CenterView: Learning Cycles: A Powerful Tool for Teacher-to-Teacher Professional Learning
Teacher leaders are well-positioned to influence positive instructional change in other teachers’ practices and can be even more impactful when equipped with tools that help them lead productive professional learning experiences.
In Teacher Practice Networks (TPN), an initiative of the Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning at WestEd, teacher leaders lead sustained, professional learning to advance K–12 instructional practices aligned to college- and career-readiness standards. Multi-year data from the TPN indicates how a learning cycle helps teacher leaders intentionally plan effective professional learning with activities that engage other teachers in learning new content, applying it in practice, reflecting on implementation, reiterating lessons, and refining instruction.
This CenterView features authentic vignettes of teacher-led learning cycles in action and discusses:
- How a learning cycle framework provides structure to teacher-to-teacher professional learning.
- How teacher reflective habits can be fostered throughout all phases of a learning cycle.
- Tips for teacher leaders and school administrators to establishing a healthy climate that supports teacher reflection and growth.
This issue is part of a CenterView series on teacher leadership in the TPN initiative. Download other issues in this series.
- Forging Partnerships – A Model for Teacher Leadership Development
- Increasing District Capacity to Implement the Common Core – It Begins with a Partnership
- Teachers Leading the Way – Teacher-to-Teacher Professional Learning
Visit the Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning at WestEd for more information.
California Statewide Early Math Initiative: Evaluation Report of the Professional Learning and Coaching Model
This report summarizes WestEd’s evaluation findings related to the professional learning and coaching model implemented as part of the California Statewide Early Math Initiative (CAEMI).
Thirty local education agencies across California each invited a team of two to four individuals to participate in the CAEMI professional learning and coaching model, for a total of 91 agency facilitators. The agency facilitators included trainers, coaches, administrators, teachers, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) coordinators. In their roles and agencies, facilitators worked with educators of young children ages birth through eight years to support early math development.
WestEd’s evaluation includes the following recommendations for future implementation of the CAEMI:
- Ensure professional learning fully addresses the birth–to–eight age range and provide guidance and resources to promote articulation and continuity in math learning across age groups.
- Deepen the facilitators’ understanding of early math content knowledge, developmental progressions, and teaching skills while engaging them in hands–on, playful math experiences.
- Further tailor the CAEMI professional learning and coaching to participants’ diverse strengths, needs, and backgrounds. For agencies that need higher levels of support, provide additional tools and concrete guidance on planning and implementing local professional learning and coaching.
- Build in additional supports for quality assurance of local implementation, such as observations and review of materials.
- Disseminate the newly developed CAEMI resources more strategically during the CAEMI Phase II.
- Expand the use of the Lighthouse for Children Child Development Center as a demonstration site.
Filling a Need: Professional Development for Charter School Teachers
Teachers and administrators in independent charter schools tend to wear multiple hats and have enormous workloads. Most independent charters are small. Many are geographically isolated. And a good number are struggling financially; just meeting the monthly payroll can be difficult.
All too often, opportunities for high-quality professional development in this context are minimal or nonexistent.
WestEd’s Charter School Teachers Online (CSTO) project is working to advance professional development opportunities for charter school teachers.
Moving professional development online is key to CSTO’s approach to overcoming the geographic and cost constraints of reaching charter school teachers. CSTO builds on an extensive online library of education resources from another WestEd project, Doing What Works (DWW). School districts can access the material free of charge at the DWW website (www.dww.ed.gov).
CSTO is developing and facilitating eight online professional development courses, each spanning four to seven weeks. Five of the courses are designed to give charter school teachers strategies they can use to boost middle and high school students’ reading comprehension.
The courses cover topics ranging from ways to more effectively lead discussions on textbook material and teach new vocabulary in the classrooms, to strategies for teaching to the Common Core State Standards for reading.
Download this article to read more about CSTO.
Innovative and Creative Uses of the Online Professional Learning Modules for the CCSS
The Professional Learning Modules developed by the California Department of Education are an excellent resource for teachers and staff as they address the implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
What do teachers really need when it comes to CCSS implementation? The presenters and participants address this key question.
This webinar is designed to help you:
- Gain a deeper understanding of the Professional Learning Modules available for CCSS in mathematics and English language arts
- Discover how to use these resources to create local professional learning activities for teachers and administrators
Professional Learning Modules discussed in this webinar are:
- Overview of the Common Core State Standards for California Educators
- Mathematics: Kindergarten through Grade Eight Learning Progressions
- Mathematics: Kindergarten through Grade Twelve Standards for Mathematical Practice
- English Language Arts: Informational Text–Reading
Video in the Middle: Flexible and Accessible Mathematics Professional Development
More than ever, math teachers need accessible, high-quality opportunities to enhance their professional knowledge. Video in the Middle (VIM) offers free, flexible, standards-aligned, online Professional development experiences based on the latest research in mathematics education.
VIM provides forty, two-hour video-based professional development modules that can be combined in a variety of ways by school district mathematics PD leaders, teacher educators, or individual teachers.
VIM module design places a video clip at the center, or “in the middle,” of a professional learning experience as teachers take part in online mathematical problem solving, video analysis of classroom practice, and pedagogical reflection. Before and after teachers watch each clip, there are activities designed to ensure that the teachers engage deeply with the mathematics content and the focal instructional components. Each VIM module contains approximately two hours of learning time plus classroom application. Each VIM Module follows a common pattern of trying out the task, considering different solution methods, understanding the lesson context, conducting a detailed analysis of the video clip, and applying it to practice and self-reflection.
Learn more, visit videointhemiddle.org.
