Teachers are rarely included as partners in school reforms or in planning teacher supports to enact new initiatives. The authors explored co-design as a professional learning (PL) framework to support localized enactment of a high school language arts project-based learning (PBL) course. They examined aspects that facilitated or limited progress…

This article is about personally driven professional development through the use of reflective self-study. The argument that teachers need to take responsibility for their own learning while also taking decisions on how and in what areas to develop is strongly made throughout the article. Data for this article were gathered over a 10-year period…

Opportunities for self-guided professional development provided a context for exploring ways that mid-career teachers designed learning projects and articulated their perceptions of professional growth. In their applications for small grants for materials and released time, participants identified their own personal goals for improving…

A study of a discipline-specific teacher development project designed to prepare teachers to implement a series of core instructional practices for pre-collegiate history teaching is described as a model that can be applied to any content discipline. Teachers were surveyed concerning the success of the project in achieving the goals it set,…

The primary purpose of the study was to create and psychometrically test an instrument which measured teachers' perceptions of characteristics of professional development. The sample consisted of elementary teachers from five school districts in Washington State participating in a district improvement initiative. Results of exploratory factor…

This paper reports on a longitudinal study of nine teachers and their principal in a new secondary school that met to select, read, discuss and determine the viability of the text for their growing English classes and the library. This research offered a unique opportunity to examine how practitioners create and develop a social context for…

Preparing teachers to implement a new curriculum presents a significant but important challenge. While formal professional development programs can assist in this preparation, finding prescribed experiences that meet the needs of all teachers can be formidable and indeed may not always be the best option for promoting change in practice. Decisions…