Teachers Need PD to Make Competency-Based Learning Work. What That Looks Like

How do teachers learn to teach in a way they likely never experienced as students, and especially if they didn’t learn how do it in their preparation programs?

One option is to learn that way through their own professional development.

As more districts shift to personalized, competency-based learning, they face the challenge of training teachers to work in an environment that can be a radical departure from the norm in K-12 education.

That’s a top reason why districts and states have increasingly embraced microcredentials in recent years. It’s professional development for teachers in a self-paced, personalized, competency-based style.

Teachers choose a skill they want to develop—often, a focused skill, like employing “wait time” after asking students a discussion question. Then, they work on it at their own pace before supplying evidence—classroom videos, student work examples, and written reflections—to show they’ve mastered it.

An outside evaluator reviews the evidence, provides feedback, and awards the microcredential if the teacher has met the criteria. If not, the teacher can keep working on it, resubmit the evidence, and earn the credential, which typically comes in the form of a digital badge.

“It’s really hard to create competency-based education when you’ve never experienced it yourself,” said Rita Fennelly-Atkinson, the senior director of credentials at the nonprofit Digital Promise, which is one of the nation’s primary providers of microcredentials for educators and runs an online platform featuring hundreds of them. (The National Education Association and the company BloomBoard are other major providers.)

“If educators have the opportunity to experience what it looks like and what it feels like to earn a microcredential and be recognized for their skills, then they understand it, and they are better able to communicate and support that process for their learners,” Fennelly-Atkinson said.

While the traditional teacher workshop is still prominent in schools, some districts have started integrating microcredentials into their slate of professional development offerings, with some extending financial incentives for teachers to pursue them.

A handful of states—three, as of 2020—now allow teachers to count microcredentials toward license renewals. Others—eight, as of 2020—allow teachers to use microcredentials to earn license endorsements in specific subjects. At least one—Rhode Island—allows prospective English to Speakers of Other Languages, or ESOL, teachers to complete their initial licensure through a prescribed course of 12 microcredentials. And additional states are working on licensure pathways for teachers and administrators using the credentials.

Some states and districts have also deployed microcredentials for narrower purposes. A state-led collaborative in Louisiana, for example, developed microcredentials specifically aimed at expanding high school STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) instruction, and an Iowa district required teachers to complete a microcredential in remote instruction at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The reason that microcredentials hold promise is because the process through which teachers or other educators are earning them reflects a lot of the best practices in adult learning,” said Melissa Tooley, the director of P-12 educator quality in the education policy program at the New America Foundation. She co-authored a 2021 report analyzing state microcredential policies, best practices, and research on their effectiveness.

High-quality microcredentials incorporate a number of elements researchers have agreed are often missing from traditional professional development. They are generally focused directly on classroom practice rather than general content and principles, and teachers typically have to apply what they learn to earn the badge. The learning isn’t confined to a one-time, one-size-fits-all workshop that might be relevant to some teachers and not others.

But a decade after the concept started generating excitement in the field, microcredentials are still in their relative infancy. There’s still limited research into their effects on student learning. And because of the number of organizations offering them, there’s no central quality control. In addition, there’s a lot of variation in whether teachers receive coaching as they pursue the credentials, according to the New America report.

How microcredentials work in an early adopter district

Casie Maekawa, an 8th grade math teacher at Juab Junior High School in Utah, said microcredentials have offered professional development in manageable doses that’s directly relevant to her teaching in a district that shifted years ago to competency-based instruction.

“One of the things that I am a firm believer of is, if I’m encouraging my students to be learners, I have to be a learner also, right?” she said. “There’s no such thing as, ‘I got to where I’m going and I’m done learning as a teacher.’”

The Juab district, located near Provo, became an early adopter of microcredentials in 2016 as a way of helping teachers become more adept at competency-based education. Utah also is among the states where teachers can apply microcredentials toward license renewal.

The Juab district encourages teachers to complete the Core Four microcredentials for competency-based instruction on Digital Promise’s platform. They address using technology in the classroom, data-driven interventions, customizing student learning experiences, and cultivating a growth mindset.

