This volume provides informed arguments, theory and practical examples based on research about what it looks like when educators, policy makers, and even students, try to rethink and change their practices by engaging in evidence-based conversations to challenge and inform their work. It allows the reader to experience these conversations. Each story reveals the depth of thinking that change requires, showing that change requires new learning and new learning is hard.

By offering guidelines for safely challenging assumptions, building common language, and giving and receiving feedback on educational practices, protocols play a vital role in helping educators have professional learning conversations that lead to improved student learning. In Protocols for Professional Learning Conversations, author Catherine Glaude provides a variety of protocols designed to create a culture that encourages productive conversations between and among teachers and administrators. Twenty-eight sample protocols guide educators through a variety of situations. These protocols navigate conversations in a way that ensures all parties play an active part in improving student achievement, teacher effectiveness, and assessment methods. The protocols are designed to: Provide ample time for reflection Promote deep listening Allow participants to learn from others' challenges and successes Help participants to gather feedback to improve teacher practices and student learning Improve and focus action research Help participants analyze the effectiveness of assessments Glaude acknowledges the sensitive nature of these conversations and outlines sample ground rules for conducting learning conversations, providing feedback, and receiving feedback. She also provides guidelines that enable participants to customize ground rules to address the organization's individual challenges. The protocols presented in this book progressively build comfort and a climate that welcomes constructive, collaborative conversations among participants by first looking at a common reading assignment and gradually building to more advanced conversations that focus on improving individual practice as participants become more comfortable with this collaborative process. Guidelines for creating and adapting your own advanced protocols are also provided.

This important professional development tool describes nearly 30 protocols or "scripts" for conducting meetings, conversations, and other learning experiences among educators--in one, easy-to-use resource. For anyone working with collaborative groups of teachers on everything from school improvement to curriculum development this book features: -Protocols for working together on problems of practice, for studying together, for organizing many different kinds of meetings, and for looking together at student work.-A thorough text that describes each protocol, provides a rationale for using them, explains the particular purpose each protocol was designed for, discusses the value that educators have found in using them, and offers helpful tips for facilitators.-Valuable appendices that list relevant resources, such as websites, contact addresses, and training opportunities, and a table that lists all of the protocols with suggestions for cross-use.-A free supplement on the Teachers College Press website with "Abbreviated Protocols" that can be downloaded and customized to suit each facilitator's needs.

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Ambitious Science Teaching outlines a powerful framework for science teaching to ensure that instruction is rigorous and equitable for students from all backgrounds. The practices presented in the book are being used in schools and districts that seek to improve science teaching at scale, and a wide range of science subjects and grade levels are represented. The book is organized around four sets of core teaching practices: planning for engagement with big ideas; eliciting student thinking; supporting changes in students’ thinking; and drawing together evidence-based explanations. Discussion of each practice includes tools and routines that teachers can use to support students’ participation, transcripts of actual student-teacher dialogue and descriptions of teachers’ thinking as it unfolds, and examples of student work. The book also provides explicit guidance for “opportunity to learn” strategies that can help scaffold the participation of diverse students. Since the success of these practices depends so heavily on discourse among students, Ambitious Science Teaching includes chapters on productive classroom talk. Science-specific skills such as modeling and scientific argument are also covered. Drawing on the emerging research on core teaching practices and their extensive work with preservice and in-service teachers, Ambitious Science Teaching presents a coherent and aligned set of resources for educators striving to meet the considerable challenges that have been set for them.

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

"Spinning off from The Power of Protocols, David Allen, Alan Dichter, Tina Blythe, and Terra Lynch seek to bring discussion protocols to the classroom for teachers to use with their high school students. Protocols in the Classroom will use the same dependable ideas that the authors developed during more than two decades of work for multiple editions of The Power of Protocols, which has provided an invaluable resource to teachers, administrators, and teacher educators to support their professional learning and development. The authors' proposed book extends beyond professional development for educators by bringing discussion protocols into the classroom while using vignettes and facilitation tips to further explain how educators can use protocols with students effectively. Protocols in the Classroom will feature descriptions of protocols that are familiar from the earlier books (e.g., the Last Word, the Tuning Protocols, the Consultancy) and new ones. Like the earlier books, it also includes guidelines for teachers in using the protocols effectively, as well as discussion of important considerations in using protocols with students, including the role of the teacher and students' preparation for participating in discussion protocols" --

"The use of discussion protocols in schools is pervasive, but the quality of these conversations is inconsistent, and teachers often participate in meetings where a protocol may not be used adequately for a specific purpose. In Discussion Protocols, author Thomas M. Van Soelen models the deep thinking needed for skillful meeting agendas to ensure that a discussion protocol can effectively assist a meeting's goals, and provides scaffolds for frequently used protocols and stories of successful implementation in schools, districts, professional learning communities, and professional development. This book helps both new and veteran educators facilitate constructive meetings and, as a group, catalyze great work in schools through detailed, high-quality protocols"--