Teacher Professional Learning In An Age Of Compliance

Teacher Professional Learning in an Age of Compliance: Mind the Gap examines ways in which practice-based inquiry in educational settings, in a number of different countries and contexts, can transcend current ways of working and thinking such that authentic professional learning is the result. The authors contend that education policy, under pressure from a number of quarters, is retreating into a standardized, audited, and backward-looking arena, with the advances of more progressive educational philosophy being rolled back. In an age where practitioner inquiry and action research have often been ‘hijacked’ for the purposes of broad-based policy implementation, this book offers a rationale for reclaiming the critical edge so fundamental to inquiry-based professional learning. It examines the potential of inquiry-based forms of teacher professional learning to contribute to the growth of professional knowledge for and about teachers’ work. The authors intend that the book will assist in building new forms of professional knowledge that go beyond the current compliance model – engineered from less enduring materials – to inform a new model with its foundations in a strong ethical and moral framework. They also believe that this new model, if implemented, will help to reverse today’s conservative educational trends and make teacher professional development a force for genuine progress once again. They have consciously moved away from the celebratory tone of much of the academic reporting of teacher professional learning, adopting instead a genuinely critical edge. In covering a wide range of policies and practices from across the international spectrum, they have allowed themselves the freedom to engage in serious epistemological arguments about the nature of professional knowledge, as well as how it is constructed and employed.

For sustained success, educators must commit to their own lifelong improvement. A clear correlation exists between level of focus on teacher professional development (PD) and student success. In this book, John Murray identifies the characteristics of effective professional learning, detailing eight strategies for planning, and executing, and evaluating PD programs. Content includes: The proven “backward” approach to articulating the goals of your PD program Descriptions of innovative and effective designs for professional learning such as Lesson Study and Instructional Rounds Powerful approaches to designing and implementing online PD

Because what we do in staff development can best be understood in terms of Contexts, Strategies, and Structures, the remainder of the book features distinguished educators who write from their own unique experiential and theoretical stances. Jacqueline Ancess describes how teachers in New York City secondary schools increase their own learning while improving student outcomes • Milbrey W. McLaughlin and Joel Zarrow demonstrate how teachers learn to use data to improve their practice and meet educational standards • Lynne Miller presents a case study of a long-lived school, university partnership • Beverly Falk recounts stories of teachers working together to develop performance assessments, to understand their student’s learning, to re-think their curriculum, and much more • Laura Stokes analyzes a school that successfully uses inquiry groups. There are further contributions (including some from novice teachers) by Anna Richert Ershler, Ann Lieberman, Diane Wood, Sarah Warshauer Freedman, and Joseph P. McDonald. These powerful exemplars from practice provide a much-needed overview of what matters and what really works in professional development today.

Design high-impact professional learning programs with results-based evaluations With increasing accountability pressure for evidence-based strategies and ever-tightening budgets, you want to make sure that the time, effort, and resources you are investing in your professional learning programs is truly making an impact on educator effectiveness and student achievement. In this third edition of Assessing Impact, Joellen Killion guides administrators, professional learning leaders, school improvement teams, and evaluators step by step through the rigors of producing an effective, in-depth, results-based analysis of your professional learning programs. A recognized expert in professional learning, Killion emphasizes the critical role of evaluation in bolstering effectiveness and retaining stakeholder support for ongoing educator development. The methods outlined here help you: Adhere to changes in federal and state policy relating to professional learning and educator development Facilitate the use of extensive datasets crucial for measuring feasibility, equity, sustainability, and impact of professional learning Produce more powerful, data-driven professional learning programs that benefit both students and educators Evaluate the effectiveness and impact of professional learning to make data-informed decisions and increase quality and results Assessing Impact is a vital resource for staff developers and educational leaders seeking to improve the effectiveness and sustainability of professional learning, while retaining the support of parents and the public alike. Praise for the Second Edition: "Anyone who reads this book has to feel obligated to ′set their world on fire.′ The text not only forces the reader to see how we are failing our children and their teachers, it provides the means for each of us to do better." —Michael J. Ford, Superintendent Phelps-Clifton Springs CSD, Clifton Springs, NY

Emerging from an education world that sees professional learning as a tool to positively shape teaching practice in order to improve student learning, Transformational Professional Learning elucidates professional learning that is transformational for teachers, school leaders, and schools. Written from the unique ‘pracademic’ perspective of an author who is herself a practising teacher, school leader, and researcher, this book articulates the why and the what of professional learning. It acts as a bridge between research and practice by weaving scholarly literature together with the lived experience of the author and with the voices of those working in schools. It covers topics from conferences, coaching, and collaboration, to teacher standards and leadership of professional learning. This book questions the ways in which professional learning is often wielded in educational settings and shows where teachers, school leaders, system leaders, and researchers can best invest their time and resources in order to support and develop the individuals, teams, and cultures in schools. It will be of great interest to teachers, leaders within schools, staff responsible for professional learning in school contexts, professional learning consultants, professional learning providers, and education researchers.

