Educational Leadership:Revisiting Teacher Learning Abstract

publications

Online June 2009 | Volume 66 | Number 9

Revisiting Teacher Learning

Best Practices in Teacher Learning

Marge Scherer

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Brain-Friendly Learning for Teachers

David A. Sousa

What makes some professional development experiences stick strongly and positively in teachers' minds—and affect their practice—while many others engender boredom or even resentment? Sousa reviews findings from recent imaging studies of the brain to show how the quality of motivation a person brings to a learning task affects whether mechanisms for remembering and learning kick on in the brain. Regions in the brain's emotional and cognitive processing areas are activated when an individual is motivated to perform learning behaviors. Four factors affect the intensity of motivation and, by extension, the intensity of learning that is ignited in professional development situations. Sousa probes how school leaders can enhance each of these four factors—emotions, feedback, past experiences, and relevance of the learning content—in developing activities designed to advance teachers' learning and improve their skills.

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A Framework for Learning to Teach

Charlotte Danielson

Educators can become "active investigators of their own teaching" through a two-pronged approach: by applying clear standards of practice, such as those outlined in the Framework for Teaching, and by incorporating features essential to learning, such as self-assessment, reflection on practice, and professional conversation. Several activities in school—such as mentoring and induction, professional development, teacher evaluation, and recruitment and hiring—can incorporate these features. The Framework for Teaching is particularly suited to such applications because of its level of detail in describing teaching practices and its levels of performance, which show a continuum of teaching from novice to expert.

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But What Do I Say?

Benjamin Dotger and Mara Sapon-Shevin

Although most teacher education programs recognize the importance of school-home communication and involving parents in their children's education, many fail to show teachers just exactly how to make these connections. One model that has proven effective is the Parent/Caregiver Conferencing Model, a semester-long teacher-development intervention designed to provide pre- and in-service teachers with multiple opportunities to practice communicating with parents. The model hinges on simulated parent-teacher conferences between participating teachers and standardized parents, actors enlisted to play the role of parents with specific concerns. Scenarios deal with such situations as a boy being bullied in school for appearing to be gay. The simulations made participating teachers more aware of gaps in their own knowledge. Teachers were frequently unsure how to respond to parents' concerns, unable to supply specific solutions, unaware of school policies relevant to the issue at hand, and unclear who else in the school needed to be involved.

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My Return to Differentiated Instruction

J Dianne Brederson

Brederson's long-cherished but neglected commitment to differentiated instruction (DI) techniques revived when she attended a three-day workshop on DI and consulted with Carol Ann Tomlinson, an expert on differentiated instruction. Although she supported the concept of differentiated instruction, as a new college professor, Brederson had found herself "lured by the simplicity, efficiency, and one-size-fits-all appeal of lectures and PowerPoint presentations" and fallen away from practicing it. After the DI workshop, she returned to the classroom recommitted, and worked differentiated activities and assignments into a seminar for new and preservice teachers on increasing awareness of diversity and competence across cultures.

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Letters from Media Specialists

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ASCD Community in Action

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