Teacher Centered Professional Development

Teacher-Centered Professional Development is a hands-on guide to collaborative skill building for educators. It introduces the Teacher's Choice Framework, a model that empowers teachers by helping them choose and initiate professional growth activities according to their schedules, strengths, and needs. The book describes a wide variety of professional development strategies, including mentoring, journal writing, peer-to-peer coaching, and seminars. For each strategy, the author provides: * A brief history of the research base * A step-by-step guide to implementing the strategy * Sample handouts and assessment forms * Examples from the field of the strategy in practice With this book, teachers at all levels can quickly learn how to set up development teams, conduct action research, and engage in other activities to further their skills. In addition, the Teacher's Choice Framework helps educators prioritize their needs and choose the strategies that best suit those needs. Teacher-Centered Professional Development offers both a perfect introduction to staff development options and a commonsense method for choosing among them. Note: This product listing is for the Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version of the book.

Teacher-Centered Professional Development is a hands-on guide to collaborative skill building for educators. It introduces the Teacher's Choice Framework, a model that empowers teachers by helping them choose and initiate professional growth activities according to their schedules, strengths, and needs. The book describes a wide variety of professional development strategies, including mentoring, journal writing, peer-to-peer coaching, and seminars. For each strategy, the author provides: * A brief history of the research base * A step-by-step guide to implementing the strategy * Sample handouts and assessment forms * Examples from the field of the strategy in practice With this book, teachers at all levels can quickly learn how to set up development teams, conduct action research, and engage in other activities to further their skills. In addition, the Teacher's Choice Framework helps educators prioritize their needs and choose the strategies that best suit those needs. Teacher-Centered Professional Development offers both a perfect introduction to staff development options and a commonsense method for choosing among them.

"This book presents a new set of ideas to challenge established thinking and to guide researching and designing teacher professional development. Grounded in the work of the Learning4Teaching project which documented public-sector teachers' experiences and learning from professional development in three countries, the volume presents a sociomaterial perspective on teacher sensemaking. This teacher-centered perspective disputes the 'conventional calculus' in which teachers learn content that they apply in their classrooms. Part One outlines conventional issues how teacher learning and professional development have been conceptualized and studied; Part Two introduces a new group of concepts that rethink these assumptions; and Part Three offers important insights to inform professional development across disciplines, cultures, and contexts. Written by a leading international teacher educator in an accessible style that incorporates visual representations and project data, the book will appeal to practitioners, scholars, and researchers who design and research how teachers learn in professional development"--

You will see concrete examples of how your school can move away from a one-size-fits-all professional development model to create an authentic learning environment that meets the needs of individual teachers. The book features chapters focusing on: implementing an instructional coaching model -- establishing study groups among teachers -- using observation as a means to model effective instruction -- going deeper with discussion through the use of Critical Friends protocols -- examining various ways adults process new information -- encouraging teachers to take leadership roles -- focusing the principal's leadership around the professional development model.

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.

This book is part of The Cambridge Teacher series, edited by senior colleagues at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, which has a longstanding tradition of involvement in high quality, innovative teacher education and continuing professional development.

This comprehensive handbook synthesizes the best current knowledge on teacher professional development (PD) and addresses practical issues in implementation. Leading authorities describe innovative practices that are being used in schools, emphasizing the value of PD that is instructive, reflective, active, collaborative, and substantive. Strategies for creating, measuring, and sustaining successful programs are presented. The book explores the relationship of PD to adult learning theory, school leadership, district and state policy, the growth of professional learning communities, and the Common Core State Standards. Each chapter concludes with thought-provoking discussion questions. The appendix provides eight illuminating case studies of PD initiatives in diverse schools.

This book presents a new set of ideas to challenge established thinking and to guide researching and designing teacher professional development. Grounded in the work of the Learning4Teaching Project which documented public-sector teachers’ experiences and learning from professional development in three countries, the volume presents a sociomaterial perspective on teacher sensemaking. This teacher-centered perspective disputes the "conventional calculus" in which teachers learn content that they apply in their classrooms. Part I outlines conventional issues in how teacher learning and professional development have been conceptualized and studied; Part II introduces a new group of concepts that rethink these assumptions; and Part III offers important insights to inform professional development across disciplines, cultures, and contexts. Written by a leading international teacher educator in an accessible style that incorporates visual representations and project data, the book will appeal to practitioners, scholars, and researchers who design and research how teachers learn in professional development.