Teacher professional development functions as a building block to student achievement by increasing teachers’ professional learning (Blank & de las Alas, 2010; Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Yoon, 2001; Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007). The target audience for the conference is faculty from Simpson County Schools (SCS). Teachers receive 24 hours of in-house professional development comprised of pre-selected content based on administrative needs. These training sessions are conducted using a whole-group lecture style. This capstone project seeks to implement a new professional development program via a district conference format, in an effort to increase the likelihood that teachers will transfer professional learning to practice and positively impact student growth.

This capstone created an instructional tool for teacher professional development (PD) as a pilot for Simpson County School (SCS) District in Franklin, Kentucky, that is based on best practices and Kentucky Department of Education requirements. Districts are required by state statute to use PD as an approach to increase transfer of professional learning to the classroom. PD is the activity a teacher does to obtain professional learning. Best practices are linked to school-wide plans, self-instruction, differentiation, active roles for teachers, collaboration, reflection, and feedback (Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Gardner, 2017; Gentile, 2006; Sparks & Loucks-Horsley, 1989). Findings support that PD characteristics in Kentucky PD law and effective PD characteristics in research are aligned, and PD is needed to provide evidence of teacher professional learning for two reasons: (a) teachers use evidence to support their growth of practice for PGES, and (b) professional learning has a direct impact on student achievement (Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007). Conclusively, professional learning suffers in the absence of effective PD practices. A PD practice is defined as an activity made up of effective PD characteristics, which includes ongoing PD. This capstone has two goals: first, to identify the effective characteristics of teacher PD, and second, to create an instructional tool for PD as a pilot tool for SCS District.