Adaptive Teacher Professional Development: Crafting Coherence by Surfacing Tensions Through Co-Design With Teachers

Although coherence is widely cited as an important feature of professional development (PD), few initiatives provide teachers with agency to adapt PD to be coherent with their contexts and experiences. Through a research–practice partnership approach, teachers in this study were active contributors in negotiating PD adaptations in response to issues raised during a 2-year mathematics PD effort. Through qualitative analysis of audio transcripts from 29 co-design meetings at two elementary schools, we documented instructional challenges and tensions that surfaced for teachers as they implemented PD learning. Tensions stemmed from the infrastructure surrounding teacher instructional change, the negotiation of opportunities for teacher agency, and the engagement of broader audiences in scaling improvement efforts. We then investigated co-designed PD adaptations to address these issues. Implications for crafting coherent and productive PD initiatives with teachers are discussed.