Learning Forward
Equity and excellence in teaching and learning.
Amid crisis, there is opportunity that can galvanize change. This issue examines what educators have learned over the past year and how it can shape practice moving forward. It also includes a special section on nurturing educator wellness.
Excellent educators are made, not born, and it takes a system-wide approach to build the workforce. This issue examines how to build a strong, diverse pipeline from pre-service and induction to expert practice and leadership. It highlights the roles of K-12 systems, higher education, government, and non-profit organizations.
What does it mean to support learning in challenging times? It means listening, communicating, and leading with empathy. It means committing to anti-racism and breaking down structural barriers to equity. This issue examines ways to do so in professional learning.
Technology constantly creates new opportunities for professional learning. Never have those developments been as important as they are now, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This issue examines how strategies like online mentoring, bug-in-ear coaching, virtual collaboration, and video observation have built educator capacity before and during the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed school as we know it. As we face an unpredictable future, professional learning has never been more urgent. This issue highlights some of the ways educators are learning and evolving to meet the shifting needs of students and staff as schools close, shift online, reopen, and prepare for whatever lies ahead.
Jal Mehta looks at how the pandemic is changing teaching and the opportunities it presents to make schools better.
As an antiracist educator, I support colleagues in affective learning spaces to engage in critical self-reflection to create schools that are safe and supportive for students, staff, and families regardless of identity. In the past year, I have found myself coaching countless adults to develop their discursive muscle around educational equity during the twin pandemics […]
School leadership literature repeatedly identifies trust as essential for creating high-gain schools — schools where student gain scores are more than one year’s worth of achievement at a given grade level. These are schools that get results beyond what their demographics would have predicted (e.g. Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, […]
It may be a well-worn trope, but for many educators, the problem with professional learning really is a modern example of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” On the one hand, school leaders need professional learning to implement successfully a range of teaching and learning initiatives driven by the state and district. They rely on professional development […]
