What a research team brings to the room that a PD vendor cannot
The professional development market has a structural problem. The organizations best positioned to deliver PD at scale — the vendors, the conference circuit, the consulting firms — are rarely the same organizations that study whether PD actually changes classroom practice. And the researchers who study PD effectiveness are rarely the ones delivering it to teachers.
We occupy an unusual position. Both of us maintain active research programs — with peer-reviewed publications, funded projects, and ongoing data collection — while simultaneously designing and delivering PD directly to school districts and teacher cohorts. That dual role is not a marketing claim. It is a methodological commitment that changes what happens in the room.
What the research role produces
When we design a PD session, we are not drawing from intuition or industry “best practices.” We are drawing from specific findings — many of them our own — about what works and what does not.
For example: our study of 60 teachers across three STEM PD cohorts (Burrows et al., 2021) found that the single most consistent request from participants was “time for practice” — not more content, not better technology. That finding directly shapes our session design: at least 40% of every engagement is structured practice time.
Our work on cybersecurity microcredentials (Burrows, Borowczak, & Mugayitoglu, 2022) showed that completion rates improved dramatically when we extended the timeline from 28 to 49 days and added peer checkpoints. That finding shapes every asynchronous component we build.
Our NetLogo study (Borowczak & Burrows, 2019) revealed that teachers adopted computational modeling tools during PD but struggled to transfer the approach to new contexts without explicit design support. That finding shapes how we structure implementation follow-up.
These are not abstract principles pulled from a literature review. They are specific, quantified findings from programs we designed, delivered, and evaluated. The research and the practice are the same pipeline.
What changes in the room
Three things are different when a PD session is designed by people who also study PD effectiveness.
The activities are evidence-informed, not experience-informed. Most PD providers design sessions based on what “worked” in prior deliveries — measured by participant satisfaction surveys or facilitator intuition. We design based on measured outcomes: content knowledge gains, implementation rates during follow-up, self-efficacy shifts, and classroom observation data. Satisfaction is a useful signal. It is not a proxy for learning.
The evaluation is built in, not bolted on. We collect data during every engagement — not because a funder requires it, but because the data tells us what to change next time. Pre- and post-assessments, session-level feedback, implementation tracking during the academic year, and follow-up interviews are standard components. Districts that work with us receive evaluation data as part of the deliverable, not as an optional add-on.
The content evolves with the field. Maintaining active research programs means we are reading the journals, attending the conferences, reviewing the papers, and publishing our own work in real time. The content we deliver reflects the current state of the evidence — not the state of the evidence when the slide deck was first created three years ago.
The guest speaker problem
Many districts attempt to bridge the research-practice gap by bringing in a university speaker for a keynote or workshop. This is better than nothing, but it has predictable limitations. The speaker delivers for one day, leaves, and has no role in implementation. There is no follow-up, no data collection, no iteration.
We are not guest speakers. We design multi-day, multi-phase engagements with built-in follow-up. The research relationship does not end when the workshop ends — it continues through the implementation year because that is where the interesting data lives.
Why this matters for your district
If you are evaluating PD providers, ask three questions:
What is the published evidence base for this program? Not testimonials. Not satisfaction scores. Published, peer-reviewed evidence of measured outcomes.
What data will you collect during our engagement, and what will you do with it? If the answer is “we will send a survey at the end,” the evaluation model is insufficient.
How does your content stay current? If the presenter’s reference list is more than two years old, the content may already be dated — especially in AI, cybersecurity, and computing education, where the field moves fast.
We publish our work. We collect data. We update our content. And we design sessions based on findings, not hunches.