NAPE’s Blueprint for Equity-Focused Learning

Coherence

For professional learning to be effective, it must be aligned with national, state, and local standards as well as the specific goals of the educators involved. This helps educators see the relevance of professional learning to their everyday classroom practice. NAPE ensures that our programming isn’t an “add-on,” but rather a part of a broader strategy for change that addresses both how personal biases and structural discrimination and inequities impact student success. We tailor our curriculum to the educators’ specific contexts, using local data and examples to make the learning relevant, nuanced, and actionable. In addition, NAPE instructors allow time for participant goal-setting and problem-solving as it applies to their daily work. Even before partnering with a local educational agency or other organization, NAPE takes care to gauge participant readiness for equitable learning environments and offers a scaffolded approach to content delivery.

Sustained Duration

Change doesn’t happen overnight. While being introduced to information and concepts can happen in a one-hour workshop, changing beliefs, practices, and behaviors requires substantial time. Research shows that professional learning needs to take place over an extended period—often lasting six to twelve months or more—to allow educators time to practice new strategies and reflect on their learning (Bezrukova et al., 2016; Dobbin et al., 2018). NAPE’s year-long programs are designed with this in mind, providing teachers with ongoing opportunities to implement equitable practices and receive feedback, helping to ensure lasting change in the classroom.

NAPE’s long-term professional learning programs include peer observations, Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), Action Research for Equity Projects (AREPs), and other forms of coaching that are part of a cycle of inquiry. It is the sustained duration of these programs that allows for participants to practice implementing equitable practices that impact students

Collective Participation

Learning together is powerful and critical to changing systems where students can experience equitable outcomes beyond one or two committed educators. Professional learning is more effective when educators collaborate in teams, sharing their experiences and learning with one another. NAPE builds networks of educators who engage in professional learning communities (PLCs) and other collaborative activities, fostering a supportive environment where they can tackle challenges and share successes. Our Academies are a great example of how cohorts of educators move through stages of learning together and remain connected for extended periods of time.

For example, if teachers struggle to find meaning in how institutional racism and sexism relate to their own lives, they will find it infinitely harder to do this effectively for students. NAPE curriculum asks educators to do the uncomfortable work of unpacking their own complex identities and positionality to privilege and oppression, individually and in community with peers. Specifically, teachers have opportunities to ask questions about their lives, teaching practices, and classrooms in a setting that is supportive and encourages growth.

Active Learning

Effective professional learning engages educators in hands-on, inquiry-based learning rather than passive listening (Darling-Hammond, 2017). Our professional learning sessions involve group activities, modeling effective practices, reflection, and real-life scenarios that educators can relate to. We emphasize interactive self-discovery, encouraging educators to reflect on their own identities and biases and to practice new skills and strategies in a safe, supportive environment.

Because NAPE provides professional learning rooted in diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, our instructors are skilled at creating structure, safety, and self-management in the face of challenge or conflict. NAPE’s instructors come with a wealth of knowledge in their content areas, as well as lived experiences that position them to speak to issues of identity across differences. NAPE instructors have years of experience facilitating complex discussions using community values and research-based approaches to managing participant growth and discomfort around topics of identity, inequity and systems of oppression.

Content-Focused

Finally, our professional learning programs tie directly to the specific content educators are teaching. Whether it’s STEM or Career and Technical Education (CTE), our instructors help educators integrate equity-focused strategies into their subject areas. We emphasize inquiry-based learning that challenges traditional teaching methods and empowers both educators and students to critically engage with the content.

Again, inquiry here is essential. One would not ask the same kinds of questions in science, auto mechanics, or English Language Arts. Some equity-based professional learning primarily focuses on providing information about issues like the gender gap in STEM or reading about famous women in science. Other such professional learning focuses on some general “best practices” teachers and faculty can be aware of in their own classrooms to support equity, such as focusing on the proportion of time spent calling on boys/men, girls/women/femmes, and trans and nonbinary students, different types of questions and praise, and increasing wait time after asking questions. All of this professional development promotes general (not content-specific) practices that allow marginalized students some space to enter the fields of science, mathematics, and technology. They do not, however, fundamentally change the ways we ask questions, study, and draw conclusions about the world around us. Therefore, they do not challenge the relationships that students develop with STEM and CTE.

Inquiry has the potential for changing educators’ and students’ relationships because it is content-specific and because it questions embedded inequitable practices. To move beyond providing educators with toolkits and assessing their implementation of specific classroom strategies, NAPE’s professional learning addresses educators’ attitudes about what education is for and the power of their role as educators in working towards a more socially just world.