"If our best thinking comes by making connections and building patterns, then what would these patterns look like, and what might they be based on?"--ask the authors. Most importantly, how could they be used? Developing Connective Leadership shows you how Thinking Maps[R] are an efficient and eloquent language that can be used to explore and…

The New Jersey Department of Education supports all districts with a tool kit of valuable resources for planning and creating collaborative learning structures that focus on getting results for all students. This tool kit was the basis for the creation of Learning Forward's "Becoming a Learning School" (2009). The tool kit helps…

In the early 2000s, Minnetonka High School decided that it needed to develop a more consistent, transparent system of grading. The school focused its grading reform efforts on one principle: Grades should reflect only what a student knows and is able to do. As the school staff analyzed their policies and practices, they discovered many practices…

The mission of the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) is to promote the improvement of programs and services to enhance the quality of student learning and development. CAS is a consortium of professional associations who work collaboratively to develop and promulgate standards and guidelines and to encourage…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore the role of relevant policies in the professional development of HR practitioners in the UK. Design/methodology/approach: A review of literature was carried out on the subject of the role of relevant policies in the professional development of HR practitioners in the UK. In doing so, the issues of…

A survey of Australian emerging researchers in aging identified the need for greater professional development and networking opportunities. To address this, a formal mentorship scheme was developed and evaluated. Fourteen postgraduate researchers (proteges) were matched by discipline and research interest to experienced academics (mentors).…

Thirty exemplary 4th-grade teachers in six states were interviewed to determine the factors that influenced their development. The teachers cited three influences on their development: specific kinds of professional development, collegial support, and a sense of engaged autonomy. They valued professional development that provided a systematic way…

The literature suggests that understandings of teaching and learning can be classified around two metaphors: acquisition and participation. It is further argued that neither metaphor is sufficient and that both are necessary. Drawing on material from a larger study related to the professional development of Special Educational Needs Coordinators,…

Accountability systems have important implications for schooling. Missing from discussions about their implementation, however, are ways they affect teacher responsibility. Responsibility has been insufficiently explicated in the education literature, including its impact on teacher motivation, emotion, and behavior. We propose that a…

PARSEL Project emerged from the urgent need to overcome the problem of lack of scientific literacy in the population, which should be a priority in a society where science occupies a central place. Indeed, nowadays for any citizen to participate in a responsible and informed way in society he has to be scientifically acknowledgeable. Nevertheless,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on the issue of professional development education for school board members. The research question that guides this mixed study is: does school board member professional development have an effect on student achievement? Design/methodology/approach: The standardized protocol for this study was to send…

Very little of the professional development literature identifies its costs. Many say good professional development is expensive, but what is meant by expensive, and if so, expensive relative to what? This article shows that effective professional development is not expensive relative to overall spending and that its key elements and their costs…

In this article, the author discusses content focus and coherence, which are fundamental to professional development that helps teachers boost student learning. Learning Forward's Outcomes standard emphasizes that teacher learning should be focused on subject-matter content and how students learn that content, and consistent with the individual,…

The language that students and teachers use to describe what they like best about M. O. Ramay Junior High School is strikingly similar. Both groups talk at length about how they are treated with respect and given freedom. Teachers describe the freedom to teach and students describe the freedom to be an individual. Both groups quickly add that with…

Social loafing in group-based projects is a common problem for college teachers. This problem has received great attention, including a Quick Fix article by Stevens (2007), whose recommendations remain useful today, particularly the mechanism for peer evaluations--a key strategy for reducing social loafing. Since the publication of Stevens's…