Demystifying Professional Learning Communities

2010-02-16
Demystifying Professional Learning Communities

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

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.

Demystifying Professional Learning Communities

2010
Demystifying Professional Learning Communities

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  • Author: Kristine Kiefer Hipp
  • Publisher: R & L Education
  • ISBN: 9781607090502
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 0

This book offers information, examples and case studies to clarify the concept of a professional learning community, to respond to critical issues in schools, and to support educational leaders in addressing the important mandates of accountability and school improvement.

Reculturing Schools as Professional Learning Communities

2003-10-22
Reculturing Schools as Professional Learning Communities

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

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

Designed to Learn

2019-11-19
Designed to Learn

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  • Author: Lindsay Portnoy
  • Publisher: ASCD
  • ISBN: 1416628274
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 219

Students become attentive, curious, and passionate about learning when they can see its relevance to their lives and when they're empowered to use that learning to solve problems that matter. Regardless of the subject or grade level you teach, you can infuse your instruction with the meaning students crave by implementing design thinking. Design thinking prompts students to consider: "I've learned it. Now what am I going to do with it?" In Designed to Learn, cognitive scientist and educator Lindsay Portnoy shares the amazing teaching and learning that take place in design thinking classrooms. To set the stage, she provides easy-to-implement strategies, classroom examples, and clear tools to scaffold the processes of inquiry, discovery, design, and reflection. Because formative assessment is crucial to the process, Portnoy includes sample assessments that measure student learning and ensure that learners take the lead in their own learning. As the author guides you through the five elements of design thinking (understand and empathize, identify and research, communicate to ideate, prototype and test, and iterate and reflect), you'll learn how to support students as they - Use the content you teach to solve a problem in their community or in the world around them. - Isolate a concern for their designed solution to address. - Communicate ideas and provide valid reasoning for potential solutions. - Prototype a solution and test it. - Revise their design for maximum impact and reflect on the process. Equipped with the strategies and supports in Designed to Learn, teachers will be able to ensure that learning in their classrooms is visible, student-centered, and measurable—by design.

Learning Together, Leading Together

2004-01-05
Learning Together, Leading Together

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  • Author: Shirley M. Hord
  • Publisher: Teachers College Press
  • ISBN: 9780807744116
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 196

Increasingly the education world is recognizing that the development of learning communities is an effective means for improving schools without increasing the budget or adding new programs. This indispensible volume offers practical advice gathered from 22 schools (elementary, middle, and high schools) that have successfully modeled or are creating professional learning communities.

Professional Learning Communities

2007-03-16
Professional Learning Communities

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  • Author: Louise Stoll
  • Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
  • ISBN: 0335230253
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 232

“All who are interested and concerned about educational reform and the improvement of schools will find this book a must read. It stimulates, it challenges, and it informs, such that the reader is most surely enriched by its plenitude.” Dr Shirley Hord, Scholar Emerita “At last we have a book of international cases to add to the literature on networks! Policymakers and practitioners alike will find the reasons why networks are fast becoming the reform organizations of choice. The book elevates network understanding to a new level.” Ann Lieberman, Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundationfor the Advancement of Teaching What is a professional learning community? What are the key challenges facing these communities and how might they be resolved? Is it time to extend our thinking about professional learning communities? There is great interest internationally in the potential of professional learning communities for enhancing educational reform efforts and sustaining improvement. This international collection expands perceptions and understanding of professional learning communities, as well as highlighting frequently neglected complexities and challenges. Drawing on research, each chapter offers a deeper understanding of topics such as distributed leadership, dialogue, organisational memory, trust, self-assessment and inquiry, and purpose linked to learning. The last section of the book focuses upon three of the most challenging dilemmas that face developing professional learning communities - developing professional learning communities in secondary school, building social capital, and sustaining professional learning communities. The authors provide pointers on why these challenges exist, offering rays of hope for ways forward. Professional Learning Communities is key international reading for education professionals, school practitioners, policymakers, academics and research students. It is a must-read for anyone interested in building capacity for sustainable learning and the ability to harness your community as a resource for change.

