This article describes the actions taken by the members of the school leadership team at McWhirter Elementary Professional Development Laboratory School in Webster, Texas, when the results of the state reading assessment in spring 2010, had taken a sudden and dramatic drop from the previous year. The team designed an action research study to…

Teachers' social capital is defined as "the knowledge and resources for teaching practice accessible through a social network." The first step to analyzing teachers' social capital is to understand the structure of their social network. Some networks are highly interconnected, offering teachers numerous opportunities to share ideas and receive…

There is not just one way to give feedback, nor is there just one kind of feedback. Bug-in-ear technology, which allows coaches to give teachers in the classroom immediate feedback, has been used successfully for 35 years. In an updated twist on this method, researchers at the University of Kansas used bug-in-ear coaching in a virtual classroom…

Instructional coaching is gaining popularity as a school-based effort to increase teacher effectiveness and student achievement. A coach can be broadly defined as a person who works collaboratively with a teacher to improve that teacher's practice and content knowledge, with the ultimate goal of affecting student achievement. By its very nature,…

Instructional teacher leaders strive to help teachers build knowledge and skills to improve teaching practice. With titles such as coach or coordinator, they may receive a stipend or released time from teaching. Instructional teacher leaders rely on an array of strategies to improve instruction and enhance student learning. They conduct…

Sparking a flame of mutual professional development at Twin Groves Middle School, in Illinois' Kildeer District 96 was a formative assessment. "Formatives," as the practitioners call them, are a technique usually adopted as a safety net for struggling students. But as districts are finding out, they are also effective at honing teacher…

Three years ago, the Toronto District School Board, the largest in Canada and the fourth-largest in North America, began to explore demonstration classrooms as a way to create a richer model of job-embedded, differentiated, and personalized professional learning. By doing action research and examining a variety of professional learning models from…

Although the idea of educational coaching is not new, the way teachers-in-training across six west Alabama counties are receiving job-embedded support is far from routine. Educational consultants 764 miles away are pioneering the use of virtual coaching for professional development. From their offices at the Pennsylvania Training and Technical…

Every teacher can recall a range of experiences in professional development workshops. Some of these may have provided opportunities in which teachers felt engaged, empowered, and supported as learners, while others felt disconnected from practice. Although these authors recognize that workshops, particularly those with no follow-up support, are…

Listening is an important part of presenting. An optimum learning environment is one in which individuals participate fully without pretense in the presentation experience. The article explores why listening is so important, offers tips for the best ways to listen to audience members, and examines how not to listen. (SM)

Explores various tools that presenters utilize to set the stage for their presentations and enhance audience retention, focusing on similarities to successful theatrical presentations. The four tools include setting the stage prior to the program, using the set effectively, selecting and placing props carefully, and considering oneself the…