In most recommendations about how to strengthen teaching quality and increase student achievement, the concept of job-embedded professional development emerges. Yet few have a common understanding of what this term means. The term is frequently misunderstood, and is used to refer to very different practices. The concepts span a range including when professional learning occurs to how it is designed.

Finally, a team has tackled the challenge of defining this elusive concept with the issue brief Job-Embedded Professional Development: What It Is, Who Is Responsible, and How to Get It Done Well.

Building some consensus about what constitutes job-embedded professional learning is necessary if educators hope to implement this practice as a core element of any reform effort, and to evaluate its effect on teaching and student learning. More importantly, it is essential to have a common understanding of job-embedded professional learning if school reform specialists intend to implement it. Prepared collaboratively by the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, the Mid-Atlantic Comprehensive Center, and NSDC, this issue brief strives to define job-embedded professional development, identify who is responsible for it, and describe how to implement it. The brief includes research base, practical examples, and recommendations for districts, schools, and other education agencies either implementing or advocating for this powerful form of professional learning.

?

Joellen Killion is NSDC's deputy executive director.