Highlighting the role of teachers in school change, Teacher Agency, Professional Development and School Improvement explores the important related issues of professional identity, teacher self-efficacy, leadership and autonomy in the context of contested improvement agendas. Providing analytical frameworks and practical models, this book: Offers examples of projects, programmes and narratives to illustrate the role of teachers in school change Invites readers to reconceptualise professional development and re-imagine school improvement Focuses on enabling teacher agency as the foundation for improvement Emphasises the importance of human agency to influence environments, lives and learning Provides strategies for improvement with integrity amidst powerful accountability requirements and external forces for change. At the heart of this book is a fresh perspective on schooling, in which teacher agency is considered a fundamental dimension of professional development and key to school improvement. This raises necessary and challenging questions about purposes and processes in education. With practical ideas and strategies that can be used to inform and evaluate practice and policy, Teacher Agency, Professional Development and School Improvement is essential reading for headteachers and teachers wishing to lead changes to improve their school and for teacher educators who support them.

Recent worldwide education policy has reinvented teachers as agents of change and professional developers of the school curriculum. Academic literature has analyzed changes in how teacher professionalism is conceived in policy and in practice but Teacher Agency provides a fresh perspective on this issue, drawing upon an ecological theory of agency. Using this model for understanding agency, Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Sarah Robinson explore empirical findings from the 'Teacher Agency and Curriculum Change' project, funded by the UK-based Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Drawing together this research with the authors' international experiences and perspectives, Teacher Agency addresses theoretical and practical issues of international significance. The authors illustrate how teacher agency should be understood not only in terms of individual capacity of teachers, but also in respect of the cultures and structures of schooling.

“When students know how to learn, they are able to become their own teachers.” —Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and John Hattie Imagine students who describe their learning in these terms: “I know where I’m going, I have the tools I need for the journey, and I monitor my own progress.” Now imagine the extraordinary difference this type of ownership makes in their progress over the course of a school year. This illuminating book shows how to make this scenario an everyday reality. With its foundation in principles introduced in the authors’ bestselling Visible Learning for Literacy, this resource delves more deeply into the critical component of self-assessment, revealing the most effective types of assessment and how each can motivate students to higher levels of achievement.

Teacher-Centered Professional Development is a hands-on guide to collaborative skill building for educators. It introduces the Teacher's Choice Framework, a model that empowers teachers by helping them choose and initiate professional growth activities according to their schedules, strengths, and needs. The book describes a wide variety of professional development strategies, including mentoring, journal writing, peer-to-peer coaching, and seminars. For each strategy, the author provides: * A brief history of the research base * A step-by-step guide to implementing the strategy * Sample handouts and assessment forms * Examples from the field of the strategy in practice With this book, teachers at all levels can quickly learn how to set up development teams, conduct action research, and engage in other activities to further their skills. In addition, the Teacher's Choice Framework helps educators prioritize their needs and choose the strategies that best suit those needs. Teacher-Centered Professional Development offers both a perfect introduction to staff development options and a commonsense method for choosing among them.

Highlighting the role of teachers in school change, Teacher Agency, Professional Development and School Improvement explores the important related issues of professional identity, teacher self-efficacy, leadership and autonomy in the context of contested improvement agendas. Providing analytical frameworks and practical models, this book: Offers examples of projects, programmes and narratives to illustrate the role of teachers in school change Invites readers to reconceptualise professional development and re-imagine school improvement Focuses on enabling teacher agency as the foundation for improvement Emphasises the importance of human agency to influence environments, lives and learning Provides strategies for improvement with integrity amidst powerful accountability requirements and external forces for change. At the heart of this book is a fresh perspective on schooling, in which teacher agency is considered a fundamental dimension of professional development and key to school improvement. This raises necessary and challenging questions about purposes and processes in education. With practical ideas and strategies that can be used to inform and evaluate practice and policy, Teacher Agency, Professional Development and School Improvement is essential reading for headteachers and teachers wishing to lead changes to improve their school and for teacher educators who support them.

Provides specific information on how to transform schools into results-oriented professional learning communities, describing the best practices that have been used by schools nationwide.

First Published in 2004. This text will enable teachers to analyze their own experience of in-service work. It offers tools for evaluating a focused aspect of work, and will help teachers to: explore models of in-service provision; develop understandings of professional and institutional development; develop understanding of the principles of appraisal and review; review and describe their own in-service work; develop and apply criteria for evaluating the quality and value of in-service work; and identify appropriate areas for future in-service work. The book will be particularly useful to teachers and heads, and will be of interest to all those responsible for managing professional development at school.