Professional Learning Systems: Reports

This 40-page 2010 paper by The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills is an important step in an effort to promote the inclusion of 21st century knowledge and skills formally into teacher preparation programs.

36-page Research and policy brief from the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality

This 28-page paper is the first of a periodic series of reports and briefs by the Center for American Progress looking at professional learning—what states and districts are doing that is working, and what policies are in place to support effective teacher-training activities. The work of improving instruction to help students achieve deserves our attention, particularly now when it is an important part of powerful reforms. This report is an attempt to map the landscape of professional learning to prompt ideas that can grow from the foundation—albeit small—that is already in place around professional learning

The purpose of the brief is to provide state leaders and technical assistance providers with information about the design and requirements of teacher evaluations systems for early childhood teachers in selected states. The brief discusses the approach each state is taking to adapt the state system and develop resources for early childhood teachers. We identify specific opportunities and challenges state leaders are addressing in implementing student learning objectives as an alternative method of measuring early childhood teachers’ contributions to children’s learning.

Education is widely held to be crucial for the survival and success of individuals and countries in the emerging global environment. U.S. politicians of all stripes have placed education at the center of their political platforms, and education has been at the center of many European and Asian policy agendas. Comparable agreement is also evident about the contributions of leadership to the implementation of virtually all initiatives aimed at improving student learning and the quality of schools. It is therefore difficult to imagine a focus for research with greater social justification than research about successful educational leadership. That was the broad focus for this six-year study funded by the Wallace Foundation: to identify the nature of successful educational leadership and to better understand how such leadership can improve educational practices and student learning. Included are sections on how districts and states are fostering school improvement.

This 76-page study looks deeply inside 17 schools that stand at the vanguard of the current revolution in teaching. This new National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) report reveals the substantive ways in which these schools are providing their teachers with more time to reflect on, develop, and hone their craft, by very explicitly leveraging an expanded-time school schedule
and calendar.

A 2011 report to the NEA from the Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching (CETT).