Texas Instructional Leadership (TIL) uses job-embedded professional development (PD) practices with its participants to promote growth and change management within the district and/or campus.  Job-embedded PD is defined as professional development that includes face-to-face training and subsequent opportunities for participants to be provided real-time feedback and one-on-one coaching as they begin implementation of their newly learned skills back on their campuses or in their districts.  Job-embedded PD includes all three of the following:

• Whole group training  to establish a shared understanding of success and allow for deliberate practice; 
• Implementation support to observe implementation and provide real-time feedback;
   and
• One-on-one coaching to rapidly improve application skills and practices.

When applicable, this approach allows for increasing leverage and sustainability of professional development by focusing on those who, through proximity and responsibility, can best support the implementation of newly learned skills and systems - campus and district instructional leaders. However, the practice can also be applied to teachers.   

The approach also seeks to measure the impact of training based on student outcomes improvements and/or by measuring outputs, such as demonstrated application of key practices, rather than inputs, such as number of hours of PD delivered (wherever possible and/or relevant).

Face-to-face professional development allows the relevant campus and district participants to convene to build a shared understanding of the skills, practices, and/or systems that educators will work to bring back to their campuses and districts. The whole group setting, often involving groups of participants from different campuses and districts across a region, provides for both an efficient way to establish a baseline understanding of the practices to be implemented and benefits from the cohort learning experience, where participants learn both from facilitators and fellow educators who occupy similar roles on other campuses or in other districts.

Implementation support occurs when participants are observed and given feedback in their day-to-day work settings. This provides two opportunities for professional development that includes (1) real-time feedback by facilitators as participants are observed in action, (2) allows the facilitator to gather evidence/artifacts on the strengths and struggles of the participant’s implementation so that the facilitator can identify the highest leverage growth area for the participant in preparation for a one-on-one coaching session between the facilitator and the participant, and (3) recurring check-ins provide an opportunity for the facilitator to establish priorities for leaders in their implementation of instructional best practices, check-in on progress towards priorities, and ensure that action steps are aligned to leaders accomplishing priorities in their district/campus.

One-on-one coaching allows instructional leaders to rapidly close practice and/or implementation gaps. By focusing on high-leverage growth areas identified during implementation support, facilitators structure one-on-one coaching sessions so that practitioners have an opportunity to see a strong model of what success looks like for the gap in question, compare that model to the practitioners’ own implementation, identify the discrete steps to take to close the gap, and then practice those steps with support and feedback from the coach.