The page for each credential lays out tasks for teachers to complete and the evidence and written reflections they must submit to prove what they’ve learned. It also lists academic research tied to each skill.

Juab teachers generally have to pay a fee for each, often about $40, for the evaluator’s time. After they complete it, though, they earn $200 per credential from the district.

Teachers who complete 12 microcredentials that they’ve agreed on with their principal—known as a stack—can become teacher-leaders, who serve as professional mentors and help colleagues with training, and receive a $3,000 annual stipend.

“Part of their agreement to be a teacher-leader is they know we’re going to lean into them, so we’re leaning into them to help in some of these areas where it gets a little challenging,” said Royd Darrington, the 2,700-student district’s assistant superintendent.

Microcredentials haven’t replaced district and schoolwide professional development, said Angie Hall, an instructional coach in the district. But when it’s offered, leaders often suggest a related microcredential educators can complete to further their knowledge.

The Juab district’s transition to competency-based education has become more difficult in recent years, Darrington said, primarily because it’s experienced about 50 percent turnover among teachers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, largely the result of veterans deciding to retire sooner than they originally had planned.

As they left, the district lost those teachers’ expertise in competency-based learning, Darrington said.

Microcredentials, however, have been a bright spot, with participation growing more robust. More than three-quarters—76 percent—of the district’s current 136 teachers have earned at least one microcredential, according to Krystle Bassett, who developed the district’s microcredentials program. Teachers have earned a total of 986 microcredentials since 2016.

“This is probably our saving grace,” Darrington said.

Microcredentials still face barriers preventing more widespread adoption

In 2021, Louisiana’s education department led a collaboration to develop microcredentials to prepare high school teachers to teach computer science and pre-engineering. It was part of a statewide initiative to expand STEM instruction.

Teachers who completed the credentials generally thought the process helped, according to a RAND Corp. evaluation of the program. But participants also completed fewer microcredentials than organizers initially expected, largely because they couldn’t find enough time. RAND researchers also found that there was no difference in math- and science-test scores between students of teachers who earned the credentials and peers whose teachers hadn’t completed the training.

The lack of a detectable effect, however, could have been because so few teachers actually completed the micro-credentials, the researchers wrote. (Another study in eastern Kentucky did find better test performance among students whose teachers pursued microcredentials, but researchers couldn’t confirm that microcredentials were the reason.)

The limited participation from teachers in Louisiana illustrates one potential barrier to more widespread adoption of microcredentials.

Another is that, because of the difficulty and the amount of work and time required, microcredentials haven’t been as successful with novice teachers, said Tooley of the New America Foundation.

And yet another is the credentials’ novelty, said Fennelly-Atkinson of Digital Promise. Because they’re still new and evolving, the number of districts and other entities that recognize microcredentials can be limited.

But researchers are working to determine what makes microcredentials most effective, according to RAND’s evaluation of the Louisiana effort. And a collaborative involving state education departments in Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Wyoming is developing and testing quality standards for microcredentials.

Districts interested in integrating microcredentials into their existing professional development should ensure the credentials available to their teachers outline a clear path for completing them and that educators have access to coaching and feedback, whether that comes from within the district or the microcredential provider, Tooley said.

Teachers also need that support if they don’t earn a microcredential on the first try and want to try again, she said.

“If you have to just keep going through this process over and over again, teachers are going to get frustrated, and it’s not going to have the impact that districts are hoping it will,” Tooley said.

Microcredentials already exist in fields aside from education, and in K-12 schools, they have the potential to expand beyond teachers to students, Fennelly-Atkinson said.

They could apply most easily in career and technical education but could also be used to recognize skills students acquire outside of school, as part of a growing effort to give students credit for out-of-classroom learning, she said.

“There’s a lot of thought going into how we can enable those opportunities,” Fennelly-Atkinson said, “and I think once people see how successful [microcredentialing] can be, then they’re more willing to explore it and consider how it can be integrated in other areas.”