Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work® PDF Download

Author: Richard DuFour
Publisher: Solution Tree Press
ISBN: 193400989X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
This 10th-anniversary sequel to the authors’ best-selling book Professional Learning Communities at WorkTM: Best Practices for Enhancing Student Achievement merges research, practice, and passion. The most extensive, practical, and authoritative PLC resource to date, it goes further than ever before into best practices for deep implementation, explores the commitment/consensus issue, and celebrates successes of educators who are making the journey.

Author: Linda Darling-Hammond
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
This report gauges progress toward achieving high quality teaching in every classroom, using data about teaching conditions that are new since publication of an earlier report by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. Section 1, "Doing What Matters Most: Investing in Quality Teaching," describes the Commission's original findings and recommendations following two years of study. Findings indicate that most schools and teachers cannot achieve new educational goals because they do not know how and do not receive support to do so. Recommendations include linking teacher standards to student standards, reinventing teacher preparation and professional development, overhauling teacher recruitment, putting qualified teachers in every classroom, and organizing schools for success for all. Section 2, "America's Agenda for Education," discusses new standards and new students in America's schools, examining why and how teaching matters. Section 3, "Lessons from Last Decade's Reforms," discusses major initiatives in North Carolina, Connecticut, and other states for improving teaching quality. Section 4, "The Current Status of Teaching," discusses teacher recruitment and teacher supply and demand; salaries and working conditions; retention; qualifications and training; reform of teacher education and induction; access to professional development; and progress in school reform. Section 5, "Evidence of Progress," describes federal, state, and local initiatives to improve quality. Six appendixes offer state report cards on teacher quality; state-by-state data tables; National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium, and National Board standards; Commission staff, advisors, and consultants; partner state contact persons; and national organization partners and contact persons. (SM)

Author: Timothy D. Kanold
Publisher: Solution Tree Press
ISBN: 193554344X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Make the transition from traditional, whole-group reading instruction to the 21st century classroom by integrating three innovations that will dramatically improve elementary reading instruction: RTI, differentiated instruction, and technology. Detailed ex

Author: OECD
Publisher: OECD Publishing
ISBN: 9264805974
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This report aims to provide an in-depth analysis of teachers’ and school leaders’ perceptions of the value of their profession, their work-related well-being and stress, and their satisfaction with their working conditions. It also offers a description of teachers’ and school leaders’ contractual arrangements, opportunities to engage in professional tasks such as collaborative teamwork, autonomous decision making, and leadership practices.

Author: Kathy L. Guthrie
Publisher: IAP
ISBN: 1648025609
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Calling others in to lead for social justice has never been more important. In a world plagued by multiple and overlapping pandemics and other crises, the cost of leadership failures is constantly rising. Leadership education is responding to these challenges by centering cultural relevance, critical pedagogies, and important issues of identity, capacity, and efficacy in the preparation of emerging learners. Meeting the global demand for social justice requires thoughtful, innovative, and engaged praxes by all leadership educators. Alongside a cadre of diverse authors, we intend to shift the mindset of leadership education toward forward-thinking and holistic solutions, empowering our students to build a fairer and more equitable world for themselves and others. Shifting the Mindset: Socially Just Leadership Education widens and deepens the discourse begun in Changing the Narrative: Socially Just Leadership Education. Our contributors’ ideas occur into two parts: the first examines student social identities otherwise underrepresented in existing leadership education literature. The second portion illuminates key factors of leadership learning contexts frequently under– or unattended in both leadership education and social justice education. Every chapter includes critical considerations and practical guidance for educators striving to meet the leadership demands of an increasingly unjust world. Taken together, these thinking, planning, and acting tools augment the potential of educators who are preparing leaders under uncertain conditions. We envision this book as an essential element of the leadership learning toolkit of socially just leadership ducators at all levels, between contexts, and across varying amounts of education, influence, and experience. You are needed now more than ever before. We, once again, invite you to our ongoing fight for fairness, freedom, and a brighter future for all.

Author: Richard DuFour
Publisher: Solution Tree
ISBN: 9781879639607
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Provides specific information on how to transform schools into results-oriented professional learning communities, describing the best practices that have been used by schools nationwide.

