TeachME Professional Development

1. When integrated into a comprehensive and evidence-based system that is aligned with district goals and processes, online communities of practice and social networks offer a powerful opportunity to strengthen professional learning among educators.

2. The stories of Bob, Sherri, and Elliott demonstrate that, as districts implement new curriculum to align with high-quality college and career readiness standards, teaching strategies will have to adjust to become more personalized to each student and more focused on:

3. As growing evidence affirms the critical need for professional learning and collaboration, the online communities of practice and social networks that educators are embracing are now most commonly linked to school- and district-level support for partnering and professional development.

4. After participating in online communities, many teachers took on leadership roles and engaged in collaboration with other educators to support professional learning throughout their schools and attempted to influence the public policy that sets the conditions for their work, which is an example of:

5. While personal learning networks tend to focus on personal growth, the intent of professional learning communities is to focus on:

6. When examining how different forms of professional learning and collaboration can work together to support continuous improvement, four paths toward integration are suggested including each of the following EXCEPT:

7. Collaborative professional learning involves engaging in sustained group activities that produce increased individual knowledge and tangible products and outcomes aligned with the goals of the group(s) and the institution(s) of association.

8. The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future developed its STEM Learning Studios model to take site-based collaboration to the next level, where cross-subject teams of teachers, scientists, and engineers, along with students, work together on yearlong projects to investigate key STEM challenges.

9. The connected collaborative learning approach is distinct in that it focuses on local and regional collaboration between individual educators and site-based educator teams.

10. The Future Ready Schools: Empowering Educators Through Professional Learning toolkit suggests several design principles that gird the approach to integration, including:

11. Job-embedded professional learning is grounded in day-to-day activities and designed to enhance instructional practices with the intent to improve student learning, and it is preferred over of one-shot workshops and focusing on popular topics.

12. Connected educators commonly consider themselves to be lifelong learners, view online interaction as a means to grow personally and professionally, use online technologies to enhance their face-to-face collaborations and relationship building, and are:

13. When assessing the value of professional learning, an evaluation tool is recommedned that describes three kinds of evidence including outcomes, objectives, and production.

14. District leaders’ should be supported in thinking and acting both systematically and systemically to fine-tune their professional learning by leveraging the power of technology through multifaceted integration.