Collaborative School Improvement

How can districts bring instructional improvement to scale within and across schools? The authors of Collaborative School Improvement argue that districts can play a powerful part in helping schools build the capacity to engage in inquiry-based reform—but that this effort requires a shift in districts’ traditional role as a professional development provider. Drawing on case studies from three districts, the authors identify eight key practices for effective school-district collaboration. By helping districts teach—and model—an inquiry-based process, Collaborative School Improvement promises to offer powerful new support for scaling up data-driven instructional reform."

Your step-by-step guide to making collaboration work Collaborating for improved student outcomes makes sense. But beyond theory, do you know where to begin? Aligned to current Learning Forward standards and based on the latest research, this book deconstructs the collaborative inquiry process. This step-by-step guide gives facilitators tools to move teams toward purposeful, productive collaborative work with: A clear and concise four-stage model that provides a structure for facilitating successful collaborative inquiry Real-world examples from collaborative teams that model componen.

Foster reflective teacher leadership and make real change happen! Teachers are powerful change agents in the on-going process of school improvement. This insightful, must-read companion guide to Donohoo’s best-selling Collaborative Inquiry for Educators helps school leaders develop a sustainable professional learning culture. Practical suggestions and in-depth research shed light on your path as you explore the benefits and challenges of adopting authentic teacher collaboration across schools and districts. Learn valuable lessons from leaders in the field and discover: A rationale and framework for engaging in inquiry The vital conditions needed to ensure systemwide collaboration Common pitfalls and the four stages of school improvement

Ensure Conversations About Collaboration Get Results. This book lays out the theory and practice of Collaborative Professionalism. Through five international case studies, the authors distinguish Collaborative Professionalism from professional collaboration by highlighting intentional collaborative designs and providing concrete examples for how to be more purposeful with collaboration. Additionally, the book makes Collaborative Professionalism accessible to all educators through clear take-aways including: Ten core tenets, including Collective Efficacy, Collaborative Inquiry, and Collaborating With Students. Graphics indicating how educators can move from mere professional collaboration to the deep and transformative work of Collaborative Professionalism. Analysis of which collaborative practices educators should start doing, keep doing, and stop doing Collaboration can be one of your most powerful educational tools when used correctly, and turned into action. This book shows you how.

Leadership, collaborative learning, and student achievement – discover what works! This resource-rich book provides a straightforward, strategic path to achieving sustainable communities of collaborative learners. Research-proven inquiry techniques, vignettes, case studies and action-oriented protocols help you build strong learning relationships for high-impact student achievement. System leaders, principals and teachers learn to: Integrate diverse views and perspectives Build trust and hear every voice Leverage key resources and processes Build students’ cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal skills Use “Assessments-in-Action” to improve, monitor and sustain progress Build a collaborative culture through learning together Use this go-to guide to transform your school from a place of ‘good intentions’ to a center of intentional practice today!

This book provides a theoretical and practical account of a successful design-based research-practice partnership, the Learning Schools Model. The Model has built school capability and improved valued student outcomes for primarily indigenous and ethnic minority students for over 15 years and across five countries.

All teachers--including career and technical education (CTE) teachers--play a vital role in building a thriving PLC. In this practical resource, the authors explicitly outline how to improve teaching and learning by integrating PLC best practices into CTE programs. Teams of CTE educators will learn how to clarify their purpose, discover their common denominators, and incorporate powerful collaborative processes into their daily work. Use this resource to learn the vital strategies necessary for building and improving teams: Become familiar with the common issues that prevent CTE educators from engaging in the collaborative PLC process. Learn why and how the PLC process benefits both CTE educators and students. Learn how CTE educators can create collaborative programs that are tailored toward CTE fields of study. Receive professional guidance and concrete, achievable teaching strategies for creating an effective PLC process. Access a checklist of crucial action steps for career tech teams at the end of each chapter. Contents: Introduction Chapter 1: Establishing a Collaborative Culture Chapter 2: Forming Collaborative Teams Chapter 3: Setting Up the Logistics of Teamwork Chapter 4: Identifying Essential Learnings and Developing CTE Curriculum Chapter 5: Designing Instruction and Assessments Chapter 6: Reflecting on Data Chapter 7: Responding to Student Learning Epilogue: Turning Parking Spaces Into Rest Spaces Appendix A: Glossary of Terms Appendix B: Reproducibles

What if you had a collaborative process of looking at student data that could pinpoint student gaps in learning and suggest effective strategies to close those gaps? What if you knew not only what you should start doing to enhance student learning, but also what you should stop doing because it hasn't given you the hoped-for results? Enter Achievement Teams. This is not another program that's here today and gone tomorrow; it's a timeless approach that any school or district can replicate that focuses on the most significant variable in student achievement: teaching. In Achievement Teams, Steve Ventura and Michelle Ventura offer a framework based on John Hattie's Visible Learning research that makes teacher collaboration more efficient, rigorous, satisfying, and effective. Think of it as a systematic treasure hunt for best practices using real data on your students. The authors walk you through the Achievement Teams four-step meeting protocol: * In Step 1, teams focus on the evidence from a pre-assessment to provide specific feedback to students and teachers about concepts and skills that students did and did not learn. * In Step 2, teams use that evidence to establish SMART goals for both teachers and students. * In Step 3, teams summarize the collected data and make inferences around students' mastery levels. * In Step 4, teachers select high-impact strategies directly targeted to student needs. A post-assessment reveals what did and didn't work. The authors provide a plethora of resources along the way, including reflection activities to extend your thinking and a variety of helpful downloadable templates designed to facilitate the work. If you're a teacher or leader who is interested in maximizing student achievement, this book is for you.

Through this book, we seek to describe improvement science in action for educators, schools, districts, universities, and communities. This book is a venue for improvement research in education focused on the application of improvement science in educational settings. Improvement science requires extensive engagement in rigorous work to implement sustainable change at a systemic level. As the editors of this volume for the Leadership in School Improvement SIG book series, we hope that these chapters, written by researchers, practitioners, and leaders engaged in improvement science will help others begin their own improvement processes to achieve desired, equitable, and sustainable results for student success. ENDORSEMENTS: "Continuous Improvement: A Leadership Process for School Improvement brings together an impressive group of fieldleading improvement scholars, with deep connections to educational practice, to provide a powerful vision for what equity-centered improvement science looks like in action. The stories of improvement, partnership, and critical enabling conditions provide theoretically sound and practically useful guidance for anyone seeking to transform education organizations in service of more equitable learning opportunities for students." — Jennifer Lin Russell, Vanderbilt Peabody College "This is a moment of empowerment in education, with movements for social justice and continuous improvement providing motivations and methods to interrogate, disrupt, and rebuild education systems to support the holistic development of all students. This essential book provides compelling accounts of what it looks like -- and what is possible -- when educational professionals, researchers, and other stakeholders come together to seize this moment." — Donald Peurach, University of Michigan’s School of Education and Carnegie Foundation

Build a community in your school and improve learning outcomes with this one-stop sourcebook that features the latest educational issues, new research-based strategies and activities, and more!