Three years ago, the Toronto District School Board, the largest in Canada and the fourth-largest in North America, began to explore demonstration classrooms as a way to create a richer model of job-embedded, differentiated, and personalized professional learning. By doing action research and examining a variety of professional learning models from…

How do some school districts not only attain excellence but sustain it over time in the face of remarkable challenges? Two districts--Blue Valley School District in Overland Park, Kansas, and Kildeer Countryside Community Consolidated School District 96 in Buffalo Grove, Illinois--have managed to do just that by functioning as professional…

One way to approach the improvement of instruction is for educators to learn from student interactions in cultural events that fully engage students' motivation and curiosity. In such a context, educators get to know students in new ways and to connect student strengths to classroom instruction. This can be especially powerful when the learning…

Consistent, excellent teaching is the single greatest factor in improving student achievement over time. School leadership is the second. Excellent teaching and strong leadership require deliberate, ongoing professional learning. In working with high-poverty school systems over time, the following basics emerge: (1) time; (2) content; (3)…

In the past decade, interest in the form of professional learning loosely described as coaching has exploded. This growing interest in coaching is likely fueled by educators' recognition that traditional one-shot approaches to professional development--where teachers hear about practices but do not receive follow-up support--are ineffective at…

Adapted from the brief "Meet the Promise of Content Standards: Investing in Professional Learning," this article draws on the work of Learning Forward's initiative, Transforming Professional Learning to Prepare College- and Career-Ready Students: Implementing the Common Core. This multidimensional initiative is focused on developing…

Good teaching occurs when educators on teams are involved in a cycle in which they analyze data, determine student and adult learning goals based on that analysis, design joint lessons that use evidence-based strategies, have access to coaches for support in improving their classroom instruction, and then assess how their learning and teamwork…

Every April, the staff of Stilwell Junior High School (West Des Moines, Iowa) spend a day analyzing student data together. Staff members consider standardized tests scores, look at item-by-item results and trends, and consider how groups are performing. They also look at social data, gathered from students about how the youth view their school…

This article presents an interview with Chris Dede, the Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research interests include the use of emerging technologies in education, with emphases on online professional development, scaling up innovations, and immersive interfaces for learning. He is…

A video club is a group of teachers who meet on a regular basis to view and discuss video segments from their classrooms. In a video club, the group establishes the goals, then tapes and selects the video segments for viewing. A video club is a fairly simple way to use technology for teacher learning. Video captures classroom interactions that…

The time-honored children's story "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" is a prime example of someone having the kind of day people would like to avoid. Having a bad day can happen to anyone--even a dedicated literacy coach. An important component of coaching is building collaborative working relationships between the coach…

The Highline School District, located roughly 10 miles south of Seattle, Washington, has begun to implement a residency model for professional learning. Like the medical model, current teachers often traveled from other schools to be "in residency" at a previously selected classroom for six half-day sessions during the 2005-06 school year. Some…

Professional development in Rockwood School District, a suburban school district outside St. Louis, Missouri, in 1997 was focused on individual teacher development rather than organizational development. Staff learning activities were fragmented. Teachers participated in a variety of unrelated topics the district offered from month to month. An…

Teachers in rural settings find it difficult to access quality professional development that can improve student science achievement. These teachers are serving the 10 million students, or about 19% percent of the nation's total public school enrollment, who attend school in a rural district. Studies show that long-term, in-depth methods of…

African-American boys are sent to the principal's office more often than any other group and disproportionately to their numbers in a school, according to Victor Cary, partner at the National Equity Project in Oakland, California. That is just one example of how the issues of society at large--racism, classism, sexism, language, and other…