Hiring new teachers and continuing their professional growth so that they remain in the profession and become effective teachers have been a challenge for decades. Research suggests that induction programs can achieve these outcomes if they are highly structured, include mentoring, focus on professional learning, and emphasize collaboration that…

This book describes nearly 30 protocols or "scripts" for conducting meetings, conversations, and other learning experiences among educators. Chapter 1, "The Basic Ideas," explains the basic ideas underlying the rest of the book, discussing why educators should educate themselves and making the case for exploring student work as…

This book discusses the most current knowledge on whole- faculty study groups (WFSGs). Nine chapters examine: (1) "Introduction" (how WFSGs began and spread); (2) "Enabling Professional Development and Schoolwide Change" (guiding principles and questions); (3) "Key Components: Context, Process, and Content"; (4)…

Highlighting the issues involved in starting and maintaining a teacher study group, this book provides practical suggestions for organizing, facilitating, and dealing with group dynamics within a study group. It addresses the details that go into making decisions about the time, place, group size, resources, and structure of the meetings, as well…

Professional development research suggests that teachers learn best from and with each other in ongoing, job-embedded activities. "A Facilitator's Guide to Professional Learning Teams" provides a way of engaging school faculties in sustained, onsite professional development that builds capacity and collegiality, improves teaching quality, and…

This toolkit explains how to get started with a collaborative process of professional development that includes selecting best practices and identifying ways to put them into action. It is a companion to an online resource, "The Knowledge Loom: What Works in Teaching & Learning." The loom as a metaphor suggests a work in progress, a…

This 19-minute VHS videotape introduces the structured reflection protocol, a tool designed to help teachers learn by working together and by using student work as a beginning point for their learning together. The videotape shows scenes of the structured reflection protocol being used in diverse school settings (elementary, secondary, rural,…

This publication presents a collection of tools that promote instructional coherence. It focuses on the importance of teachers collaborating to develop a deeper understanding of how children learn and exploring relationships between teaching and learning. Coherence leads to improved educational experiences for learners as teachers make their…

This book explains how to use whole-faculty study groups to get the entire teaching staff working together on one set of organizational goals. Chapter 1 discusses the school reform environment and the potential of whole-faculty study groups to serve as a major change process for improving schools and student learning. Chapter 2 describes the…

"Transformational Professional Learning" is a periodically published e-newsletter designed to influence what educational leaders think, say, and do to improve teaching and learning by promoting deep understanding of important issues, the transformation of beliefs and assumptions, and a stream of powerful goal-focused actions. There are two…

This book presents a set of stories that focus on what teachers learn from talking to one another about their practice, presenting a case for how the ordinary talk among teachers is a potent medium for teacher learning and professional development. Drawing from the work of eight groups of teachers in the United States and Israel who met in…

This book helps school administrators redesign the professional development model to better reflect the relevant issues and realities of today's schools. Using the metaphor of architecture, the book outlines innovative ways to create and implement such a transformation and highlights the rationale behind why these changes are so crucial. It also…

Six "silver bullets" that could raise student achievement are (1) set national standards;(2) make sure all students can read; (3) improve the quality of teaching; (4) demand from vendors better textbooks and teaching materials; (5) encourage charter schools; and (6) collaborate, coordinate, and redefine resources. (MLF)

This book joins instructional design as the axis of school reform with collaborative observation as the proven method to sustain teacher growth and renewal. The acronym COMPASS (Collaborative Observation for Monitoring Practices to Achieve Sustained School reform) is used. The book details a four-part observation process, each component of which…

This introductory-level training program is designed to develop in classroom teachers the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for functioning as successful mentors to novice North Carolina teachers. This includes background and perspectives for mentoring in North Carolina; Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC)…