A common approach to scaling up a professional development program is for the researchers who designed the program to prepare teacher leaders to facilitate it at their schools. When researchers eventually leave, however, teacher leaders may receive less support. To ensure that teacher leaders continue receiving support, researchers can prepare…

Despite the complexity of facilitating professional development (PD) and growing attention to supporting facilitators, few tools exist for facilitators to engage in ongoing inquiry into their practice. In this article, we offer a practical measure, the Collaborative Professional Development Survey (CPDS), designed to provide facilitators with…

Using evidence of student thinking and performance is crucial to enacting ambitious science teaching because intimate, formative data can be responsive to student ideas about science. However, narratives and policies about assessment and data use do not always position teachers to draw on the breadth and variety of evidence from the classroom to…

Classroom assessment and the use of student performance data to inform instructional decisions have significant potential to help students meet the learning goals of science education. Research has shown that process-oriented assessment practices are challenging and sometimes ignored aspects of teaching, partly because teachers' conceptions of…

There is a need to strengthen the theory-practice connection, particularly for early-career mathematics teachers, through effective professional development (PD) programs that integrate theory and research with the implementation of classroom practices. The current study investigates the effect of the online coaching component a hybrid…

Considerable evidence suggests that dialogical interaction in the classroom promotes students' scientific knowledge building and reasoning. Hence, scientific argumentation is recognized as a central component of the Next Generation Science Standards. A focus on argumentation, however, requires teachers to adopt instructional practices that…

This article reports an investigation of a professional development program to enhance elementary teachers' ability to engage their students in argument from evidence in science. Using a quasi-experimental approach, three versions were compared: Version A--a 1-week summer institute with a 2-week summer practicum experience and 8 follow-up days…

Background: This paper describes the Problem-Solving Cycle model of professional development and the Mathematics Leadership Preparation model of PD leader preparation. These models form the backbone of our current research-practice partnership project in which we are working with a large urban district to adapt these models to develop district…

This article focuses on three features of professional development (PD) programs that play an important role in developing leadership skills and building teachers' capacity: (1) fostering a professional learning community, (2) developing teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching, and (3) adapting PD to support local needs and interests. We…

This article explores the use of classroom video as a tool for fostering productive discussions about teaching and learning. The setting for our research is a 2-year mathematics professional development program, based on the Problem-Solving Cycle model. This model relies on video from the teachers' own classrooms and emphasizes creating a…

The paper examines how community was established in a professional development institute that focused on algebra content knowledge for middle school mathematics teachers. This qualitative study was framed within a situative perspective. We analyzed multiple data sources to identify the ways in which community was established. Results indicate…

Presents case studies of four exemplary Kentucky schools to illustrate characteristics of a statewide initiative designed to support standards based educational reform. The reform emphasized professional development, increased financial support for professional development, and used a decentralized model so that local needs influenced the types of…

Teachers' judgments of the aptitudes of hypothetical students and decisions about classroom organization and management were examined using a policy-capturing approach. Teachers' decision policies could not be represented by a single set of common regression weights. Rather, for each judgment, teachers' decision policies were essentially…

Examined the change process experienced by 14 third-grade teachers participating in the University of Colorado Assessment Project, which helped teachers design and implement classroom-based performance assessments compatible with their mathematics and literacy instructional goals. Teachers made several significant changes in their ideas about…