Changes in the Expertise of ESL Professionals: Knowledge and Action in an Era of New Standards
Common Core and Next Generation standards present new challenges and possibilities for English as a-second language (ESL) professionals. In addition, the implementation of the standards raise critical questions about long-established ideas about the teaching and learning of English as a second language.
This paper, cowritten by Aida Walqui of WestEd’s Quality Teaching for English Learners, explores the shifting landscape surrounding the new standards and its implications for building and enacting teacher expertise.
The paper is intended to inform ESL professionals, including teachers, teacher-leaders, school principals, district administrators, and other K–12 educators who work primarily or exclusively with students labeled as English language learners (ELLs).
The authors:
- Discuss, and provide a brief introduction to, the Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards
- Discuss the English language proficiency standards; that is, the standards that establish the goals of ESL instruction in each state as well as the assessment of expected proficiencies
- Address two key challenges facing ESL professionals in the new standards era: the language practices required by the standards themselves and the issue of how ELLs can best be included in standards-aligned instruction
- Suggest key ways in which ESL professionals can translate knowledge of changing theories about language and language acquisition into expertise and action in supporting ELLs’ needs in the new standards era
PD2GO Collection
Research shows adults learn best through active participation, when visually engaged, and in brief, meaningful experiences. PD2GO (Professional Development 2 Go) is an innovative approach to early childhood professional development based on this research. Each professional development experience (or “pack”) included in this collection focuses on continuous quality improvement in early learning programs.
Designed for center directors and family child care home providers to use with staff members, PD2GO can be delivered in as few as 15 minutes and is strategically organized in the following three comprehensive learning strands:
- Systems Thinking: Provides early educators and caregivers with the tools to think deeply about their work with children and identify where small changes can lead to lasting change
- Intentional Interactions in Teaching: Shows how to implement effective interactive practices in small, but meaningful, steps
- Effective Assessment: Illustrates how to weave effective assessment into everyday practice with young children
The strands can be customized to fit specific needs. All together, the strands create a foundation for adding quality improvement topics such as family engagement, dual language learning, and coaching.
Watch an introduction to PD2GO.
Browse professional development packs.
PD2GO is produced by the Early Education Effectiveness Exchange (E4), which facilitates quality improvements in early learning programs throughout California. The funder, First 5 California, selected WestEd’s Center for Child & Family Studies to implement the E4.
Science Learning for Teachers That Improves Students’ Achievement
Professional development programs can document a positive impact on participating teachers, but does it make any difference for students?
According to several rigorous research studies analyzing WestEd’s Making Sense of SCIENCE professional development, the answer is a resounding yes.
Professional development improves teachers’ science and literacy understanding and pedagogical content knowledge so effectively that their students’ learning benefits significantly. A recent study found that students whose teachers participated in the professional development outperformed comparable students by more than 40 percent.
Using a case-based approach, similar to what helps doctors, lawyers, and other professionals wrangle with the ambiguities of knowledge in practice, Making Sense of SCIENCE provides teachers with tools to examine common misunderstandings about science topics—for example, incorrectly equating the concept of energy with a force or power.
After collaboratively analyzing student work in the case, teachers work with colleagues to identify effective interventions for students. Teachers also focus on literacy by exploring the language of science and how to use it to communicate with students and represent concepts in different ways.
Core components of Making Sense of SCIENCE include:
- Science Investigations
- Literacy Investigations
- Teaching Investigations
- Classroom Connections
Innovations in Literacy Professional Learning: Strengthening Equity, Access, & Sustainability
Energize your literacy knowledge, planning, and professional learning with this valuable addition to any literacy educator’s toolkit.
Literacy leaders Cynthia Greenleaf, Gayle Cribb, Mira-Lisa Katz, and Mary Stump have written a chapter, Professional Learning Designed to Cultivate Continuous Learning and Innovation, which calls on us all to create more opportunities for teachers to deepen their professional growth over time.
Published by Guilford Publishing, the book presents case studies of transformational initiatives tailored to culturally and linguistically diverse populations of teachers and students. Purchase the book and check out the companion video below, which features teachers and students who have participated in WestEd’s Reading Apprenticeship program.
This book was edited by Dana A. Robertson, Leigh A. Hall, and Cynthia H. Brock, and is presented in WestEd’s resource library with permission from Guilford Publishing.
Roadblocks and Routes: Professional Development in Math in Common Districts
This report describes several roadblocks that districts participating in the Math in Common (MiC) initiative faced in their early years of Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSS-M) implementation, along with the routes that the districts took around those roadblocks in order to support teacher and student learning.
The Math in Common® (MiC) initiative, funded by the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, supported a formal network of 10 California school districts as they implemented the CCSS-M across grades K–8. This report is part of a six-part series summarizing key findings from the five-year initiative.
In working to build the understanding of different staff groups about implementing the CCSS-M, MiC districts faced several specific challenges related to how to provide effective and scalable professional development to staff, administrators, and teachers in support of CCSS-M implementation.
Despite the challenges that these roadblocks presented, they also created rich environments for innovation, problem solving, and learning across the MiC community of practice.
This report draws on years of conversation with — and observations of — MiC participants in their districts’ classrooms to offer a set of recommendations about providing effective professional development to support standards implementation. They include:
- Developing an array of professional development strategies for differentiating in-service support to enable useful learning for all teachers
- Examining ways to reallocate or augment funding in order to provide additional time and resources to support teachers’ collaborative work
- Building greater math expertise across the district to support deeper learning for teachers
- Considering how to evaluate the impact of professional development activities to ensure that they are helping staff to implement the district’s mathematics vision
Download this report and the Evaluation Brief to learn more.
Read the entire series of summative evaluation reports and the Executive Summary at WestEd.org/mic-summative-evaluation-reports.