Demystifying Discussion

2021-11-29
Demystifying Discussion

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  • Author: Jennifer Orr
  • Publisher: ASCD
  • ISBN: 1416630643
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 194

How do you take the passion and chatter that K–5 students bring to the classroom and turn it into conversation skills that make them better learners? Academic conversation can help hone speaking and listening, critical thinking, and social-emotional skills, as well as deepen content knowledge. But despite its effectiveness, this kind of purposeful, student-led discussion is rarely taught or used at the elementary level. The mystery for teachers is how to support students at various stages of development and build an environment of trust that lets them cultivate these skills. In Demystifying Discussion, veteran teacher Jennifer Orr gives elementary school teachers a primer on teaching students to engage in student-led academic conversation. The strategies, sample assessments, and example conversations in this book show you how to help young learners get better at sharing, exploring, and synthesizing their individual and collective thinking. You'll also learn how to manage different perspectives and disagreements among students. This is a book to use all year long to improve classroom discussion, hone students' skills (and your own), and enhance students' overall learning throughout their time in school and beyond.

Teachers Leading Educational Reform

2017-07-31
Teachers Leading Educational Reform

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  • Author: Alma Harris
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 1317247884
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 424

Teachers Leading Educational Reform explores the ways in which teachers across the world are currently working together in professional learning communities (PLCs) to generate meaningful change and innovation in order to transform pedagogy and practice. By discussing how teachers can work collectively and collaboratively on the issues of learning and teaching that matter to them, it argues that through collective action and collaborative agency, teachers are leading educational reform. By offering contemporary examples and perspectives on the practice, impact and sustainability of PLCs, this book takes a global, comparative view showing categorically that those educational systems that are performing well, and seek to perform well, are using PLCs as the infrastructure to support teacher-led improvement. Split into three sections that look at the macro, meso and micro aspects of how far professional collaboration is building the capacity and capability for school and system improvement, this text asks the questions: Is the PLC work authentic? Is the PLC work being implemented at a superficial or deep level? Is there evidence of a positive impact on students/teachers at the school/district/system level? Is provision in place for sustaining the PLC work? Teachers Leading Educational Reform illustrates how focused and purposeful professional collaboration is contributing to change and reform across the globe. It reinforces why teachers must be at the heart of the school reform processes as the drivers and architects of school transformation and change.

Leaders of Learning

2011-07-26
Leaders of Learning

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  • Author: Richard DuFour
  • Publisher: Solution Tree Press
  • ISBN: 1935542680
  • Category : Education
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 179

For many years, the authors have been fellow travelers on the journey to help educators improve their schools. Their first coauthored book focuses on district leadership, principal leadership, and team leadership and addresses how individual teachers can be most effective in leading students—by learning with colleagues how to implement the most promising pedagogy in their classrooms

Demystifying Opioid Conversion Calculations: A Guide for Effective Dosin

2018-08-28
Demystifying Opioid Conversion Calculations: A Guide for Effective Dosin

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  • Author: Mary Lynn McPherson
  • Publisher: ASHP
  • ISBN: 1585284300
  • Category : Medical
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 263

Praised by practitioners, students and instructors for its engaging approach to teaching a very complex subject, Demystifying Opioid Conversion Calculations: A Guide for Effective Dosing, has long been the go-to guide for learning how to calculate opioid conversions. Now in its second edition, this reference is a must-have for clinicians involved in pain management at all levels. Written by pain management expert Mary Lynn McPherson, PharmD, MA, MDE, BCPS, CPE, Demystifying Opioid Conversion Calculations focuses on the calculations that practitioners use in actual practice, providing realistic scenarios for decision making. The revised edition covers the entire spectrum of opioid analgesics used to manage patients with moderate-to-severe pain and serious life­-limiting illnesses.