Professional development (PD) resources can be powerful for teachers to improve their craft. But in many schools, PD still takes the form of undifferentiated, stale workshops with little accountability or follow-up for implementation. Decades of scholarly literature has shown that this method doesn’t change practices or benefit students – but despite loud critiques from educators and researchers, PD for teachers has been slow to evolve. That might be because revitalizing PD seems difficult: workshops are low-cost and often low-effort, and administrators may be hard-pressed to find resources to do better, like funding or trusted PD providers.

This infographic visualizes some common pitfalls, as well as how to avoid them.