You’ve just found your new comprehensive guide to designing powerful professional learning! Full of protocols, vignettes, and case studies, this book dissects elements of professional learning, like coherence, connections, and content, and examines each through an evidence-based lens. Destined to become a go-to resource for anyone in a teacher-support role, this book analyzes research from the past 25 years on what makes professional learning work. In addition to focusing on the often-neglected role of the facilitator itself, other features include: A multi-year implementation framework to improve instructional practice Planning tools to shift instruction at the school and district level Techniques and strategies to embed content-based learning for all educators

The knowledge and decisions of professionals influence all facets of modern life, a fact reflected by the increasing and distinct emphasis on public accountability for what professionals know and do. The nature of this accountability has been fundamentally transformed in response to a changing context of market pressures, network arrangements, declining discretion and public trust, and public managerialism. To tackle these challenges, an important body of research has emerged which concentrates on the material elements and processes of professional learning, and considers how these affect wider society. This volume presents specific pressures on professionals’ learning in different occupational contexts ranging from public school teaching to medicine and creative industry. These pressures are wrought by changing regulatory frameworks, changing modes of organising, changing demands and changing knowledge authorities in professional practice. The authors stress the importance of understanding these relations as sociomaterial webs through which the important moments of professional action and decisions emerge. This approach moves us beyond accepting ‘learning’ as an identifiable, individualist phenomenon by emphasising the multiplicities around professional practice ‘standards’ and ‘quality’, workarounds, responsibility, agency, and knowledge practices. As the chapters here demonstrate, sociomaterial perspectives raise new questions and methodologies that can highlight what is often invisible in the sometimes messy dynamics of professional learning, and point to new ways of promoting and supporting professional education. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Education and Work.

Currently, many states are adopting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) or are revising their own state standards in ways that reflect the NGSS. For students and schools, the implementation of any science standards rests with teachers. For those teachers, an evolving understanding about how best to teach science represents a significant transition in the way science is currently taught in most classrooms and it will require most science teachers to change how they teach. That change will require learning opportunities for teachers that reinforce and expand their knowledge of the major ideas and concepts in science, their familiarity with a range of instructional strategies, and the skills to implement those strategies in the classroom. Providing these kinds of learning opportunities in turn will require profound changes to current approaches to supporting teachers' learning across their careers, from their initial training to continuing professional development. A teacher's capability to improve students' scientific understanding is heavily influenced by the school and district in which they work, the community in which the school is located, and the larger professional communities to which they belong. Science Teachers' Learning provides guidance for schools and districts on how best to support teachers' learning and how to implement successful programs for professional development. This report makes actionable recommendations for science teachers' learning that take a broad view of what is known about science education, how and when teachers learn, and education policies that directly and indirectly shape what teachers are able to learn and teach. The challenge of developing the expertise teachers need to implement the NGSS presents an opportunity to rethink professional learning for science teachers. Science Teachers' Learning will be a valuable resource for classrooms, departments, schools, districts, and professional organizations as they move to new ways to teach science.

New to the Routledge Advances in Learning Sciences series, this book highlights diverse approaches taken by researchers in the Learning Sciences to support teacher learning. It features international perspectives from world class researchers that exemplify new lenses on the work of teaching, encompassing new objects of learning, methods and tools; new ways of working with researchers and peers; and new efforts to work with the systems in which teachers are embedded. Together, the chapters in this volume reflect a new frontier of research on teacher learning that leverages diversity in the content, contexts, objects of inquiry, and tools for supporting shifts in instructional practice. Divided into three sections, chapters question: What new pedagogies and knowledge do teachers need to facilitate student learning in the 21st century? How do learning sciences’ tools, strategies, and experiences provide opportunities for them to learn these? What role do teachers play as co-designers of educational innovations? What unique affordances does co-design afford for teacher learning? What do teachers learn through engaging in co-design? How do teachers work and learn as part of interdisciplinary teams within educational systems? What might it look like to design for teacher learning in these broader organizational systems? Uniquely highlighting how cycles of reflection and co-design can serve as important mechanisms to support teacher learning, this invaluable book lays the groundwork for sustained teacher learning and instructional improvement.

For sustained success, educators must commit to their own lifelong improvement. A clear correlation exists between level of focus on teacher professional development (PD) and student success. In this book, John Murray identifies the characteristics of effective professional learning, detailing eight strategies for planning, and executing, and evaluating PD programs. Content includes: The proven “backward” approach to articulating the goals of your PD program Descriptions of innovative and effective designs for professional learning such as Lesson Study and Instructional Rounds Powerful approaches to designing and implementing online PD

This book presents some highlights from the deliberations of the 2003 conference of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT). Part 1 presents the five keynote addresses of the conference, while Parts 2 through 4 present selected papers related to each of three sub-themes: knowledge construction and learning to teach, perspectives on teachers’ personal and professional lives, and teachers’ workplace as context for learning. The chapters in this book provide an array of approaches to understanding the process of teacher learning within the current context of the changing workplace environment. They also provide an important international perspective on the complex issues revolving around the international educational reform movement. Basically, they show how teachers’ workplace (inside and outside schools) are more than ever subject to continuous change and that, subsequently, standards for teaching must be flexible to these changing conditions. This asks for a redefinition of teacher professionalism in which the role of context in teacher learning is emphasized as well as the improvement of the quality of teacher thinking and learning. Related to the ever-changing context of teaching, a dynamic approach to teaching and teacher learning is required, in which identity development is crucial. Researchers have an important role to play in revealing and explaining how teachers can build their professional identity, through self-awareness and reflection, in the ever-changing educational contexts throughout the world.

Emerging from an education world that sees professional learning as a tool to positively shape teaching practice in order to improve student learning, Transformational Professional Learning elucidates professional learning that is transformational for teachers, school leaders, and schools. Written from the unique ‘pracademic’ perspective of an author who is herself a practising teacher, school leader, and researcher, this book articulates the why and the what of professional learning. It acts as a bridge between research and practice by weaving scholarly literature together with the lived experience of the author and with the voices of those working in schools. It covers topics from conferences, coaching, and collaboration, to teacher standards and leadership of professional learning. This book questions the ways in which professional learning is often wielded in educational settings and shows where teachers, school leaders, system leaders, and researchers can best invest their time and resources in order to support and develop the individuals, teams, and cultures in schools. It will be of great interest to teachers, leaders within schools, staff responsible for professional learning in school contexts, professional learning consultants, professional learning providers, and education researchers.