Discover how Lesson Study benefits both students and teachers. Unlike scripted curricula that strip teachers of professional decisionmaking, Lesson Study values teachers by expecting them to be agents of improvement in their own classrooms. This resource empowers readers to oppose reform efforts that minimize teacher agency by offering an…

Teachers already know that students need the skills necessary to think critically, work with others and express ideas, but often wonder how they can ensure a painless, successful professional development experience that puts the learner at the center and models best practices? They also ask how the outcomes of these fruitful professional learning…

As K-12 schools increase the presence of and access to technology, the role of school librarians is changing. Many librarians have not been prepared by their colleges and universities for the changes demanded by their jobs. In this article, we discuss the skills that 47 school librarians reported having learned on the job as opposed to in…

This report summarizes select results for items pertaining to Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), teacher collaboration, instructional practice, and teacher planning from the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 Teaching, Empowering, Leading and Learning (TELL) AISD Working Conditions and the 2011-2012 Employee Coordinated (ECS) surveys.

This article focuses on curriculum-based learning communities (LCs). In these LCs, manipulation of the curriculum is intentional and often innovative, with the overarching goals of developing meaningful connections among students, between students and faculty, and between students and their coursework. The variety of curriculum-based models…

Traditionally, learning is provided in a unidirectional manner from instructor to learner. This practice can be limiting to all individuals involved in the learning process. To develop quality instructional materials, the learning team can participate in instructional design and development (ID) as partners. This article discusses a proposed…

Teacher education and professional development prepare teachers with up-to-date knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for effective teaching. To sustain this, however, hinges on continued professional learning within schools. Research shows that establishing long-term conditions that allow teachers to learn continuously from one another…

This paper is a course description of a Digital Literacies class offered to both undergraduate and graduate students at an American university. The purpose of this paper is: (1) to describe the pedagogical bones of this course, drawing upon theories of learning in a participatory culture, including a discussion of how, and where, the course fell…

At Wagner College, students are required to participate in a series of three curriculum-based learning communities (C-BLCs) as the core of the undergraduate curriculum known as the Wagner Plan for the Practical Liberal Arts. This article describes the senior learning community (LC) in psychology at Wagner College, which is an example of a…

In today's policy and political climate, where teacher quality is widely assumed to be the single most important influence on students' learning, viewpoints about where, when, and how people learn to teach are mixed. However, most teachers and teacher educators continue to believe that teachers learn how to teach over time. This article looks…

Students in remote communities face many challenges to get an education. This is especially true for indigenous and native people. To train teachers for these populations, the authors used web-based conferencing, which avoids some of the technological challenges of communicating with students in these communities. The virtual classes also were…

The lesson study model of professional development that originated in Japan is becoming increasingly popular in the United States. At its core, lesson study is a means of bringing teachers together to carry out the process of planning a lesson, implementing and observing it, and then examining it during a debriefing session. The debriefing…

Teacher education in universities is under pressure. In many new education policies there is a renewed focus on teacher quality, and therefore quality initial teacher education. In some countries this renewed focus has led to a resurgence of "alternative approaches" to teacher education such as Teach for America / Australia. One of the…

Two approaches to professional learning communities, the inquiry-oriented and the results-oriented approaches, both have weaknesses. Neither adequately addresses the overall coherence of a school's efforts to improve teaching and learning. A third model, the Common Priorities approach, combines the strengths of the other two approaches and…

"Learning Theory and Online Technologies" offers a powerful overview of the current state of elearning, a foundation of its historical roots and growth, and a framework for distinguishing among the major approaches to elearning. It effectively addresses pedagogy (how to design an effective online environment for learning), evaluation (how to know…