This paper describes the development of an early childhood education Professional Development School (PDS) partnership between an all kindergarten elementary school and a comprehensive state university. The partnership emphasized collaboration. The PDS coordinator began the process of collaboration by meeting with the school principal. The…

From 1995 to 2000, the SouthEast Initiatives Regional Technology in Education Consortium (SEIR-TEC) provided technical assistance and professional development to 12 schools, referred to as intensive sites. Typically, this effort entailed a member of the SEIR-TEC staff spending three or four days per month working with teachers and administrators…

In July of 2005, the American Association of Physics Teachers/Physics Teacher Resource Agents (AAPT/PTRA) Rural Project gathered 73 PTRAs at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City for the annual AAPT/PTRA Leadership Institute. The major goal for the summer institute is to provide the PTRAs with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively lead…

Effective teaching leads to positive student outcomes, and professional development for early childhood teachers is key to improving both. But what exactly is meant by "professional development"? What effect does it have on school readiness? Which models and approaches really work? This is the book the early childhood field needs to take the…

I clarify in this chapter what Iran can learn from Japan's experience of jugyou kenkyuu(lesson study) model, and what we can apply to the Iranian educational context. The chapter also discusses the process, progress and challenges of incorporating jugyou kenkyuu into Iranian teacher training. I examine how Iranian teachers and school…

On September 22-23, 2005, Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP) and the C.S. Mott Foundation convened the After School Evaluation Symposium, with over 100 researchers, evaluators, policymakers, and practitioners, in Washington, DC. The goal of the interactive 2-day meeting was to bring together the perspectives of diverse stakeholders to inspire…

This literature review discusses four aspects of professional development schools (PDSs) that either arose with great frequency in the literature or that seemed to be most relevant to the partnership between the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District and the University of California, Los Angeles. The four aspects are collaboration, teacher…

The Inland Empire Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Program (IE-BTSA) is in its third year of funded development and implementation of assessment strategies designed to guide support of beginning teachers. The IE-BTSA program is grounded in a cognitive and developmental model of how beginning teachers move along the continuum from novice…

This paper presents findings of a study that compared the school environment in Australian Catholic and government schools. A total of 208 teachers from 32 Queensland secondary schools completed the "Catholic School Environment Questionnaire." The sample included 80 teachers of religion at the Catholic nonorder (coeducational) and the…

Aiming to provide a coherent and useful guide to practitioners, this paper presents highlights of discussions held at a seminar that focused on how to create powerful reading programs for all of California's students. The paper also provides an extensive summary of key findings of research, a description of effective classroom and school…

Planned educational change tends to be imposed from the top down and increases the requirements for local reporting. This paper reports on the effects of a curriculum-planning workshop on teachers' instructional practices. Eight teachers at a Catholic college in rural Western Australia participated in a curriculum-planning workshop to learn how to…

This digest examines the emerging profession of teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) to adults who live and work in the United States, offering suggestions for beginning a career in this field and continuing to grow professionally. The fundamental duty of an ESL teacher is to facilitate development of communication skills in English, in…

The Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) has made it possible to develop comprehensive profiles of the nation's public and private schools and teachers and principals and to study issues of teacher supply and demand. The planned switch to a 5-year cycle of data collection provides a good time to re-examine the survey's design. This paper focuses on…

This paper chronicles the preparation, describes the course content, and details the evaluation of a course designed to train police officers in interpersonal communication. Training was done in two-hour sessions for a police department that was implementing the philosophies and activities of community policing. The paper discusses the needs…

This book details the characteristics of schools that continue to provide their students with a good education. It integrates two important bodies of research in its findings: (1) the research on effective schools and the characteristics of effective schools; and (2) studies of effective business practices and the leadership behind those…