This guide is intended to stimulate professional reflection, dialogue and debate about mathematics and how to improve it. It draws together themes, features and characteristics of effective improvement in mathematics and descriptions of good practice. It offers a reference point for staff and teachers who are working together to improve…

Professional learning communities (PLCs) have been held up as powerful structures for teachers' continuing professional development. In this work, the author has applied transformative learning theory to highlight the psychic risks of collaborative teacher learning, as well as the need for practical efforts to improve student learning--the means…

This document is a Problem Based Learning project addressing the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the achievement gap issue that lingers in public education. It centers on the ideas of cultural sensitivity as a means of educating all students in an era of accountability. The goal of the project was to address the problem of minority student…

This report details five principles for creating powerful classrooms and offers a new vision for professional development: (1) High Structure; (2) High Challenge; (3) Intensity; (4) Intentionality and Learning How to Learn; and (5) Inquiry and Making Learning Visible. Included are recommendations drawn from the work of the 11 community college…

This guide is part of a series of curriculum guides for the middle grades that use a special framework to examine and implement standards-based curricula. In this guide, for developing science curricula for the middle grades, a set of critical questions is posed for curriculum decision making that corresponds to a framework of three components of…

This article discusses how three principals were able to transform their schools into communities of professional learners. It focuses on how the principals demonstrated their own learning and how they nurtured learning in their staffs. It offers a brief profile of each principal and how she incorporated continuous learning into her life. All the…

Given the lack of preparation incoming school district superintendents receive and the many challenges they face, this article reviews the approach of the few existing programs for new superintendents and describes the leadership development strategies that would be beneficial. With this background, the article presents the findings from an…

Professional development is the cornerstone of school transformation. The first part of this two-part paper describes the professional development experiences of several hundred teachers and administrators in schools implementing New American Schools (NAS) designs and discusses the links between these professional development experiences and key…

The concept of secondary schools as learning organizations is being examined as part of a research project involving South Australian and Tasmanian secondary schools. The authors defined learning organizations as schools that: employ processes of environmental scanning; develop shared goals; establish collaborative teaching and learning…

This presentation addresses three topics: (1) the assessment of professional learning communities in schools; (2) the design and development of professional learning communities in schools; and (3) the effects of professional learning communities in schools. The purpose of this brief document is to share descriptions, processes, and materials…

The Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching program was established in 1983 to recognize outstanding science and mathematics teachers in the United States. In 1993 a national probability sample was taken of approximately 6,000 elementary/secondary teachers asking about their backgrounds and preparation, classroom…

Noting that the work of early childhood educators is often complex, variable, and individualized, this booklet brings together a range of teacher stories that describe such work across many settings. A number of challenges for early childhood education are described, and a host of innovative teaching ideas are presented in an attempt to describe…