The architecture of professional development: materials, messages and meaning

As an aesthetic form, architecture deals with the creation and definition of space expressed in buildings and other physical structures. The Colosseum in Rome, Notre Dame in Paris, and the United States capital in Washington, through their designs define space, capture our imagination, and communicate important cultural and historical messages. Similarly, the architecture of professional development communicates messages about teaching, learning, and educational reform by creating and defining professional learning spaces for teachers and principals. In this paper I build on and extend earlier work on the architecture of professional development in schools (Designs for Learning: A New Architecture for Professional Development in Schools, Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA). The purpose of this paper is to accomplish three objectives. First, I describe an emerging architecture for teacher professional development highlighting its underlying design principles, essential components, and expressions in contemporary educational reform in schools. The second objective is to propose a framework for evaluating the architecture of professional development. In the final section of this paper, I describe how the systematic evaluation of professional development helps us better understand the messages and meanings communicated in current expressions of professional development in architecture.