Author: Jane Bumpers Huffman
Publisher: R&L Education
ISBN: 1461653827
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
This important work documents and examines evidence of efforts taking place in rural, urban, and suburban Pre-K-12 schools that are actively engaged in creating professional learning communities (PLCs). Literature is reviewed that defines and identifies the distinguishing dimensions of PLCs. A five-year, federally funded research study is explained including the methodology and demographics of the six study schools and a synthesis of the 64 interviews. A PLC organizer (PLCO) is introduced, which realigns with Shirley Hord's original 1997 research. The organizer provides the framework to explain the five PLC dimensions and related critical attributes. The PLCO also merges Fullan's model, Phases of Change (1985), which includes initiation, implementation, and institutionalization. The authors provide extensive evidence of the progressive development of a PLC from initiation to implementation using exemplars and non-exemplars from interviews that either hinder or facilitate creating and sustaining PLCs. A new assessment tool, the Professional Learning Community Assessment (PLCA), is also presented and can be used for diagnosis and evaluation of schools as they work toward school reform efforts. Readers are also presented with information that connects professional learning community work to a new approach to school improvement. Five case studies are included that can be used in schools and university classrooms for the purpose of engaging educators in reflection, open dialogue, problem finding, and problem solving. This first-hand documented information provides readers with unique issues as they wrestle with the challenges of transforming schools into organizations that meet diverse students needs. Lessons learned from this problem-based learning can easily transfer to the readers' own experiences and schools. The authors conclude by highlighting significant findings, reviewing the most recent related research that addresses sustaining such efforts, and offering suggestions for school leaders to

Author: Kristine Kiefer Hipp
Publisher: R&L Education
ISBN: 1607090511
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
The purpose of this book is to clearly define an approach to school improvement that uses professional learning community (PLC) practices to achieve school improvement and success for every student. This book offers information, examples and case studies to clarify the concept of a PLC, to respond to critical issues in schools, and to support educational leaders in addressing the important mandates of accountability and school improvement. As school leaders proactively lead efforts to create learning communities, their schools, districts, and staff will incorporate knowledge, skills, and practices that focus on teaching and learning for all. The authors' findings will assist leaders, change agents, policy makers, and university faculty in guiding schools toward creating and maintaining PLCs as they sustain school improvement for student learning.

Author: Craig A. Mertler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351674544
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 135

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Book Description
Action Research Communities presents a new perspective on two current and proven educational practices: classroom-/school-based action research and professional learning communities. Implementation of one or the other of these practices often results in a variety of possible benefits for the teaching–learning process, for student achievement, and for overall school improvement. While these might seem to be separate, isolated practices, the author has taken the beneficial aspects of each practice and merged them into a cohesive and potentially powerful concept, coined "action research communities." Each of the two concepts or approaches (action research and professional learning communities) is presented and discussed in detail. Because they both focus on local-level improvement of educational practice and share several overlapping features, the two concepts are then merged into a single entity—action research communities, or ARCs. These professional learning communities, with action research at their core, hold an immense amount of power and potential when it comes to enhanced professional growth and development for educators, increased student achievement, school improvement, and educator empowerment. ARCs essentially capitalize on all the individualized benefits and strengths of action research and of professional learning communities, and merge them into a single educational concept and practice. ARCs have the potential to help educators everywhere experience: •a common and collective focus and vision; • sustained collaborative inquiry; •individualized, customizable—and meaningful—professional growth; and •true empowerment that comes with this form of collaborative, inquiry-based, and reflective practice. Practical guidance for the development and implementation of ARCs is also provided, by focusing on ways in which professional educators (teachers, administrators, support staff, etc.) can implement, sustain, and extend the impact of their respective action research communities. Specific roles for district administrators, building administrators, and teachers are presented and discussed in depth, as are ways that ARCs can be used both to deepen professional learning for educators and to improve student learning.

Author: Douglas Fisher
Publisher: Corwin
ISBN: 1544385781
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
What makes a powerful and results-driven Professional Learning Community (PLC)? The answer is collaborative work that expands the emphasis on student learning and leverages individual teacher efficacy into collective teacher efficacy. PLC+: Better Decisions and Greater Impact by Design calls for strong and effective PLCs plus—and that plus is YOU. Until now, the PLC movement has been focused almost exclusively on students and what they were or were not learning. But keeping student learning at the forefront requires that we also recognize the vital role that you play in the equation of teaching and learning. This means that PLCs must take on two additional challenges: maximizing your individual expertise, while harnessing the power of the collaborative expertise you can develop with your peers. PLC+ is grounded in four cross-cutting themes—a focus on equity of access and opportunity, high expectations for all students, a commitment to building individual self-efficacy and the collective efficacy of the professional learning community and effective team activation and facilitation to move from discussion to action. The PLC+ framework supports educators in considering five essential questions as they work together to improve student learning: Where are we going? Where are we now? How do we move learning forward? What did we learn today? Who benefited and who did not benefit? The PLC+ framework leads educators to question practices as well as outcomes. It broadens the focus on student learning to encompass educational equity and teaching efficacy, and, in doing so, it leads educators to plan and implement learning communities that maximize individual expertise while harnessing the power of collaborative efficacy.