Joellen Killion

WHAT THE STUDY SAYS Teacher discourse patterns about students’ learning in mathematics reflect teachers’ beliefs and expectations about student learning. These beliefs have the capacity to limit or enhance a teacher’s instructional agency. This study focused on professional development as a vehicle for changing teacher thinking and examines discourse patterns […]

At a glance Rethinking how to analyze and conduct research on professional development yields new insights to inform practice. The study Kennedy, M. (2016). How does professional development improve teaching? Review of Educational Research, 86(4), 945-980. WHAT THE STUDY SAYS A new approach to analyzing professional development research provides both researchers […]

WHAT THE STUDY SAYS More than a decade after the last comprehensive literature review on teacher leadership, researchers conclude similar findings and challenges exist in the more recent studies analyzed. Study description In 2004, Jennifer York-Barr and Karen Duke published a seminal and comprehensive review of the literature on teacher […]

At a glance Principal practices influence student achievement, and identifying those that influence student achievement guides principal development and decision-making. The study Hitt, D. & Tucker, P. (2016). Systematic review of key leader practices found to influence student achievement: A unified framework. Review of Educational Research, 86(2), 531-569. WHAT THE […]

This book explores the complex, multi-faceted roles played by teacher leaders and school-based coaches as well as examining district and school expectations, hiring practices, and deployment of these educators. Includes a CD-ROM with more than 200 pages of resources in PDF format plus Innovation Configuration maps for the school-based learning […]

Hirsh & Killion outline eight principles to guide professional learning during the next era. If professional development decision makers adopt these principles, the authors believe they will contribute to ensuring that professional learning will improve leading, teaching, and learning. This book helps readers understand what qualifies as effective professional learning, […]

The days of teachers toiling alone on student learning challenges are coming to a close as more and more educators understand the power of collaborative learning. When educators throughout a school commit collectively to transforming their buildings into learning schools, students reap the benefits. However, effective professional learning communities do […]

Evaluation is “a systematic, purposeful process of studying, reviewing, and analyzing data gathered from multiple sources in order to make informed decisions” about professional learning (Killion, 2008, p. 8). Standards-aligned professional learning requires the use of data for continuous formative and summative evaluation to measure its processes and progress toward […]

A meta-analysis of 37 studies of teacher coaching, many focused on literacy coaching, reveals that coaching positively affects both teaching practice and student achievement. The pooled effects of both general coaching and content-specific coaching have a positive and significant effect on teacher instruction as measured by classroom observations. Both general […]