In this collaborative, multi-voice paper we tell the story of our design collaboration. By describing the process of one design team of teacher educators, we offer a template of what it means to center teachers' lives and experiences as we design professional development with and for them.

Rural schools have repeatedly been subjected to standardizing state and federal education policies that seek to minimize variance in instructional systems and increase the number of college- and career-ready graduates. The Race to the Top policy agenda combined standards-based and accountability-based reforms to meet these objectives and once…

Collaborating teachers need common planning time to plan instruction to teach students with diverse needs in their classroom. Teachers usually have limited common planning time or no time. It therefore became incumbent upon collaborating teachers to be mindful of how productively they use the limited planning time. This qualitative case study…

This article is part of a larger exploratory study that followed preservice early childhood teachers through their program and into their first year of practice, giving voice to their understandings of quality teaching and learning, and insight into the ways their preservice program prepared them for the challenges of teaching in diverse settings.…

Teacher collaboration is an important part of professional growth (Coburn, 2001; DuFour, 2004b; Grossman, Wineburg, & Woolworth, 2001; Little, 2002) and has been found to be a key element in highly successful schools (McEwin & Greene, 2010). Additionally, the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE), formerly National Middle School…

In the wake of new teaching standards and evaluation systems introduced in the United States, teacher collaboration has emerged as a common theme. However, despite these recent changes, teaching is still largely a private act, in which teachers are often secluded from their colleagues. This study investigated the range and variation of the…

Begun in 1994, the New York Philharmonic School Partnership Program (SPP) gives elementary schools the unique opportunity of integrating symphonic music into the school community through collaborations between Philharmonic teaching artists and classroom teachers in full-year residencies. During the three-year curriculum, students gain skills in…

A major focus of the booming education technology sector is on products that aim to help teachers improve classroom practice. For their part, districts must figure out which of these resources will be most useful to schools. In New York City, the Department of Education developed its own Achievement Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS), which…

The advent of Common Core Standards in New York State has forced a revisitation of past practices. With a goal of ensuring that all students are college and career-ready by the end of high school these standards call for increased rigor and higher expectations at all grade levels. The purpose of this study was to analyze through collaborative…

One increasingly popular way of supporting new teachers is through the use of mentoring. New teachers are often paired with mentors as one of a number of supports meant to aid new teachers as they begin their career. The various types of mentoring range from school based mentors assigned by the school to specialty mentors, such as math coaches.…

This paper presents research that explores similarities and differences across six randomized controlled trials of learning communities in community colleges that were conducted by MDRC and the National Center for Postsecondary Research. Five of these studies track students' progress in the program semester and two follow-up semesters, and one…

Foreign language teachers experience difficulties in teaching students with learning disabilities. The challenge is to teach students with and without disabilities in the same classroom while having no background knowledge of how to teach towards all these students. Through observations and interviews with two foreign language teachers, the use of…

In this article we examine induction policies and practices for new alternatively certified mathematics teachers in the country's largest urban school district, New York City. Our focus is on the support system for such teachers as it is legislated and as it is enacted. This includes the induction and general supports (e.g., mentoring, coaching,…

This study describes key challenges and necessary supports related to implementation of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) identified by rural math educators in the Northeast. The research team interviewed state and district math coordinators and surveyed teachers in Maine, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont, to assess their…

Informal science education institutions have been identified as critical participants in helping students succeed in science by working in collaboration with school systems across the country. The results of one such collaboration, the Urban Advantage (UA) program found that participation in UA improved student achievement, on average, by 0.6…