Build a community in your school and improve learning outcomes with this one-stop sourcebook that features the latest educational issues, new research-based strategies and activities, and more!

This comprehensive handbook synthesizes the best current knowledge on teacher professional development (PD) and addresses practical issues in implementation. Leading authorities describe innovative practices that are being used in schools, emphasizing the value of PD that is instructive, reflective, active, collaborative, and substantive. Strategies for creating, measuring, and sustaining successful programs are presented. The book explores the relationship of PD to adult learning theory, school leadership, district and state policy, the growth of professional learning communities, and the Common Core State Standards. Each chapter concludes with thought-provoking discussion questions. The appendix provides eight illuminating case studies of PD initiatives in diverse schools.

Professional Development Schools: Researching Lessons from the Field provides a comprehensive analysis of PDS research that can aid PDS stakeholders in designing and sustaining meaningful research in their partnerships. Breault and Breault used an extensive qualitative meta-synthesis to examine the research over the past 20 years. Their comprehensive review of 300 studies provides a.deep understanding of the challenges and potential within PDSs. The authors offer analysis regarding key elements of PDSs and highlight strong studies including a large-scale, multi-site study and studies using mixed methods and action research effectively. They also highlight exemplary studies showing how pilot studies are effective ways to research new partnerships, how theory can lead to greater abstraction, and how metaphor can clarify complex relationships. This book is an essential resource for all stakeholders involved in professional development schools.

This classic book, edited by Linda Darling-Hammond, explains the function, structure, and philosophy of the professional development school. The text includes case studies, taken from urban and suburban settings, that illustrate the accomplishments of these schools as well as the challenges they face as they strive to create a new and viable vision for the improvement of the American educational system.

Professional Development Schools offers a close-up, comprehensive look at the state of professional development schools in the United States today. The vision of an ideal professional development school (PDS) is drawn from the best-known P-12 practices and optimum sites for preparing novice teachers. This "ideal" PDS would continually generate, test, and refine new knowledge and organizational structures. Abdal-Haqq poses the following questions regarding whether the PDS is performing its intended role: Is the PDS improving the curriculum, instruction, and structure of P-12 schools through professional development of educators? and Is it making substantive, positive differences in students' learning levels? To find answers, the author examines substantial amounts of evidence from various sources: student interviews and follow-up studies with teacher education graduates; surveys with preservice teachers on attitudes, beliefs, and self-efficacy; and reviews in student journals. Abdal-Haqq also investigates the important questions of time and money. She explores the kinds of additional fiscal and human resources necessary to start up and sustain a PDS.

Featuring scholarly descriptions, teacher leader reflections, and thoughtful questions, this thoughtful collection will immerse readers in deep exploration of teacher leadership and student learning; definitions, structures, and cultures that promote teacher leadership; and teacher leader preparation and development.

Teacher education in the United States is changing to meet new policy demands for centering clinical practice and developing robust school-university partnerships to better prepare high-quality teachers for tomorrow’s schools. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SCHOOLS (PDSs) have recently been cited in national reports as exemplars of high-quality school-university partnerships in the clinical preparation of teachers. According to the National Association for Professional Development Schools, PDSs have Nine Essentials that distinguish them from other school-university collaborations. But even with that guidance, working across the boundaries of schools and universities remains messy, complex, and, quite frankly, hard. That’s why, perhaps, there is such diversity in school-university partnerships. For the last thirty years, educators have been fascinated yet puzzled with how to build PDSs. Clinically Based Teacher Education in Action: Cases from PDSs addresses that perplexity by providing images of the possible in school-university collaboration. Each chapter closely examines one of the NAPDS Nine Essentials and then provides three cases from PDSs that target that particular essential. In this way, readers can see how different PDSs from across the globe are innovating to actualize that essential in PDS development. The editors provide commentary, addressing themes across the three cases. Each chapter ends with questions to start collaborative conversations and a field-based activity meant to propel your PDS work forward.