Leveraging the Promise of Micro-credentials to Develop Culturally Responsive Educators

Teacher professional development often gets a bad rap. The chief complaints? Development activities are all too frequently short-term, episodic, and divorced from teachers’ daily work. Fortunately, education leaders aim to remedy these concerns by exploring new professional learning strategies, among which is micro-credentialing. An avenue for personalized learning, micro-credentialing involves earning “mini certifications” for mastering a specific skill or content area. Micro-credentials are worth looking at, considering they receive high ratings from early participants, and at least 17 states have included them in their ESSA plans. This newly minted professional learning tool also stands out as an opportunity to foster a more culturally responsive teaching workforce.

Earning micro-credentials is a straightforward process whereby teachers:

• identify what micro-credential they want to earn;
  
• pursue a new skill through a digital platform;
  
• put their learning into practice; 
  
• remit evidence of mastery through videos, personal reflections, student work, and other artifacts; 
  
• are graded based on their submissions; and,   
  
• receive a micro-credential or an opportunity to try again.
  

These micro-credentials are “issued” by organizations (e.g., Digital Promise), usually in collaboration with a state, school district, or school. State and local education agencies can increase participation by tying micro-credentials to licensure processes, pay schedules, or by offering a stipend.

This model of professional learning is promising for several reasons. Whereas traditional professional development entails attending a training session that generally has no follow-up, micro-credentials require that educators reflect, implement, and receive feedback on new skills. Building on this promise, Tennessee currently uses micro-credentials as a follow-up to traditional state-led training, allowing teachers to present evidence that they are applying their new knowledge and skills. Early evaluations suggest states and districts can further strengthen teacher follow-through by coupling micro-credentials with real-life coaching and mentoring.

Micro-credentials also enable personalized learning. In Arkansas, for instance, teachers are required to choose micro-credentials that support their professional growth plans. Tying micro-credentials to professional growth plans ensures teachers use micro-credentialing to engage in new learning, not solely to validate existing knowledge.

States and districts are also choosing to design and pilot micro-credentials to increase the share of teachers trained in culturally responsive teaching. New York State is a pioneer in culturally responsive teaching micro-credentials.  Since their adoption in 2017, their culturally responsive teaching micro-credentials have reached over 100 teachers and 25 principals. One micro-credential they offer school leaders in collaboration with Teaching Matters, Building Foundations for Culturally Responsive Education, prompts principals and vice principals to analyze their own identities and cultural backgrounds, before requiring that they facilitate campus-wide discussions about diversity and equity grounded in data. Meanwhile, Washington State is also exploring micro-credentials to support culturally responsive teaching, though their emphasis is on training veteran teachers who may have missed training in this area.

Education leaders increasingly recognize the value of readying teachers to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student population. In New York City, for example, decisionmakers have committed over $20 million to provide teachers with training on how to design learning experiences and spaces that more tightly align to students’ ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. As education leaders focus more attention on culturally responsive teaching, the need to develop adequate training in this area becomes more pressing.

Micro-credentialing is particularly well-poised to meet this need because each micro-credential presents only one bite-sized and evidence-based competency. Practically, this means teachers could potentially earn a micro-credential that targets improvements to classroom community and climate, another that supports their cross-cultural communication, and a third that helps them analyze personal biases in their discipline practices. Each of these micro-credentials could also be part of a progression, or “stack” of micro-credentials, which would allow teachers to learn different components of the approach at their own pace. 

Teachers are already responding positively to micro-credentials. In fact, one survey conducted by the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation and the Oak Foundation, in collaboration with Digital Promise, found that 97 of teachers who completed their first micro-credential were interested in pursuing a second—a sizeable feat since teachers are critical consumers of professional development. Despite positive evaluations by participants, however, many questions remain unanswered about micro-credentialing, particularly around quality. 

An American Institutes for Research report, which synthesized lessons from early state adopters, suggests states should keep a close eye on the grading process for micro-credentials to ensure they maintain a high bar for participants. Education leaders should also turn to state-developed frameworks and standards to ensure micro-credentials remain tied to research-based elements of culturally responsive teaching. Finally, to guarantee teachers earn rigorous and evidence-based micro-credentials, education leaders should consider devising a formal approval process for micro-credentials. 

As states and districts continue to incorporate micro-credentials to their current outfit of tools, it is worth continuing to gauge their impact on teacher practice and student outcomes. Done right, micro-credentialing may turn out to be an effective way to keep pace with the growing demand for training in culturally responsive teaching.