Learning Forward

The Powers Of Teacher Rounds A Guide for Facilitators, Principals, & Department Chairs By Vivian B. Troen and Katherine C. Boles The practice of Teacher Rounds is a professional learning design that promotes teacher collaboration through making teaching practice public. The Power of Teacher Rounds traces the development of an […]

Learning Forward has launched a free web-based professional learning guide using excerpts from the award-winning PBS documentary, The Principal Story, to illustrate five key practices of effective principals. The Principal Story is a one-hour film portraying the challenges principals face in turning around low-performing public schools and raising student achievement. […]

What The Study Says Adopting new curricula presents both a need and an opportunity for professional development to advance teacher content knowledge and instructional practices for achieving curriculum-specific student outcomes. This study examines two modalities of professional development: face-to-face in a summer workshop and online that included two days of […]

While effective professional learning necessitates identifying and leveraging the expertise that exists in schools already, external vendors and technical assistance providers also have an important role to play in building educators’ capacity. Expectations for these third-party vendors are shifting and may now include reframing their roles so they act as […]

State Policies 2013 State Teacher Policy Yearbook National Council on Teacher Quality, January 2014 The National Council on Teacher Quality offers its annual analysis of every state policy that affects teaching. In 2013, states averaged C- for their teacher policies. Florida, with a B+, earned the highest overall teacher policy […]

There’s an awful video making the rounds right now of a roomful of educators in a professional development workshop. It’s the classic horror show, at least from what we can see of it — a presenter speaking at rows of adults, asking them to recite sentences and phrases back to […]

With increased teacher accountability and decreased funding, effective professional learning is more critical than ever. Teachers and educational leaders need to be fully and continuously supported in their professional growth around the changes they face, such as implementing Common Core, learning to interpret and use student data, and supporting teachers […]

Learning and leading happen everywhere — and technology unlocks access to information. Want to visit a local museum, but you’re not sure how to get there? Download directions from a map app, key the address into a GPS or your phone, and a voice provides turn-by-turn instructions to the destination. […]

In the current, very complex, and even conflicted discourse about schools, one thing is clear: Schools need to be about student learning. Schools need to ensure that students are good readers, proficient writers, capable mathematicians, competent scientists, and knowledgeable historians. Students also need to learn to work together, be healthy, […]

Most people are familiar with the practice of medical rounds, in which interns and mentoring physicians visit patients in an institutional setting, observe their various conditions, discuss what they observed, and analyze possible treatment options and outcomes. In the medical profession, making these rounds is viewed as a significant and […]