Professional practice in health and social care is embodied by the practitioners concerned, embedded in practice contexts and creative in nature. It is therefore complex to investigate, understand and develop. Current health and social care contexts can present practitioners with increasingly constraining circumstances and spaces that can feel…

What should professional development of knowledge and skills of academic sport scientists look like? We address this question by first dwelling in what 'being a professional academic' entails. Professionals work methodically, typically specialising their knowledge and skills while strategically planning how to progress their careers, often not…

In this article, the authors describe a key change from the First Edition to the Second Edition of Essential 3 of the NAPDS Nine Essentials. In the original Essential 3, the concept of "reciprocal professional development" was emphasized to honor PL opportunities that are led by either school-based faculty personnel as well as…

This article reviews the work of two Albertan educators, David Townsend and Pam Adams, in their application of collaborative inquiry to improving school leadership. Collaborative inquiry is essentially a professional practice that has yet not been comprehensively theorized. This article seeks to lay some foundations for a theorization of the…

A professional development program in Salt Lake City aims to show math teachers what it's like to be in a math class oriented around discourse and inquiry. The effort, write Meghan Everette and Benjamin Shuldiner, is helping the teachers gain a sense efficacy in this critical but underutilized area of math instruction.

State education leaders and entities play vital, if not always highly visible, roles in establishing high-quality professional learning. Through legislation and regulations, resource allocation, leadership support, and more, they establish a vision of professional learning and support its implementation in districts and schools. In particular,…

Learning Forward's Standards for Professional Learning define and describe professional learning that leads to improved educator practices, leadership, and student outcomes. Standards draw on the latest evidence and research about what works in professional learning to help educators implement every phase of the professional learning process. They…

In this article the Second Edition of Essential 5 emphasizes the values of "Collaborative Research and Inquiry" as a critical part of PDSs. Collaborative research and inquiry should involve participants from both colleges and universities as well as those who work primarily in P-12 contexts. The Second Edition of Essential 5 of the…

This article presents a case in point of an inquiry community in a professional development school (PDS). The community (supported by an "Inquiry in the PDS" graduate seminar) spanned institutional boundaries and involved a range of PDS partners who collaboratively studied their own practices. The article describes the community and…

Research practice partnerships (RPP) intend to blur the lines of traditional teacher and researcher roles. Teachers who participate in RPPs gain experiences in research activities such as identifying problems of practice, designing research methods and data collection tools, collecting and analyzing data. They learn to be critical consumers of…

Based on McREL International's research and experience, this white paper suggests that student curiosity is a powerful driver of student success and engagement. The most powerful changes that can be made within schools must come from the inside out, from the natural curiosity and intrinsic motivation that everyone shares to experience the joy of…

A year of COVID-19 quarantine required educators to switch from in-person to virtual learning platforms, causing a dramatic reimagining of their daily praxis. Their experiences are likely to influence new norms for K-12 education. While virtual learning can be effective, student engagement, student retention, and student attention can be…

The Bowie State University PDS Network Partnership is one of the 2015 Exemplary PDS Partnerships recognized by the National Association for Professional Development Schools. This partnership is built on a series of signature programs that define and support our partnership work. This article describes each of those signature programs that make our…

This is the story of our collaborative work as educators and researchers. Because writing as a collective is challenging, we have elected Jenn to serve as narrator, but the story is ours collectively. We are Glennda and Rita, elementary school teachers, Ellen, principal, and Jess, graduate research assistant. The story told here is distilled from…

This paper reports on a planned, professional, postgraduate diploma that aims to develop educators and education officials professionally towards policy making and at the same time bring about transformation in the students' work environment. In order to focus particularly on this aim and also to instil reflexive practices, we will focus on two…