted,” in addition to providing educators “personalized support and feedback for improvement.”
SETDA warns that fragmented PL systems without time for follow-up and experimentation tend to be less effective, emphasizing that school and district leaders must shift from one-off workshops to sustained, strategic schedules of professional learning.
“PL that focuses only on individual tools often leads to shallow adoption and quick obsolescence,” the report said. “At the same time, educators do need occasional, targeted training on specific platforms or applications. A balanced approach combines focused training on tools or strategies, time for teachers to explore and experiment, and ongoing coaching or peer support to connect the work back to instructional goals.”
Coordinated planning between curriculum, assessment and technology teams, in addition to federal programming, also allows districts to set shared goals and braid multiple funding streams to support coherent professional learning, SETDA’s report said.
PEDAGOGY FIRST
Matt Federoff, a high school science teacher in Ohio and senior fellow for the Center for Digital Education, said that effective tech PD for teachers begins with a determination of instructional needs, where technology serves pedagogy and not the other way around. Federoff, who also served as the chief information officer of an Arizona school district for 22 years, said tech must be relentlessly teacher-centered.
“The more layers you have between who bought the thing and who needs to use the thing, the harder it gets,” he said. “And communicating purpose and desired outcome becomes more difficult and more critical.”
Tech PD is thus less about the tool and its dozens of potential features, he continued, than on helping educators design instruction for a digital environment.
“Individuals delivering the tech instruction have to be instructors or have been instructors themselves,” he said. “Good tech PD either solves a problem or gives the teacher one particular ability they did not have before.”
At its best, Federoff said, professional learning around tech begins with asking teachers, “What’s a problem in your classroom that technology could help solve?”
“I’m going to spend time with the teachers and go, ‘OK, where are your pain points? What in your classroom? What hurts?’” he said. “And, well, ‘Is there a technology solution for that?’ And then we’ll talk about, how do I extend and embrace and encourage your educational instructional capabilities? Never looking to replace, never looking to supplant, but always looking to enhance.”
Once that question is answered, Federoff said, training should be concise, focused and immediately actionable. He recommended 30–45 minute sessions that leave teachers with at least one distinct skill they can apply to their practice the next day. That kind of laser-focused PD, he added, respects both teachers’ time and their day-to-day realities.
“Consider what you’re competing with. You’re competing with exhaustion. You’re competing with families. You’re competing with traffic. You’re competing with all of these things because people have vast lives outside of school,” he said. “How do you get past the fact that people look upon your PD as an imposition upon their time? You have to provide a rational answer to their legitimate resistance.”
SUSTAINED, COLLABORATIVE APPROACH
Recommendations from Fallon, Federoff and SETDA’s report converged on the same point: One-off PL workshops do not shift instructional practice. To maximize technology’s impact on teaching, PD must instead be ongoing, relevant and collaborative.
Fallon outlined a multipronged approach that includes in-person sessions, asynchronous work, personalized coaching and peer learning.
“It’s the ongoing cycle of professional learning and not these single workshops where you will probably see gains,” she said. “I tend to believe that all teachers really are trying to be better at their craft, but they need time and space to do that.”
According to Federoff, professional learning works best when it mirrors classroom learning: relationship-based, supportive and communal. Teachers, he said, come together not just to learn, but to connect as professionals, reflect on practice and support each other.
“Always remember in PD that content is the pretense for relationship. In that, as school leaders, you’re still bringing teachers together because you want to be in relationship with them,” he said. “It’s the same thing as any good classroom teacher.”
DIFFERENTIATION MATTERS
Both Fallon and Federoff underscored that one-size-fits-all PD doesn’t meet teachers’ needs.
Fallon noted that the varying levels of confidence, background knowledge and instructional needs directly affect how much time and support teachers require. As a result, Fallon said professional learning systems must be built in flexibility, so teachers who need deeper support receive it, and those ready to advance can do so.
“It’s a more systemic approach to supporting teachers,” she said. “It depends on the complexity of the technology ... and then it really depends on what instructional shifts are needed.”
Federoff also recommended that whenever districts introduce a new tool or design a new learning experience for students, they make an effort to gauge teachers’ background knowledge before training them on it.
That clarity sets the stage for PD that is focused and relevant, rather than overwhelming educators with features or expectations that don’t align with their immediate challenges. The goal, he said, is for teachers to walk away with tangible, actionable skills they can immediately apply to their pedagogy, ensuring the learning is both respectful of their time and directly usable in their classrooms.
“We create this dynamic that if you don’t use the tech pervasively, in everything you do, you are somehow less. That’s not the place to go ... that’s deeply disrespectful to professional teachers. A really good teacher with a chalkboard and a group of kids can light them up. A good teacher needs nothing,” Federoff continued. “I never presume that what I have to offer, you necessarily need it. But with humility, I say, ‘Look what you could do. Here’s one or two cool things you can do to take your teaching further.’”
