You are here

Disable VAT on Taiwan

Unfortunately, as of 1 January 2020 SAGE Ltd is no longer able to support sales of electronically supplied services to Taiwan customers that are not Taiwan VAT registered. We apologise for any inconvenience. For more information or to place a print-only order, please contact uk.customerservices@sagepub.co.uk.

Designing Schools for Meaningful Professional Learning
Share
Share

Designing Schools for Meaningful Professional Learning
A Guidebook for Educators

  • Janice Bradley - Utah State University, USA, New Mexico State University, USA, University of Texas, Austin, USA

Foreword by Shirley M. Hord



December 2014 | 192 pages | Corwin

Empower your teachers as partners in professional learning­and see student achievement soar!

 

Are you ready for a professional learning program that makes a lasting difference in the quality of teaching within your school or district?

 

Janice Bradley, a highly-respected educator shows how to promote your faculty’s professional growth and accountability through job-embedded learning. This breakthrough book enables education leaders to

  • Work collaboratively with faculty to develop and implement a five-part plan for professional learning designed to meet your school’s unique needs 
  • Connect professional learning with practices that have the greatest positive effect in the classroom
  • Link professional development to teacher evaluation in a manner that builds trust
  • Learn best practices from schools that implemented Bradley’s methodology, and benefit from user-friendly strategies and tools

Say goodbye to top-down programming that’s quickly forgotten, and discover an approach that empowers and inspires your faculty at all levels of experience. 

"It's hard to imagine a simple, five-step process that could integrate all of Learning Forward's seven professional learning standards, yet that is exactly what Janice Bradley has done in the book, Designing Schools for Meaningful Professional Learning.”

—Patricia Roy, Senior Consultant

Learning Forward Center for Results

 

"I’ve never experienced professional learning such as this! Taking part in collaborative learning with my team gave me the opportunity to explore questions and curiosities about my students that have been buried in years of district-driven professional development. Now my colleagues and I research together in order to create a learning environment every child deserves.”

—Kathryn Million, First-Grade Dual Language Teacher

Las Cruces, NM


 
Preface
 
1. Moving to Meaningful Professional Learning in Schools
 
2. The Five-Part Plan: How to Design a School for Meaningful Professional Learning
 
3. Cycles of Learning Designs Connected to the Classroom
 
4. The Power of Teachers Selecting Learning Designs
 
5. Assessing and Evaluating Changes
 
6. The Principal: The Key to Making Learning Happen
 
7. Three Dimensions for Learning Designs: Technical, Psychological/Emotional, and Social
 
8. Building a School’s Professional Knowledge Base
 
9. Meaningful Learning to Remember

"It's hard to imagine a simple five-step process that could integrate all of Learning Forward's seven professional learning standards, yet, that is exactly what Janice Bradley has done in the book, Designing Schools for Meaningful Professional Learning. The book outlines a practical, step-by-step professional learning process that embraces teacher engagement and choice. It also connects the content of professional learning with teacher evaluation frameworks while also focusing on student learning and engagement. It's backed by solid research and on-the-ground experience in four schools.

I especially appreciated the description of a whole school strategy in which faculty members come to consensus on five essential instructional strategies that need to be included in every classroom every day. Those strategies are then aligend with the Teacher Evaluation framework, which creates a common goal for the whole school, a set of powerful faculty practices, and a strategy that assists teachers to prepare for skills required in their new evaluation system. Powerful!

Bradley's book provides a practical, realistic framework for authentic job-embedded professional learning which also includes peer collaboration and attention to student needs diagnosed through the use of data. Most importantly, it compels schools to engage eachers in designing and implementing their own professional devleopment, and builds the self-efficacy needed, especially now, from all educators."

Patricia Roy, Senior Consultant
Learning Forward's Center for Results, Oxford, OH

"I’ve never experienced professional learning such as this! Taking part in collaborative learning with my team gave me the opportunity to explore questions and curiosities about my students that have been buried in years of district-driven professional development. Now my colleagues and I research and reflect together in order to create a learning environment every child deserves.

 

A part of me, “teacher as researcher,” that I thought was dead came alive through this experience. I look at teaching and learning differently now that I have experienced professional learning as it should be. I am now continuously reflecting with my colleagues on how we can maximize student learning."

 

Kathryn Million, Teacher - First Grade Dual Language
Las Cruces, NM

"As a principal of an elementary school, it is crucial that professional learning is meaningful and impacts staff and student learning.  The Five-Part Plan (FPP) provided us a simple, yet very impactful structure to focus on professional learning. It led to student learning through teacher choice and voice, collaborative work time, classroom implementation, feedback and follow-through with a shared Learning Showcase at the end of the year.  It is incredibly powerful to see teachers learning and collaborating with each other, providing each other feedback, restructuring and refining instruction, and seeing their efforts result in increased student learning.  For me, the beauty of the FPP is that I now have a structure to provide any theme of professional learning.  For example, our current FPP will focus on the critical areas in CCSS Mathematics.  Next year our FPP focus may be oral language development.  As teachers become familiar with this process, we begin to build a culture where learning is our focus no matter whether you are the student or the adult.  Teachers become excited about professional learning because they have choice, they are learning from each other, it directly impacts their practices, their classrooms, and their students. 

 

The bonus to FPP was that it directly related to our new system of teacher evaluation for our state.  Many of the state's criteria for professional learning and responsbilities were directly tied to our FPP.  Through the evaluative process we also saw the results of the teachers working through the FPP in their instruction and student learning.  For example, one group of teachers asked me to do an observation during their FPP process.  I observed teachers planning together, observing each other, and providing feedback to each other.  I then observed the second group of teachers teach the same lesson, but with lessons learned from what was taught by the first group of teachers. The process was incredibly powerful with teachers learning about their instruction as well as  the increased quality of student learning.  There was not an area of the evaluation observation protocol that was not touched by this process.

 

I will continue to use the FPP for professional learning in the future, in new schools, and new environments because of its powerful simplicity and because of the results I have experienced through using the plan." 

Christa Vaudrey, Principal
Las Cruces Public Schools, New Mexico

"So often teachers in our educational systems are left out of the decision-making that concerns their own practice as teachers. Yet we know that teachers learn each day in the classroom and that they learn through conversations they have with colleagues about practice. Further, we know that their learning is actually transferred to classroom practice when that learning is job-embedded and teachers have choice in the content. Janice shows us ways to do this that are doable and manageable in every school. This book guides us in processes that work and inspire us to always keep learning."

Janet Dunham, MC2 Math Field Specialist
Jemez Valley Public Schools, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Key features
  1. Outlines the processes for selecting and creating learning designs appropriate for and specific to the context and needs of adult learners at their school site
  2. Offers the tools, processes, and procedures showing how to promote adult active engagement
  3. Focuses on the ways learning designs can create flow - optimal learning experiences that inspire, so that people feel braver to take risks and try new practices,
  4. Describes how learning designs can promote both individual and collective creativity with a diverse school staff 
  5. Includes vignettes and cases of enactment showing how real people in real settings design learning opportunities connected to classrooms.
  6. Grounded in the research, learning theories, and models of adult learning that are readily accessible for educators to study together to create a shared knowledge base
  7. Connected to teacher evaluation, specifically to promote growth and effectiveness through the Five Part Plan. 

Sample Materials & Chapters

Preface

Table of Contents


Select a Purchasing Option


eBook
ISBN: 9781506300412

Paperback
ISBN: 9781483339221
$39.95

This title is also available on SAGE Knowledge, the ultimate social sciences online library. If your library doesn’t have access, ask your librarian to start a trial.