Rather than just teach students facts about history, high school social studies teacher Amy Presley searched for ways to create meaningful experiences they would remember forever. This article describes how she found a group of social studies educators using a Twitter hashtag as a way to share resources and improve her teaching skills. Energized…

How can schools and districts leverage technology to create effective professional learning? At Learning Forward's 2012 Annual Conference, several sessions on innovative professional development, called iPD, highlighted the emerging work of districts, organizations, and companies focused on this issue. Presented in this article are excerpts from a…

The transition to Common Core State Standards for Mathematics has created a need for high-quality professional learning on content and pedagogy. This is especially true for algebra 1 teachers in Florida, where students must pass a standards-based exam as a requirement to earning a high school diploma. Time, distance, and cost constraints can get…

The future of professional learning is shaped by its present and past. As new technologies emerge to increase affordability, access, and appropriateness of professional learning, three beliefs are visible in current practices related to online learning. Each contains a premise that merits identification and examination. The authors call these…

Teachers, curriculum experts, and other educators work together using online tools developed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create high-quality, useful lessons and research-based instructional tools incorporating the Common Core State Standards.

Joellen Killion is senior advisor to Learning Forward. In each issue of JSD, Killion explores a recent research study to help practitioners understand the impact of particular professional learning practices on student outcomes. The study presented here builds on past research about the relationships between teacher practice and beliefs, teacher…

Adopting new curricula presents both a need and an opportunity for professional development to advance teacher content knowledge and instructional practices for achieving curriculum-specific student outcomes. This study examines two modalities of professional development: face-to-face in a summer workshop and online that included two days of…

Adapted from the brief "Meet the Promise of Content Standards: Investing in Professional Learning," this article draws on the work of Learning Forward's initiative, Transforming Professional Learning to Prepare College- and Career-Ready Students: Implementing the Common Core. This multidimensional initiative is focused on developing…

This article describes how teachers who were once isolated by distance and the nature of their jobs are connecting across schools in online professional learning communities. While riding the wave of technology, St. Mary's County Public Schools in Leonardtown, Maryland, is providing a connection for teachers that extends beyond school walls.…

Community has taken on a new meaning for several school-based coaches spread across Indonesia. For far too long in developing countries, educators have been forced to rely on one-shot centralized professional development for teachers and those who work with them. A shortage of money, locally trained staff, and access to learning materials has made…

Discusses how to engineer more time into the school day for staff development by restructuring staff, using technology, and team teaching. School boards and parents must be given education, information, and results to experiment with these and other options to create time. A sidebar describes how to create a 15-hour block of time for planning or…

The Metropolitan District of Lawrence Township in Indianapolis, Indiana, needs a new model of teaching the latest technologies and strategies to teach kids. This paper presents the districts' implementation of the staff development plan. The plan focuses on enhancing teachers' abilities to teach: (a) basic literacy; (b) technological literacy; (c)…

Discusses the introduction of technological innovations into schools, suggesting that rather than relying on authority-driven initiatives, leaders should initiate change by developing teachers' learning capacities, thus creating environments with widespread commitment. This ensures that the commitment to the initiative is sustained rather than…

Examines the experiences of three school districts that provide effective, district-wide staff development on teaching with technology, embracing three major concepts: delivering staff development in a variety of ways, having teachers teach teachers, and using technology-based lesson plans, instructional units, and other teaching tools (often…

Describes how one teacher used an instructional Web site to encourage student learning, explaining how such Web sites can create teacher development opportunities. The paper explains how to get teachers to build and use instructional sites and how to empower teachers to participate and innovate. Sidebars describe the school, explain what makes a…