I am a public elementary teacher currently serving as a school-based supervisor for a Professional Development School (PDS) undergraduate elementary-teacher-education program in Madison, Wisconsin, where our charge is to leverage the intersecting contexts of school, university, and community to prepare skilled and caring teachers for urban…

Teachers need to be taught how to collaborate. When the Stamford (Conn.) Public Schools introduced PLCs in the district's 20 schools, they learned of the four roles that districts play when implementing PLCs systemwide: 1) Districts must involve teachers and administrators in developing and leading the PLC process, 2) they must teach…

Most teachers look back on their first year (or years) of teaching with humility, many with some regret. The author stresses that teachers are always learners, especially so in their first years. At the beginning of each year, they start over again with new students. A learning teacher takes risks and makes mistakes but derives new information,…

The authors, male and female African-American faculty from different academic disciplines at predominantly white institutions, share personal reflections on their experiences teaching postsecondary graduate and professional courses that focus on diversity and multicultural themes. This article provides tools and strategies for improving the…

The staff development teacher facilitates the evolution of a school-based professional learning community focused on improving teaching and learning by being a catalyst for teacher change and reflection. These teacher leaders needed the knowledge and skills to transform individual school staffs into professional learning communities focused on…

The notion of critical friendship is central to self-study. A critical friend acts as a sounding board, asks challenging questions, supports reframing of events, and joins in the professional learning experience. In this paper, we share our experiences of acting as critical friends for each other in two separate self-studies of practice. We…

Presents a case study of one fourth-grade teacher researcher. Documents the teacher's initial reticence toward teacher research, how being part of a group was central to her participation, and how her preferences for methods of data collection and methods for presenting teacher research findings differed from the preferred methods of the group…

Since 1989, professional growth seminars at St. Norbert College (Wisconsin) have brought cooperating teachers together to share their thoughts and emotions related to the experience of student teacher mentoring. In these seminars, the mentors gather for mutual instruction and support. Each seminar series consists of six 2-hour meetings during a…

Many early childhood practitioners use pedagogical documentation as an important process that enables children's thinking to be represented in a form that can be readily shared with others (Dahlberg et al., 1999). Documentation in the form of a professional portfolio provides a vehicle for reflection and an appreciation of the complexities and…

This paper examines an intervention to change prospective elementary teachers' knowledge and beliefs about mathematics education. The intervention consisted of a sequence of mathematics courses, a methods course, and a curriculum seminar in which establishing a community of learners was a central feature. The concept of community embodies the…

The purpose of this article is to describe how a collaborative partnership between a public school teacher and university teacher-educator positively influenced their thinking about effective literacy practices in schools. The collaboration began when the two attended a state initiative summer literacy project. During the workshop they engaged in…