The contributors to this volume explore challenges and dilemmas around professional learning that confront educators in Australia. The book is organised around three dimensions of professional learning: professionalism, identity formation and communal sites of professional learning. It addresses important questions. In what ways do policies and practices mediate the construction of ‘a professional’ among current and future educators? How do communal spaces shape the professional learning of educators? What are the tensions that emerge in the construction of professional identity through professional learning? As a whole, all chapters provide insight into the dynamic nature of ‘professional becoming’.

Empower your teachers as partners in professional learning—and see student achievement soar! Are you ready for a professional learning program that makes a lasting difference in the quality of teaching within your school or district? Janice Bradley, a highly-respected educator shows how to promote your faculty’s professional growth and accountability through job-embedded learning. This breakthrough book enables education leaders to Work collaboratively with faculty to develop and implement a five-part plan for professional learning designed to meet your school’s unique needs Connect professional learning with practices that have the greatest positive effect in the classroom Link professional development to teacher evaluation in a manner that builds trust Learn best practices from schools that implemented Bradley’s methodology, and benefit from user-friendly strategies and tools Say goodbye to top-down programming that’s quickly forgotten, and discover an approach that empowers and inspires your faculty at all levels of experience. "It′s hard to imagine a simple, five-step process that could integrate all of Learning Forward′s seven professional learning standards, yet that is exactly what Janice Bradley has done in the book, Designing Schools for Meaningful Professional Learning." —Patricia Roy, Senior Consultant Learning Forward Center for Results "I’ve never experienced professional learning such as this! Taking part in collaborative learning with my team gave me the opportunity to explore questions and curiosities about my students that have been buried in years of district-driven professional development. Now my colleagues and I research together in order to create a learning environment every child deserves." —Kathryn Million, First-Grade Dual Language Teacher Las Cruces, NM

This book offers a vital new approach to teacher professional learning, drawing on teachers’ stories from the field. It investigates expert teachers’ professional learning and uses a narrative framework to analyse their meaning-making processes. The book focuses on how proficient teachers develop their expertise, emphasising that individual needs and the contextual nature of learning require a personally enacted approach. Further, it explores the stories of five secondary school teachers, nominated by their colleagues for their outstanding expertise, to present new insights into expert teachers’ views. Using a new evidence-based approach, Enacted Personal Professional Learning, it incorporates teachers’ unique perspectives, problems and thought processes in order to understand expert teachers’ learning, and offers essential principles for promoting storytelling to help teachers be or become empowered educators who can actively shape education communities for teacher professional learning.

How might inquiry enhance the professional practice of student and practising teachers, teacher educators and other practitioners? What effect might this have on the learning of young people in and outside of the classroom? Based on the findings of an international colloquium and drawing upon a range of practices from the UK, USA, Canada, Europe and Australia, this book is designed to make explicit the connections between Practitioner Inquiry and Teacher Professional Learning in Initial Teacher Education and Ongoing Teacher Professional Development. Considering issues such as the relationship between practitioner inquiry and pedagogical content knowledge whether it is possible to scale up from small local and intensive innovations to more broadly-based inquiry inquiry’s role in professional identity, both individual and communal prevailing socio-political contexts and consequences for social policy formation. It brings together writers who work in designing teacher education courses, and those who are practice-based researchers and policy makers. Crucially, many of these writers inhabit both spheres, and their accounts of how they successfully combine their multiple roles will prove vital reading for all those involved in examining and improving practice leading to enhanced teacher professional learning.

Your path to implementation success starts here! Get the knowledge and know-how to put Leaning Forward’s Standards of Professional Learning into practice with this thoroughly researched book from recognized leaders in the field. Deepen your knowledge of the standards and learn to: Use professional learning as a powerful lever for long-term change Invest in human and social capital to promote school-wide success through an original “think piece” by Michael Fullan Connect the standards to your site-specific needs Includes an overview of the standard, an inspirational case study, and, an array of practical tools. Discover what it takes to implement lasting, high-impact improvements in teaching and learning. This expert resource will show you how!